New Technologies,New Identities,and the Growth of Mass Opposition in the Arab Spring

The recent revolutions known as the Arab Spring have been characterized as the products of social media. However, there is an alternative view that revolution takes place on the street or the battlefield and that the role of social media has been overstated. We argue that some new technologies can serve to facilitate rapid social change when they provide ways to overcome restrictions on the freedoms of expression and association. In doing so, communication technologies enable the formation of new social identities that can challenge existing social orders by promoting the growth of a social movement that is positioned as loyal to the nation and its people but opposed to the government. Our analyses focus on the role of social media in spreading video images of dissent and the links between this video material, satellite television, and mobile telephones in Tunisia and Egypt.     

Retro-cue benefits in working memory without sustained focal attention

In working memory (WM) tasks, performance can be boosted by directing attention to one memory object: When a retro-cue in the retention interval indicates which object will be tested, responding is faster and more accurate (the retro-cue benefit). We tested whether the retro-cue benefit in WM depends on sustained attention to the cued object by inserting an attention-demanding interruption task between the retro-cue and the memory test. In the first experiment, the interruption task required participants to shift their visual attention away from the cued representation and to a visual classification task on colors. In the second and third experiments, the interruption task required participants to shift their focal attention within WM: Attention was directed away from the cued representation by probing another representation from the memory array prior to probing the cued object. The retro-cue benefit was not attenuated by shifts of perceptual attention or by shifts of attention within WM. We concluded that sustained attention is not needed to maintain the cued representation in a state of heightened accessibility.     

Overgeneral Autobiographical Memories: Gender Differences in Depression

Considering the higher prevalence of depression in women than in men, the study of the variables that underlie this gender difference becomes important for both the prevention and the treatment of depression. This study explores gender differences in the relationship between depressive symptoms, rumination, repressive coping, and overgeneral autobiographical memory (OGM) in a nonclinical population. There are 141 men and 148 women who completed the measures of depression, rumination, and repression, and the Autobiographical Memory Test to assess OGM. Women remembered a higher number of specific memories than men. Most importantly, results showed a different pattern of association between rumination, repression, depression, and OGM by gender. Depressive symptoms were associated with repressive coping and OGM in women. However, depressive symptomatology was related to repressive coping but not to OGM in men. These results suggest that the role of OGM in depression may be less important in men than in women. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Progress Toward Understanding the Structure and Determinants of Job Performance: A focus on task and citizenship performance

Job performance criterion models have become more popular and more often investigated. The current research adds to this literature by testing performance models focusing on ability and personality predictors of task and citizenship job performance. Air traffic controllers (N = 928) completed cognitive ability and personality predictor measures, were administered a performance test assessing two possible mediators, and were evaluated using supervisor and peer ratings of two task performance, one citizenship performance, and an overall performance dimension. Path analyses largely confirmed that ability predicts primarily task performance and personality predicts primarily citizenship performance. The mediation related to task knowledge and skill on the task performance side was confirmed, and the overall fit of the performance models was quite good. Discussion focuses on how the present research furthers progress toward mapping relations among individual differences and individual performance constructs, beyond using overall performance as the endogenous performance variable.     

How dogs scan familiar and inverted faces: an eye movement study

Faces play an important role in communication and identity recognition in social animals. Domestic dogs often respond to human facial cues, but their face processing is weakly understood. In this study, facial inversion effect (deficits in face processing when the image is turned upside down) and responses to personal familiarity were tested using eye movement tracking. A total of 23 pet dogs and eight kennel dogs were compared to establish the effects of life experiences on their scanning behavior. All dogs preferred conspecific faces and showed great interest in the eye area, suggesting that they perceived images representing faces. Dogs fixated at the upright faces as long as the inverted faces, but the eye area of upright faces gathered longer total duration and greater relative fixation duration than the eye area of inverted stimuli, regardless of the species (dog or human) shown in the image. Personally, familiar faces and eyes attracted more fixations than the strange ones, suggesting that dogs are likely to recognize conspecific and human faces in photographs. The results imply that face scanning in dogs is guided not only by the physical properties of images, but also by semantic factors. In conclusion, in a free-viewing task, dogs seem to target their fixations at naturally salient and familiar items. Facial images were generally more attractive for pet dogs than kennel dogs, but living environment did not affect conspecific preference or inversion and familiarity responses, suggesting that the basic mechanisms of face processing in dogs could be hardwired or might develop under limited exposure.     

Investigating Maternal Touch and Infants' Self‐Regulatory Behaviours during a Modified Face‐to‐Face Still‐Face with Touch Procedure

Maternal touch and infants' self‐regulatory behaviours were examined during a modified Still‐Face with Touch (SF + T) procedure. Mothers and their 5½‐month‐old infants participated in one period of Normal interaction followed by three SF + T periods. Maternal functions of touch, and infants' self‐regulatory behaviour, affect, and attention were evaluated. Contrary to a typical SF procedure, the amount of smiling remained high while fretting remained low. High levels of maternal touching and variations in the functions of maternal touch were observed across periods. Playful touch remained high while there was an increase in nurturing touch and a decrease in attention‐getting touch from the Normal to all SF + T periods. Similar amounts of self‐regulatory behaviours were observed across periods with the exception of a decrease in bidirectional exchanges during the SF + T periods. Finally, across periods, maternal touch and infants' self‐regulatory behaviours were found to be temporally organized with infants' affect and attention. Examining how mothers use touch when other forms of communication are absent increased our understanding of the role of touch in infants' emotion regulation. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.