A model of involvement in work-related learning and development activity: the effects of individual,situational, motivational,and age variables

Eight hundred employees from across the U.S. work force participated in a detailed 13-month longitudinal study of involvement in learning and development activities. A new model was posited and tested in which the hypothesized sequence was as follows: worker age --> individual and situational antecedents --> perceived benefits of participation and self-efficacy for development --> attitudes toward development --> intentions to participate --> participation. The results depict a person who is oriented toward employee development as having participated in development activities before, perceiving themselves as possessing qualities needed for learning, having social support for development at work and outside of work, being job involved, having insight into his or her career, and believing in the need for development, in his or her ability to develop skills and to receive intrinsic benefits from participating. Given the aging work force, a detailed treatment of age differences in development is presented. Implications for new ideas in practice and future research are discussed.     

Developmental changes in face processing skills

Expertise in processing differences among faces in the spacing among facial features (second-order relations) is slower to develop than expertise in processing the shape of individual features or the shape of the external contour. To determine the impact of the slow development of sensitivity to second-order relations on various face-processing skills, we developed five computerized tasks that require matching faces on the basis of identity (with changed facial expression or head orientation), facial expression, gaze direction, and sound being spoken. In Experiment 1, we evaluated the influence of second-order relations on performance on each task by presenting them to adults (N=48) who viewed the faces either upright or inverted. Previous studies have shown that inversion has a larger effect on tasks that require processing the spacing among features than it does on tasks that can be solved by processing the shape of individual features. Adults showed an inversion effect for only one task: matching facial identity when there was a change in head orientation. In Experiment 2, we administered the same tasks to children aged 6, 8, and 10 years (N=72). Compared to adults, 6-year-olds made more errors on every task and 8-year-olds made more errors on three of the five tasks: matching direction of gaze and the two facial identity tasks. Ten-year-olds made more errors than adults on only one task: matching facial identity when there was a change in head orientation (e.g., from frontal to tilted up). Together, the results indicate that the slow development of sensitivity to second-order relations causes children to be especially poor at recognizing the identity of a face when it is seen in a new orientation.     

The use of the Ego Impairment Index across the schizophrenia spectrum

The goal of this study was to assess perceptual and thought disturbance, as indexed by the Ego Impairment Index (EII; Perry & Viglione, 1991), a Rorschach-derived measure, across the schizophrenia spectrum. We hypothesized that there would be an increase in EII scores (indicating increased disturbance) across the spectrum from nonpatients to severely disturbed, hospitalized schizophrenia patients. Normal comparison participants (n = 66), students with elevated scores on either the Perceptual Aberration/Magical Ideation or the Physical Anhedonia Scales (n = 24), first-degree relatives of schizophrenia patients (n = 36), participants diagnosed with Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed. [DSM-IV]; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) schizotypal personality disorder (n = 36), outpatient schizophrenia participants (n = 33), and hospitalized schizophrenia patients (n = 56) were studied. As hypothesized, we found increased EII scores in all of the schizophrenia spectrum groups when compared against normal comparison participants. Furthermore, the EII was significantly different between the schizophrenia patients and the other schizophrenia spectrum groups. These findings support the use of the EII as a sensitive measure of perceptual and thought disturbance across the schizophrenia spectrum that yields specific information regarding the type of thinking problems that occur within schizophrenia spectrum subgroups.     

A prescribed employee fitness program and job-related attitudes

A prescribed physical fitness exercise program was initiated in a small furniture manufacturing plant. The present purpose was to investigate the effect of an intervention to change employees' attitudes and sense of well-being. The objective was to evaluate the changes in employees' attitudes (well-being) attributable to the exercise program. The method of evaluation was the survey administered to a treatment (n = 22) and a mixed (n = 30) control group. A multidimensional attitude survey questionnaire was administered to assess effects over a 6-mo. period. While some changes in job attitudes were observed for the treatment group, those were not the expected changes. Possible explanations for the findings are discussed.     

Developmental changes in perceptions of attractiveness: a role of experience?

In three experiments, we traced the development of the adult pattern of judgments of attractiveness for faces that have been altered to have internal features in low, average, or high positions. Twelve-year-olds and adults demonstrated identical patterns of results: they rated faces with features in an average location as significantly more attractive than faces with either low or high features. Although both 4-year-olds and 9-year-olds rated faces with high features as least attractive, unlike adults and 12-year-olds, they rated faces with low and average features as equally attractive. Three-year-olds with high levels of peer interaction, but not those with low levels of peer interaction, chose faces with low features as significantly more attractive than those with high-placed features, possibly as a result of their increased experience with the proportions of the faces of peers. Overall, the pattern of results is consistent with the hypothesis that experience influences perceptions of attractiveness, with the proportions of the faces participants see in their everyday lives influencing their perceptions of attractiveness.     

