Extended spider cognition

There is a tension between the conception of cognition as a central nervous system (CNS) process and a view of cognition as extending towards the body or the contiguous environment. The centralised conception requires large or complex nervous systems to cope with complex environments. Conversely, the extended conception involves the outsourcing of information processing to the body or environment, thus making fewer demands on the processing power of the CNS. The evolution of extended cognition should be particularly favoured among small, generalist predators such as spiders, and here, we review the literature to evaluate the fit of empirical data with these contrasting models of cognition. Spiders do not seem to be cognitively limited, displaying a large diversity of learning processes, from habituation to contextual learning, including a sense of numerosity. To tease apart the central from the extended cognition, we apply the mutual manipulability criterion, testing the existence of reciprocal causal links between the putative elements of the system. We conclude that the web threads and configurations are integral parts of the cognitive systems. The extension of cognition to the web helps to explain some puzzling features of spider behaviour and seems to promote evolvability within the group, enhancing innovation through cognitive connectivity to variable habitat features. Graded changes in relative brain size could also be explained by outsourcing information processing to environmental features. More generally, niche-constructed structures emerge as prime candidates for extending animal cognition, generating the selective pressures that help to shape the evolving cognitive system.     

Headphone screening to facilitate web-based auditory experiments

Psychophysical experiments conducted remotely over the internet permit data collection from large numbers of participants but sacrifice control over sound presentation and therefore are not widely employed in hearing research. To help standardize online sound presentation, we introduce a brief psychophysical test for determining whether online experiment participants are wearing headphones. Listeners judge which of three pure tones is quietest, with one of the tones presented 180° out of phase across the stereo channels. This task is intended to be easy over headphones but difficult over loudspeakers due to phase-cancellation. We validated the test in the lab by testing listeners known to be wearing headphones or listening over loudspeakers. The screening test was effective and efficient, discriminating between the two modes of listening with a small number of trials. When run online, a bimodal distribution of scores was obtained, suggesting that some participants performed the task over loudspeakers despite instructions to use headphones. The ability to detect and screen out these participants mitigates concerns over sound quality for online experiments, a first step toward opening auditory perceptual research to the possibilities afforded by crowdsourcing.     

The Role of Consistent Context in Rapid Movement Planning: Suboptimal Endpoint Adjustment to Changing Rewards

The authors' purpose was to determine if participants adjusted their endpoint during a rapid aiming task in the context of changing rewards and whether participants needed consistent feedback to do so. Participants aimed to a target that was overlapped by a penalty region. Participants gained points for hitting the target but lost points for hitting the penalty region. The reward value associated with target contact either changed trial to trial, reducing consistent feedback (variable condition) or changed between blocks of trials (blocked condition) with the repetition of reward value within a block increasing the consistency of feedback. Participants adjusted their endpoints with changing reward value in the blocked but not variable condition indicating consistent feedback is needed to adjust endpoint to changing rewards.     

A Cyber Phenomenon: A Q-Analysis on the Motivation of Computer Hackers

In computer security parlance, a hacker is an individual who actively seeks and takes advantage of flaws and weaknesses of a computer network or system. In recent years, one has seen the rise of hacking, often as a form of protest and retaliation for reasons ranging from political to social, but the question remains as to what really motivates an individual to hack a computer network? Using the Q-method, the study aimed to develop a classification of the motivation of computer hackers. This was done with the use of 43 participants who were subjected to preliminary interviews and the sorting method. The statements from the interviews were categorized that resulted in seven conceptual themes, namely social-positive, social-negative, intellectual gain, self-satisfaction, economic rewards, technological-positive and technological-negative. From these themes, three distinct profiles emerged and were used to describe the motivation of hackers.     

A realist social ontology of religion

Jonathan Z. Smith famously pointed out that the concept of ‘religion’ is not universal but emerged only in the modern West. Several scholars have drawn from Smith the non-realist implication that the existence of religion apart from that concept is an illusion. The word ‘religion,’ they say, does not refer to something out there in the world. In this article, the author argues that Smith’s point is open to a realist interpretation according to which religion exists in the world, as a transhistorical and transcultural reality, even apart from the concept. To make this case, the author outlines and responds to non-realist positions that draw on genealogical, deconstructive, and linguistic arguments, as well as to the alternative proposal that ‘religion’ is simply a heuristic device. In short, the goal of this article is to argue that a realist social ontology provides the better understanding of the central theoretical term in our field.     

