The Role of Self-Regulation Training in Developing the Motivation Management Capabilities of Salespeople

Time management, goal setting, goal attainment strategies, prioritization techniques! These are some of the self-regulation skills that today’s sales organizations are attempting to develop in a sales force through self-regulation training. This study empirically investigates self-regulation training and how it can facilitate salesperson performance. Findings suggest that self-regulatory training can enhance salesperson self-regulation capabilities, decrease role ambiguity, and thereby aid sales performance. Furthermore, our findings suggest that the value of self-regulation training may not be uniform across all sales trainees. Specifically, self-regulation training may be more beneficial to salespeople after they have developed a level of mastery over fundamental core selling capabilities.     

Age-Related Changes in Neural Activation During Working Memory Performance

Changes in frontal lobe functions are a typical part of aging of the brain. There are age-related declines in working memory performance, a skill requiring frontal lobe activation. This study examined neural activation, using [15 O] water positron emission tomography (PET) methodology, during performance on two verbal working memory tasks in younger and older participants. The results demonstrated the typical areas of activation associated with working memory performance (e.g., dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and inferior parietal cortex) in both groups. However, the younger participants utilized the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate gyrus significantly more than the older participants. In turn, the older participants used the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex significantly more than the younger participants and maintained material-specific lateralization in their pattern of activation. These findings are consistent with a previous report of different age-related patterns of frontal activation during working memory.     

"Not another meeting!" Are meeting time demands related to employee well-being?

Using an interruptions framework, this article proposes and tests a set of hypotheses concerning the relationship of meeting time demands with job attitudes and well-being (JAWB). Two Internet surveys were administered to employees who worked 35 hr or more per week. Study 1 examined prescheduled meetings attended in a typical week (N=676), whereas Study 2 investigated prescheduled meetings attended during the current day (N=304). As proposed, the relationship between meeting time demands and JAWB was moderated by task interdependence, meeting experience quality, and accomplishment striving. However, results were somewhat dependent on the time frame of a study and the operational definition used for meeting time demands. Furthermore, perceived meeting effectiveness was found to have a strong, direct relationship with JAWB.     

Multicultural perspectives on suicide

Cultural differences exist as to suicide rates, suicide attempts, suicide attitudes such as acceptability, and appropriate treatment of suicide. Although suicide has been studied cross-nationally to highlight cross-cultural differences, the nuances of suicide among racioethnic groups within the United States have been at times been overlooked. The present article discusses suicide among the four (African American, Hispanic American, Native American, Asian American) most populous minority sociopolitical groups in the United States, and makes culture-specific recommendations for treatment and research.     

Instrumentation of a self-luminous fixation annulus

A simple and inexpensive way of constructing a fixation annulus is described. Such a device is important for experiments in which a fixation spot in the test field area is undesirable or when subjects’ experimental tasks preclude their manipulation of a fixation dot brightness control. A luminous compound is inserted into transparent plastic tubing which can be shaped and inserted into a groove milled to fit the tube’s diameter and shape. Annulus luminance is in the scotopic range. Repeated measurement showed that there was no brightness loss over time. Ways of further attenuating brightness are discussed.     

Structural and Functional Meta-analytic Evidence for Fronto-subcortical System Deficit in Progressive Supranuclear Palsy

Meta-analytic methods were used to determine the most sensitive indexes to fronto-subcortical deficit in progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and to further characterize the neurocognitive and related features of PSP that can provide a basis of comparison to other disorders with prominent subcortical brain lesions. Studies dating back to 1984 were gathered and calibrated to compare the neuropsychological, neuroimaging, and neurophysiological test results from 229 patients with PSP, and 357 healthy controls. The tests most sensitive to fronto-subcortical deficit in PSP were mostly neuropsychological measures that include such tests as the Stroop Task, Trail Making Test Part A, and Purdue pegboard performance. We conclude that although neuropsychological measures may be most sensitive to deficits in PSP, they are also less specific and valid indicators of fronto-subcortical brain system integrity.     

When is it wrong to eat animals? The relevance of different animal traits and behaviours

Research suggests that animals’ capacity for agency, experience, and benevolence predict beliefs about their moral treatment. Four studies built on this work by examining how fine‐grained information about animals’ traits and behaviours (e.g., can store food for later vs. can use tools) shifted moral beliefs about eating and harming animals. The information that most strongly affected moral beliefs was related to secondary emotions (e.g., can feel love), morality (e.g., will share food with others), empathy (e.g., can feel others' pain), social connections (e.g., will look for deceased family members), and moral patiency (e.g., can feel pain). In addition, information affected moral judgements in line with how it affected superordinate representations about animals’ capacity for experience/feeling but not agency/thinking. The results provide a fine‐grained outline of how, and why, information about animals’ traits and behaviours informs moral judgements.     

Infant care from infants' viewpoint: the views of some professionals

Debate about infant care tends to focus on still unresolved questions about whether or not day care is harmful, while research studies often confine care options to an unrealistic axis of choice between group care and mother care. Research that delineates constituents of day care quality in relation to measurable outcomes for different groups of children is urgently needed and should be based on a broader view of infant care options. A postal opinion survey sought the confidential views of members of an international organization of infant mental health professionals as to the kinds of care they considered likely to be best for infants from birth to 36 months, assuming that all types of care were of equally high quality and availability. Surprisingly lengthy periods of care by mothers were consistently endorsed; fathers were almost entirely disregarded as principal or joint caregivers; all forms of family care were endorsed over all forms of purchased care, but all forms of individual care were preferred to full-day group care for all age groups and to half-day group care up to the age of 2. The patterns of care judged by these respondents as likely to be best for infants are very different from those which most infants experience now, and from those which policy- and opinion-makers, practitioners and parents aspire, publicly at least, to provide for infants in the future. ©1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.