Work values among the unemployed: changes over time and some gender differences

Work involvement (psychological identification with work in general) has generally been considered as a stable, dispositional characteristic, although some studies of unemployment have contradicted this view. Using longitudinal data from a Swedish representative sample (n= 888), this study examines employment status change (e.g. from work to unemployment) and work values development in a 15-month time period. Furthermore, the relationship between employment status change and well-being is explored, with a special focus on the roles played by work values and gender differences. Results indicated that work values are fairly stable over 15 months. As expected, the long-term unemployed (mostly active job seekers) had higher measures of work involvement after 15 months. Further, no gender difference was found with regard to work involvement but females were more likely to agree that there is an entitlement to work. Becoming unemployed was associated with negative health effects, but only among unemployed men.     

The role of item-specific information for the serial position curve in free recall

The serial position curve in free recall of a list of action phrases differs depending on whether the phrases were memorized by listening/reading (verbal task; VT) or by additionally enacting the denoted actions (subject-performed task; SPT). In VTs there is a clear primacy effect and a short recency effect. In SPTs there is no primacy effect but an extended recency effect. H. D. Zimmer, T. Helstrup, and J. Engelkamp (2000) assumed that SPTs provide excellent item-specific information, which leads to an automatic pop-out of the items presented last. In the present study, the authors assumed that good item-specific encoding generally enhances the recency effect and that it hinders rehearsal processes and thereby reduces the primacy effect. This assumption was confirmed. An item-specific orienting task leads to parallel serial position curves in VTs and SPTs with no primacy effect but a clear recency effect. Moreover, the same serial position effects were shown with nouns as learning material. An item-specific orienting task changes the classical U-shaped serial position curve with verbal material and leads to the disappearance of the primacy and the enhancement of the recency effect.     

Reactions to social and non‐social novelties in 2‐year‐olds

The purpose of this study is to investigate the internal structure of behavioural inhibition [cf. Goldsmith, H.H. and Campos, J.J. (1990). Child Development, 61 , 1944–1964]. Observations of 45 2‐year‐olds’ approaching/positive reactions, inhibited/negative reactions, and latencies, when encountering strangers as well as unfamiliar objects, are made in a laboratory setting. The intercorrelations between the six different measures, obtained from the observations, are analysed by means of a multitrait–multimethod matrix. It is concluded, from inspection of the matrix, that aggregations of data into indexes covering different reactions (approaching/positive reactions, inhibited/negative reactions, and latency) and settings (stranger and objects), respectively, are appropriate. To further validate the different indexes, assessments of concurrent variables (separation reactions, reactions to physical intrusion, reactions in a new setting, and maternal ratings of reactions to strangers) are used. The results indicate that all reactions to both social and non‐social novelties can be assigned to one construct, which is in line with the assumption made by Kagan and his co‐workers about behavioural inhibition. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Interactions between mothers and infants showing food refusal

This study examined the interactional patterns of mothers and their infants who showed food refusal (N = 24) and of mothers and infants in a control group (N = 24) during feeding and play. The observations revealed significant group differences in both infant and maternal behavior. Infants in the case group rejected food more often and showed less clear communication signals than control infants, and mothers of case infants were less sensitive, less cooperative, and had more verbal teaching/control behavior than the control group. These differences pertained to both feeding and play situations. The findings have implications for the development of appropriate and efficient intervention strategies for infants showing food refusal.     

Auditory distractor processing in sequential selection tasks

In this review, we analyze the cognitive processes contributing to selection in audition. In particular, we focus on the processing of auditory distractors in sequential selection paradigms in which target stimuli are accompanied by distractors. We review the evidence from two established tasks, namely the auditory negative priming and the auditory distractor–response binding task, and discuss the cognitive mechanisms contributing to the results typically observed in these tasks. In fact, several processes have been suggested as to explain how distractors are processed and handled in audition; that is, auditory distractors can be inhibited, encoded with a do-not-respond-tag, integrated into a stimulus–response episode containing the response to the target, or upheld in working memory and matched/mismatched with the following distractor. In addition, variables possibly modulating these cognitive processes are discussed. Finally, auditory distractor processing is compared with distractor processing in vision.     

Switching between filter settings reduces the efficient utilization of visual working memory

The capacity limitation of working memory requires that only relevant information gains access to the workspace, while irrelevant information is kept out. Thus, the ability to use attention to filter out irrelevant information is an important factor in how efficiently the limited storage space is used. Here, we examined to what degree the requirement to flexibly change filter settings affects filtering efficiency. Participants were presented with visual objects in different colors, and a cue presented in advance indicated which objects had to be stored. The contralateral delay activity, an event-related brain potential that reflects working-memory load was used to assess filtering efficiency during the retention interval. The data of two experiments showed that when filter settings had to be adjusted on a trial-by-trial basis, more irrelevant information passed the gate to working memory. Moreover, this switching-induced filtering deficit was restricted to those items that matched the previous, but currently irrelevant, filter settings. Thus, lingering effects of the selection history seem to counteract goal-directed encoding, and thus constitute an important attentional limitation for the efficient utilization of our limited workspace.     

Electrophysiological evidence for late maturation of strategic episodic retrieval processes

Improvement in source memory performance throughout development is thought to be mediated by strategic processes that facilitate the retrieval of task-relevant information. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), we examined developmental changes in these processes during adolescence. Adolescents (13-14 years) and adults (19-29 years) completed a memory exclusion task which required the discrimination between words studied in one color ('targets') and words studied in the alternative color ('non-targets') under two conditions that put different demands on strategic control. Memory accuracy improved with age and also increased with decreasing control demands in both age groups. The parietal old/new effect, an ERP correlate of recollection, was reliable for targets across conditions in both age groups. By contrast, ERP correlates of non-target recollection were present in adolescents across conditions but not in adults. This suggests that adults implemented a strategy to prioritize recollection of target information with greater success than adolescents regardless of control demands, presumably reflecting maturational differences in cognitive control. In support of this view, the ERP amplitude difference between targets and non-targets was positively correlated with a measure of working memory capacity (WMC) in adults but not in adolescents. A further age-related difference was that ERP correlates of post-retrieval processing, including late right-frontal old/new effects and late posterior negativities, were observed in adults only. Together, our data suggest protracted maturation in the strategic processes that underlie selective recollection and post-retrieval control.     

Increased spatial salience in the social Simon task: A response-coding account of spatial compatibility effects

A spatial compatibility effect (SCE) is typically observed in forced two-choice tasks in which a spatially defined response (e.g., pressing a left vs. a right key) has to be executed to a nonspatial feature of a stimulus (e.g., discriminating red from green) that is additionally connoted by a spatial feature (e.g., the stimulus points to the left or the right). Responses are faster and more accurate when the response side and the spatial stimulus feature are compatible than when they are incompatible. Previous research has demonstrated that SCEs are diminished when stimuli from only one response category are responded to in individual go/no-go tasks, whereas SCEs reemerge when two participants work jointly on two complementary, individual go/no-go tasks in a joint go/no-go task setting. This social Simon effect has been considered evidence for shared task representations. We show that SCEs emerge in individual go/no-go tasks when the spatial dimension is made more salient, whereas SCEs are eliminated in joint go/no-go tasks when the spatial dimension is made less salient. These findings are consistent with an account of social Simon effects in terms of spatial response coding, whereas they are inconsistent with an account of shared task representations. The relevance of social factors for spatial response coding is discussed.