Neoliberal Education for Work Versus Liberal Education for Leisure

My concern in this essay is not so much with the invisible work or hidden labor produced by neoliberalism, but rather with what Joseph Pieper describes as an emerging culture of “total work” (Pieper, p. 43). More than the sheer (and increasing) number of hours of work, Pieper diagnoses a transformation in the way we view work. Work (or the necessary tasks of production and consumption) has become the exclusive point of reference for how we see and define ourselves. We are, Pieper feared, increasingly incapable of seeing beyond the working self. The human being (or homo sapien) has become the human worker (or homo faber). Historically, the ideal of leisure offered a counter vision (and its practices a counterbalance) to this tendency. Michael Oakeshott notes that while human beings must attend to the necessities for survival, they are most especially distinguished (from other animals) by their capacity for leisure—by an ability to pursue questions, conversations, and explorations that transcend the realm of production and consumption (Oakeshott 1989). To overlook and exclude leisurely pursuits is to diminish our humanity.     

The Philosopher's Baedeker: Wittgenstein's Tractatus as Guidebook

The Wittgenstein of the Tractatus is committed to four central and interlocking claims: a limit to sense and nonsense can be drawn in logic; a limit to meaningful and meaningless language – to meaningful and meaningless nonsense – cannot be drawn in logic; whether nonsense is meaningful is shown in its use rather than its form; the Tractatus consists largely of meaningful nonsense. Undergirding these commitments is an account of language‐to‐world picturing in which shared “mathematical multiplicities” play a key role. Picturing as a global phenomenon – language‐to‐world, rather than proposition‐to‐fact – has not been well understood. The Tractatus is not a textbook. No doctrines are developed in it. No problems solved. Instead, it is a kind of Baedeker, a guidebook for those who want “to see the world aright.”     

Conflicts with Friends: A Multiplex View of Friendship and Conflict and Its Association with Performance in Teams

Drawing on conservation of resources theory, multiplex social networks research, and the emerging conflict involvement perspective, the purpose of this study is to develop and test a multiplex view of conflict that explicitly accounts for the nature of the social relationships between those involved in intrateam conflict and how these multiplex relationships differentially impact team performance. Data were collected from 120 teams engaged in a 4-month business simulation. Relationship conflicts occurring among team members who are friends have a negative impact on team performance, whereas those occurring between non-friends have a positive impact on team performance. Although we also find non-friend task conflicts to be beneficial for team performance, friend task conflicts have no impact on team performance. This study highlights the dark side of workplace friendships and admonishes managers to pay close attention not only to conflicts among employees, but also to the relational closeness of those involved in conflict. The current study provides empirical support for the emerging conflict involvement perspective by explicitly assessing the number of individuals involved in conflict as well as the type of relationships between them. We also extend research on multiplex relationships from the individual to the team level of analysis. Finally, we respond to calls for studies of multiplexity that include both positive and negative relationships.     

Differential Effects of Task Performance,Organizational Citizenship Behavior,and Job Complexity on Voluntary Turnover

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to investigate the performance–turnover relationship by considering the effects of task performance and OCBs simultaneously while also examining the moderating effect job complexity has on the relationship between voluntary turnover and each type of performance.

Design/Methodology/Approach

Data were obtained as part of a larger study to validate an employment test, in which actual turnover data and supervisory ratings of job performance were collected for employees in two hospitals (n = 782).

Findings

Task performance exhibited a curvilinear relationship with turnover, while OCB exhibited a negative linear relationship with turnover. Job complexity moderated both of these relationships. For task performance, turnover in high-complexity jobs was greater for low performers but lower for high performers relative to that of employees in low-complexity jobs. For OCB, the negative relationship with turnover was more pronounced in high-complexity jobs.

Implications

Both low- and high-task performers are more likely to turnover, while employees exhibiting high OCBs are less likely to turnover. These results imply that retention strategies are critical for top performers, but especially in high-complexity jobs. Organizations may be able to discourage voluntary turnover by creating conditions that stimulate OCB, particularly in highly complex jobs.

Originality/Value

Most prior performance–turnover relationship research used unidimensional measures of performance, whereas this study included two dimensions of performance and examined this relationship while controlling for one-performance dimension when predicting the other. Furthermore, this study is one of the first studies to suggest that job complexity moderates the performance–turnover relationship.