Expecting different categories at different locations and spatial selective attention

An experiment is reported testing the idea that spatial selective attention operates like the beam of a spotlight. Subjects made speeded orientation judgements to alphanumeric characters that could appear at an upper or lower display location. Letters tended (p = 0.8) to occur at one location, while digits tended to occur at the other. Alphanumeric category was pre-cued (p = 0.8). Response times were faster for cued than uncued items. For cued items subjects were faster at the likely location for a cued item. For uncued items this was reversed, with faster responding at the likely location for an uncued item. Hence, location selectivity reflected location probability for each category regardless of short-term expectancy concerning stimulus category. These data are incompatible with a simple spotlight view of spatial selective attention. Alternative explanations, including a modified two-stage spotlight model, were considered.     

Affective commitment,trust, and the psychological contract: contributions matter,too!

ABSTRACT

Employees’ receipt of inducements is associated with trust and affective commitment, and employees pay for their inducements with their contributions (e.g., time, and physical and intellectual effort). Yet this relationship does not fully mirror events as they occur in an employment relationship where employees’ promises and delivery of inducements and contributions are ongoing, and relatively continuous. Our premise is that promising and delivering contributions may enhance or reduce employees’ trust in and commitment to the organization depending on how well they fulfill psychological needs. We tested a social exchange theory model and our alternative model. Survey results favoured our alternative model and suggested that employees’ contributions were related to trust and commitment, independent of the role of inducements. Tests of the social exchange model exhibited worse fit to the data. Breach and fulfilment results from polynomial regression and response surface analyses revealed that commitment was higher when delivered contributions equal promised contributions and declined when delivered amounts were deficient of, or exceeded, promised amounts. Employees’ promised and delivered contributions to organizations may constitute a path to their feelings of commitment, but commitment was highest when delivered contributions were within close range of promised amounts.     

The Effect of Anxiety Sensitivity and Gender on the Experience of Pain

The association between negative affectivity (NA) and health complaints is thought to reflect a stronger attentional focus on bodily sensations in high NA persons. Perceiving these sensations as rather threatening, high NA persons may scan their internal environment for impending signs of pain and trouble. Using an on-line registration of attentional deployment, we tested whether high NA persons were allocating more attentional resources to internal sensations and less to external stimuli compared to low NA persons. High and low NA participants (N = 68) performed a Stroop-like primary task during a number of trials in which: (1) only an internal; (2) only an external; or (3) both an internal and an external stimulus could occur. Internal stimuli consisted of 7.5% carbon dioxide administrations, causing slight increases in ventilation. An increase in time interval between successive tones served as the external stimulus. Participants were asked to press a button when they noticed one of both events. Results showed that high NA participants: (1) detected the effects of a first respiratory stimulus faster; (2) performed poorer on the tone task when anticipating a respiratory challenge; (3) performed slower on the Stroop task during respiratory stimuli. These findings may indicate that high NA participants show a stronger attentional bias to internal sensations.