Mood, personality, and self-monitoring: negative affect and emotionality in relation to frontal lobe mechanisms of error monitoring

A fundamental question in frontal lobe function is how motivational and emotional parameters of behavior apply to executive processes. Recent advances in mood and personality research and the technology and methodology of brain research provide opportunities to address this question empirically. Using event-related-potentials to track error monitoring in real time, the authors demonstrated that variability in the amplitude of the error-related negativity (ERN) is dependent on mood and personality variables. College students who are high on negative affect (NA) and negative emotionality (NEM) displayed larger ERN amplitudes early in the experiment than participants who are low on these dimensions. As the high-NA and -NEM participants disengaged from the task, the amplitude of the ERN decreased. These results reveal that affective distress and associated behavioral patterns are closely related with frontal lobe executive functions.     

Age-related changes in contextual associative learning

The hippocampus plays a critical role in processing contextual information. Although age-related changes in the hippocampus are well documented in humans, nonhuman primates, and rodents, few studies have examined contextual learning deficits in old rats. The present study investigated age-related differences in contextual associative learning in young (6 mo) and old (24 mo) rats using olfactory stimuli. Stimuli consisted of common odors mixed in sand and placed in clear plastic cups. Testing was conducted in two boxes that represented two different contexts (Context 1 and Context 2). The contexts varied based on environmental features of the box such as color (black vs. white), visual cues on the walls of the box, and flooring texture. Each rat was simultaneously presented with two cups, one filled with Odor A and one filled with Odor B in each context. In Context 1, the rat received a food reward for digging in the cup containing Odor A, but did not receive a food reward for digging in the cup containing Odor B. In Context 2, the rat was rewarded for digging in the cup containing Odor B, but did receive a reward for digging in the cup containing Odor A. Therefore, the rat learned to associate Context 1 with Odor A and Context 2 with Odor B. The rat was tested for eight days using the same odor problem throughout all days of testing. The results showed no significant difference between young and old rats on the first two days of testing; however, young rats significantly outperformed old rats on Day 3. Young rats continued to maintain superior performance compared to old rats on Days 4-8. The results suggest that aging results in functional impairments in brain regions that support memory for associations between specific cues and their respective context.     

Who is empowered? Relative importance of dispositional and situational sources to psychological empowerment

Major reviews of psychological empowerment (PE) suggest four broad sources to becoming empowered: organizational, leadership, job, and dispositional. This study examines the redundancy, uniqueness, and relative importance within and across these situational and dispositional domains using commonality and dominance analyses. Across multiple samples, we find (a) within socio-structural domains, empowering leadership, knowledge sharing, and task significance are the most unique organizational sources of PE, (b) dispositional predictors augment situational features in explaining PE, and, perhaps most importantly, (c) job characteristics (JC) along with core self-evaluation (CSE) occupy the most dominant role on PE. In study 1 (N = 229), rank and CSE accounted for 64% of the variance in PE after accounting for information distribution, leadership, and the Big Five. Controlling for expanded Big Five inventory, leadership constructs, and socio-structurally features, study 2 (N = 171) finds general dominance of task significance (14%), empowering leadership (19%), and reduced, albeit incremental, effect of CSE (10%). Finally, study 3 (N = 386) replicates the large (30%) and moderately (10%) dominant effects of multiple JC dimensions and CSE. Implications call for a micro-level approach to PE emphasizing expanded roles, broadened self-concept, and personal impact on society rather than inspiring managers or organizational practices.