Exploring the validity of the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) with established emotions measures

Emotions measures represent an important means of obtaining construct validity evidence for emotional intelligence (EI) tests because they have the same theoretical underpinnings. Additionally, the extent to which both emotions and EI measures relate to intelligence is poorly understood. The current study was designed to address these issues. Participants (N = 138) completed the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT), two emotions measures, as well as four intelligence tests. Results provide mixed support for the model hypothesized to underlie the MSCEIT, with emotions research and EI measures failing to load on the same factor. The emotions measures loaded on the same factor as intelligence measures. The validity of certain EI components (in particular, Emotion Perception), as currently assessed, appears equivocal.     

Strength-Based Assessment of Rural African American Early Adolescents: Characteristics of Students in High and Low Groups on the Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale

Early adolescents strengths were examined in relation to factors that are associated with developmental risk or resilience in two rural low-income southern communities. The sample was comprised 279 students (101 boys, 178 girls), all of whom were African American and reflected the public school attendance of this community. Parent reports on the Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale (BERS) were used to assess strengths. BERS scores were examined in relation to academic, behavioral, and social characteristics of participants. For girls, total strength scores on the BERS were positively associated with indices of high competence and negatively associated with problematic characteristics. For boys, high and low total strength scores differentiated between youth who did and did not have risks associated with externalizing behavior problems. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for assessment and prevention.     

Adrenocorticotrophic hormone modulates Escherichia coli O157:H7 adherence to porcine colonic mucosa

Exposure to stress is associated with susceptibility to disease and one stress mediator, norepinephrine, has been reported to enhance the adherence of enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli O157:H7 (EHEC) to the colonic mucosa. We tested the hypothesis that adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) and other stress-related hormones may act in a similar fashion. Explants of distal colonic mucosa from young pigs were mounted in Ussing chambers and their luminal aspect was exposed to EHEC strain 700728 for 30-90 min. When added to the contraluminal, but not luminal bathing medium, ACTH increased EHEC adherence within 90 min in a concentration-dependent manner (EC50 = 1.2 nM), but did not alter tissue electrical conductance. ACTH had no effect on the adherence of a pig-adapted non-O157 E. coli strain. The effect of 0.1 microM ACTH on luminal EHEC adherence was prevented in tissues pretreated contraluminally with the type 2 melanocortin receptor antagonist ACTH7-38, the neuronal conduction blocker saxitoxin, or the muscarinic cholinergic antagonist atropine. Moreover, ACTH7-38 decreased EHEC adherence in the absence of ACTH. These results suggest that ACTH acts via melanocortin receptors located on enteric nerves to enhance mucosal adherence of EHEC.     

Mortgaging the future: Dumping ethics with nuclear waste

On August 22, 2005 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued proposed new regulations for radiation releases from the planned permanent U.S. nuclear-waste repository in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The goal of the new standards is to provide public-health protection for the next million years — even though everyone admits that the radioactive wastes will leak. Regulations now guarantee individual and equal protection against all radiation exposures above the legal limit. Instead E.P.A. recommended different radiation exposure-limits for different time periods. It also recommended using only the arithmetic mean of the dose distribution, to assess regulatory compliance during one time period, but using only the median dose to assess compliance during another period. This piece argues that these two changes — in exposure-limits and in methods of assessing regulatory compliance — have at least four disturbing consequences. The changes would threaten equal protection, ignore the needs of the most vulnerable, allow many fatal exposures, and sanction scientifically flawed dose calculations.     

Can children recognize pride?

Recent research has shown that pride, like the "basic" emotions of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise, has a distinct, nonverbal expression that can be recognized by adults (J. L. Tracy & R. W. Robins, 2004b). In 2 experiments, the authors examined whether young children can identify the pride expression and distinguish it from expressions of happiness and surprise. Results suggest that (a) children can recognize pride at above-chance levels by age 4 years; (b) children recognize pride as well as they recognize happiness; (c) pride recognition, like happiness and surprise recognition, improves from age 3 to 7 years; and (d) children's ability to recognize pride cannot be accounted for by the use of a process of elimination (i.e., an exclusion rule) to identify an unknown entity. These findings have implications for the development of emotion recognition and children's ability to perceive and communicate pride.