Mental multiplication and working memory

This paper is concerned with the role of working memory resources in mental multiplication. In two experiments a dual-task paradigm was used. In the first experiment neutral tapping was contrasted to three modalityspecific secondary tasks: Irrelevant speech and articulatory suppression were used to disrupt the phonological loop and a visuo-spatial tapping was used to disrupt the visuo-spatial sketchpad. Multiplication sums needed to be solved mentally and results needed to be spoken aloud. Sums varied in difficulty (easy, e.g., 3 x 4 =, difficult, e.g., 8 x 17 =). Results from the first experiment revealed declines in performance on difficult sums under articulatory suppression but no interference effect for easy sums. To investigate the role of central executive processes, a second experiment extended the range of interference conditions to a central executive interference task (random letter generation). Now articulatory suppression and random generation caused a decrease of performance on difficult sums. In addition, performance on easy sums was negatively impacted by random letter generation as well. We infer that solving complex multiplication sums demands phonological loop and central executive processes, whereas retrieving numerical facts in solving simple multiplication sums requires only central executive processes. We found no evidence of modality-specific access to numerical facts stored in long-term memory.     

Optimal matching analysis in career research: A review and some best-practice recommendations

Optimal matching is a method for the analysis of sequential data. It allows researchers to detect patterns in career sequences or occupational trajectories. We first give a brief introduction to the method and review the existing career literature that employs optimal matching. To examine which data properties are required for optimal matching analysis, we conducted Monte Carlo simulations of career sequences with varying parameters for sequence length, sample size and missing items. We find that sequence length is the relevant factor for correct results, while sample size does not substantially affect result quality. Another important finding is that sequences with up to 30% elements missing can be used for optimal matching analysis. We also show which settings for the optimal matching procedure deliver the best results.     

Development of early vocational behavior: Parallel associations between career engagement and satisfaction

The present five-wave longitudinal study examined the parallel development of career engagement and satisfaction among young adults over an eight-year period starting from the last stages of their secondary education and ending after the transition to higher education or working life. The research questions were analyzed with parallel process latent growth curve (LGC) modeling and growth mixture modeling (GMM). The study is part of the ongoing longitudinal Finnish Educational Transitions (FinEdu) study, and followed 826 participants from ages 17 to 25. The developmental dynamics showed that career engagement and satisfaction developed parallel, each predicting the changes in the other. Towards the end of secondary education, career engagement increased and career satisfaction decreased on the mean level; however, later on, after the transition to higher education/work, both processes leveled off. The GMM results also revealed the existence of two latent trajectory groups, one representing a high transitional and the other a low increasing trajectory of career engagement and satisfaction.     

Bounded by Disbelief: How Atheists in the United States Differentiate themselves from Religious Believers

Recent empirical studies have revealed that religious believers tend to hold atheists and other religious doubters in low regard. This article examines how atheists in turn negotiate and construct the social and symbolic boundaries between atheists and religious believers. I draw on ethnographic and interview data to explore the lenses through which atheists view religion, religious believers, and the boundary between religious believers and non-believers. I find that atheists participate in boundary work to construct difference between religious believers and non-believers. However, atheists see greater social distance between themselves and some groups of religious believers than they do in relation to other groups, constructing religious leaders and devout adherents of particular religions as especially different. Atheists’ constructions of religious believers also vary in response to their individual experiences with religious people. The analysis illuminates the complexity of boundary work among members of a minority group.     

Study Burnout and Engagement During COVID-19 Among University Students: The Role of Demands,Resources, and Psychological Needs

The COVID-19 pandemic forced most universities to switch from in-person to remote teaching from May 2020 to May 2021. This period covered three semesters of studies, and due to these changes students experienced fundamental changes in their learning. The present research was carried out 3 times during the pandemic (e.g., May 2020, December 2020, and April 2021) to investigate study engagement and burnout, and their associations with various demands, resources, and psychological needs among university students. Self-reports were collected from 1501, 1526, and 1685 university students in Helsinki. The results showed that study burnout increased across the time points, being the highest in April 2021, whereas study engagement was the lowest in December 2020. Further, at the beginning of the pandemic the explanatory power of study-related demands and resources on study burnout and engagement was stronger, whereas in April 2021 the role of psychological needs increased. These results inform strategies to promote students’ engagement through distance-learning, mitigating negative effects of the situation.

     

Focus on the essential: all great apes know when others are being attentive

When begging for food, all great ape species are sensitive to a human’s attention. However, studies investigating which cues are relevant for chimpanzees to assess the attentional state of others have produced highly inconsistent results. Some have suggested chimpanzees differentiate attention based on the status of the face or even the eyes, while others have indicated that body posture alone is the relevant cue. Kaminski et al. (Anim Cogn 7:216–223, 2004) compared the behaviour of chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans while begging for food from a human experimenter who systematically varied his face and body orientation. Their results indicated that both factors, face and body orientation, affect apes’ begging behaviour. The authors claimed that while body orientation provides information about the experimenter’s general disposition to offer food, the visibility of the face provides information about the human’s attentional state. In the current study, we tested this hypothesis with all four great apes species. However, unlike Kaminski et al. (Anim Cogn 7:216–223, 2004), the experimenter was able to hand over food regardless of body orientation. The results show that as soon as the offering of the food was no longer restricted, the orientation of the face became the key factor. Therefore, we present the first evidence that all great ape species are able to assess the attentional state of a recipient based on the orientation of the face.     

Memory activation and the availability of explanations in sequential diagnostic reasoning

In the field of diagnostic reasoning, it has been argued that memory activation can provide the reasoner with a subset of possible explanations from memory that are highly adaptive for the task at hand. However, few studies have experimentally tested this assumption. Even less empirical and theoretical work has investigated how newly incoming observations affect the availability of explanations in memory over time. In this article we present the results of 2 experiments in which we address these questions. While participants diagnosed sequentially presented medical symptoms, the availability of potential explanations in memory was measured with an implicit probe reaction time task. The results of the experiments were used to test 4 quantitative cognitive models. The models share the general assumption that observations can activate and inhibit explanations in memory. They vary with respect to how newly incoming observations affect the availability of explanations over time. The data of both experiments were predicted best by a model in which all observations in working memory have the same potential to activate explanations from long-term memory and in which these observations do not decay. The results illustrate the power of memory activation processes and show where additional deliberate reasoning strategies might come into play.     

Cultural and Institutional Determinants of Social Dominance Orientation: A Cross‐Cultural Meta‐Analysis of 27 Societies

We investigate macrocontextual antecedents of national levels of Social Dominance Orientation (SDO). The majority of previous research, in contrast, has tended to focus on individual‐level correlates of SDO. We extend research on Social Dominance Theory by modelling national‐level differences in institutional discrimination, macroeconomic development, and value ideologies as broad situational factors affecting SDO mean levels in previous studies. Our hypotheses were tested in a three‐level meta‐analysis of aggregate data from 50,971 individuals in 95 samples from 27 different societies. Strong effects for hierarchy‐attenuating legitimizing ideologies and gender empowerment were found. Aggregate discrimination against arbitrary‐set groups was less consistently linked to SDO, suggesting that these hierarchies are context‐specific. Using mixed‐effects three‐level modelling, the patterns can be generalized to new contexts and suggest a particular institutional and social climate that fosters high SDO.