Translating External Knowledge to Team Creativity in Turbulent Environments: The Role of Absorptive Capacity and Knowledge Integration

In seeking to understand factors contributing to team creativity in dynamic environments, we explored the role of external knowledge search on team creativity through absorptive capacity and knowledge integration. We tested our hypotheses with a sample of 96 teams involving 421 employees in China. Results demonstrated that external knowledge search related positively to team creativity, fully mediated by both absorptive capacity and knowledge integration. In addition, environmental dynamism played a moderating role in the relation between external knowledge search and absorptive capacity, as well as in the relation between external knowledge search and knowledge integration. We discussed the implications of these findings for research and practice.     

Discriminated functional communication: a procedural extension of functional communication training

A limitation associated with communication-based interventions for problem behavior is the potential for requesting reinforcement at high rates. Multiple-schedule arrangements have been demonstrated to be effective for controlling rates of responding (Hanley, Iwata, & Thompson, 2001). In the current study, we extended previous research by teaching individuals to attend to naturally occurring discriminative stimuli (e.g., caregiver behavior) instead of arbitrary stimuli (e.g., picture cards). Following successful treatment with functional communication and extinction, 2 participants were taught to request attention differentially based on whether the caregiver was engaging in a variety of "busy" (e.g., talking on the phone) or "nonbusy" (e.g., reading a magazine) activities. Following training, each participant engaged in communication primarily when caregivers were engaged in nonbusy activities.     

Time Costs for Genetic Counseling in Preconception Carrier Screening with Genome Sequencing

Advances in technology and the promise of personalized health care are driving greater use of genome sequencing (GS) for a variety of clinical scenarios. As health systems consider adopting GS, they need to understand the impact of GS on the organization and cost of care. While research has documented a dramatic decrease in the cost of sequencing and interpreting GS, few studies have examined how GS impacts genetic counseling workloads. This study examined the time needed to provide genetic counseling for GS in the context of preconception carrier screening. Genetic counselors prospectively reported on the time spent in the results disclosure process with 107 study participants who were part of the NextGen study. We found that the median time for results disclosure was 64 min (ranged from 5 to 229 min). Preparation work was the most time-consuming activity. Qualitative data from journal entries, debrief interviews with genetic counselors, and detailed case conference notes provided information on factors influencing time for results disclosure and implications for practice. Results suggest that expanded carrier screening could require significant increases in genetic counseling time, unless we are able to generate new resources to reduce preparation work or develop other strategies such as the creation of new models to deliver this type of service.     

On the interplay of visuospatial and audiotemporal dominance: Evidence from a multimodal kappa effect

When participants judge multimodal audiovisual stimuli, the auditory information strongly dominates temporal judgments, whereas the visual information dominates spatial judgments. However, temporal judgments are not independent of spatial features. For example, in the kappa effect, the time interval between two marker stimuli appears longer when they originate from spatially distant sources rather than from the same source. We investigated the kappa effect for auditory markers presented with accompanying irrelevant visual stimuli. The spatial sources of the markers were varied such that they were either congruent or incongruent across modalities. In two experiments, we demonstrated that the spatial layout of the visual stimuli affected perceived auditory interval duration. This effect occurred although the visual stimuli were designated to be task-irrelevant for the duration reproduction task in Experiment 1, and even when the visual stimuli did not contain sufficient temporal information to perform a two-interval comparison task in Experiment 2. We conclude that the visual and auditory marker stimuli were integrated into a combined multisensory percept containing temporal as well as task-irrelevant spatial aspects of the stimulation. Through this multisensory integration process, visuospatial information affected even temporal judgments, which are typically dominated by the auditory modality.     

Supervisor Reactions to Avoidance Job Crafting: The Role of Political Skill and Approach Job Crafting

Avoidance job crafting refers to employees proactively changing work boundaries by reducing tasks and/or interactions with others. Although avoidance job crafting may help employees to address work demands, if noticed by others, specifically supervisors, it may trigger negative reactions from them. While previous research posits that job crafting is largely unnoticed by supervisors, using a dyadic supervisor-employee study (N = 141 dyads), we found that supervisors were in fact aware of their employees’ avoidance job crafting, which related to a reduction in supervisor support. This relationship was moderated by employee political skill (but not approach job crafting), such that high avoidance job crafting in combination with high political skill resulted in fewer negative outcomes, presumably because supervisors were less likely to notice their employees’ avoidance job crafting. In a second, vignette study (N = 92 supervisors), we experimentally replicated the relation between observed avoidance job crafting and negative supervisor reactions, and found that this relation can be explained by supervisors perceiving avoidance job crafting as destructive work behavior. Our findings introduce the supervisor perspective to the job crafting literature and highlight the importance of engaging in avoidance job crafting in a skillful way that aligns with the external context.     

Evaluation of early relational disturbance in high-risk populations: Borderline personality disorder features,maternal mental state,and observed interaction

Despite the longstanding theoretical association in the attachment literature between maternal trauma history and disturbances in the mother–infant interaction, few studies have investigated mechanisms of transmission of traumatogenic relational patterns in high-risk mother–infant dyads. This study investigated interrelationships among maternal trauma history, distorted maternal representations (DMRs, i.e. disturbed thoughts and feelings about the infant and self-as-parent), maternal mentalisation (i.e. capacity to conceive of self and other's intentions in terms of mental states including thoughts, feelings, and desires), and quality of interaction in a clinical sample of mothers with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) features and their infants (N = 61). Measures used included the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, Parent Development Interview, Mother–Infant Relationship Scale, Borderline Symptom Checklist-23, and the Emotional Availability Scales. The results indicated BPD features mediated the relationship between maternal trauma history and DMRs predicting disturbance in interaction. In addition, analyses showed that maternal mentalisation had a buffering effect between DMRs and maternal non-hostility and yet the severity of BPD features moderated the relationship between mentalisation and DMRs. The findings suggest postpartum borderline pathology may adversely impact the experience of being a parent for women with a relational trauma history including deficits in mentalisation (i.e. hypermentalising) and disturbances in the mother–infant interaction. Implications for research and clinical practice are discussed.