The influence of perceptual and semantic categorization on inhibitory processing as measured by the N2–P3 response

In daily activities, humans must attend and respond to a range of important items and inhibit and not respond to unimportant distractions. Our current understanding of these processes is largely based on perceptually simple stimuli. This study investigates the interaction of conceptual-semantic categorization and inhibitory processing using Event Related Potentials (ERPs). Participants completed three Go–NoGo tasks that increased systematically in the degree of conceptual-semantic information necessary to respond correctly (from single items to categories of objects and animals). Findings indicate that the N2 response reflects inhibitory processing but does not change significantly with task difficulty. The P3 NoGo amplitude, on the other hand, is attenuated by task difficulty. Further, the latency of the peak of the P3 NoGo response elicited by the most difficult task is significantly later than are the peaks detected during performance of the other two tasks. Thus, the level of complexity of conceptual-semantic representations influences inhibitory processing in a systematic way. This inhibition paradigm may be a key for investigating inhibitory dysfunction in patient populations.     

Gender Differences in the Influence of Professional Tenure on Work Attitudes

In this study we examined gender differences in the influence of professional tenure on 3 work attitudes: career salience, organizational commitment, and job involvement. In total, 220 men and 125 women working in high-level jobs in a large multinational organization completed a written questionnaire. Using hierarchical regression analyses, and controlling for differences between men and women in age, the presence of children, and number of working hours, we found no significant gender differences in the 3 work attitudes. The results further show that although career salience, job involvement, and organizational commitment increase with age, these work attitudes decrease with professional tenure. In terms of organizational commitment, the negative influence of professional tenure was significantly stronger for women than for men. Finally, the implications for future studies and for organizational practice are discussed.     

Online corrections in children with and without DCD

Human arm movements need 'online' corrections due to noise in perception and action. A Step-Perturbation paradigm explored online corrections in control children and children with DCD aged between 7 and 13 years. Control children found the task straightforward: a distracter had no effect and they managed to stop relatively quickly. Children with DCD found the task difficult and the apparatus was modified accordingly (decreased postural and force production demands). The distracter affected some children with DCD and some found it difficult to stop. All of the DCD population showed poorer performance in both the perturbation and non-perturbation condition. Nevertheless, there was no interaction between group and condition. Thus, this study found no evidence for specific deficits in online correction mechanisms in DCD. We suggest that: (i) fundamental problems in generating basic movements can account for the documented difficulties in correcting on-going movements, and (ii) such fundamental difficulties make it very difficult to pinpoint specific mechanism deficits.     

Psychological contract breach and job attitudes: A meta-analysis of age as a moderator

The aim of this study was to examine the influence of age in the relation between psychological contract breach and the development of job attitudes. Based on affective events, social exchange, and lifespan theory, we hypothesized that (1) psychological contract breach would be related negatively to job attitudes, and (2) that age would moderate these relations. The hypotheses were tested by means of a meta-analysis of k = 60 studies, using Weighted Least Squares estimation. Our results supported both hypotheses for the outcomes trust and organizational commitment. However, for job satisfaction the moderating influence of age was in the unexpected direction. The relations between contract breach and trust and organizational commitment were indeed stronger for younger workers, whereas the relation between contract breach and job satisfaction was stronger for older workers. The implications are discussed, and a research agenda is presented.     

Towards a Philosophy of Software Development: 40 Years after the Birth of Software Engineering

Over the past four decades, software engineering has emerged as a discipline in its own right, though it has roots both in computer science and in classical engineering. Its philosophical foundations and premises are not yet well understood. In recent times, members of the software engineering community have started to search for such foundations. In particular, the philosophies of Kuhn and Popper have been used by philosophically-minded software engineers in search of a deeper understanding of their discipline. It seems, however, that professional philosophers of science are not yet aware of this new discourse within the field of software engineering. Therefore, this article aims to reflect critically upon recent software engineers’ attempts towards a philosophy of software engineering and to introduce our own philosophical thoughts in this context. Finally, we invite the professional philosophers of science to participate in this interesting new discourse.

The psychometric properties of the Slovenian translation of the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity: a study among Roman Catholic undergraduate students

In order to contribute to a growing international research programme concerned with the correlations, antecedents and consequences of individual differences in attitude toward religion, the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity was translated into Slovenian. Data provided by a sample of 808 undergraduate students affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church supported the internal consistency reliability and construct validity of this instrument and commended it for further use in studies conducted in Slovenia.     

Metacognitive myopia and the overutilization of misleading advice

Previous research on advice taking has explained the failure to exploit collective wisdom in terms of the egocentric underweighting of advice provided by independent others. The present research is concerned with an opposite and more radical source of irrational advice taking, namely, the failure to critically assess the validity of advice due to metacognitive myopia. Participants could use the advice of one or two experts when estimating health risks. They read sketches of the study samples that experts had drawn to estimate conditional probabilities (e.g., of HIV‐given drug addiction). Whether samples were valid or seriously biased, subsequent judgments were strongly affected by any advice (Experiment 1). Uncritical reliance on any advice persisted when participants were sensitized to the contrast of valid and invalid advice in a repeated measures design (Experiment 2), when participants themselves believed advice not to be valid (Experiment 3), and even after full debriefing about invalid advice (Experiment 4). Lay advice exerted a similar influence as expert advice (Experiment 5). Although these provocative results are independent of numeracy and consensus (Experiment 6), they highlight the impact of metacognitive myopia as an impediment of social rationality.     

Sources of error in picture naming under time pressure

We used a deadline procedure to investigate how time pressure may influence the processes involved in picture naming. The deadline exaggerated errors found under naming without deadline. There were also category differences in performance between living and nonliving things and, in particular, for animals versus fruit and vegetables. The majority of errors were visuallyand semantically related to the target (e. celery-asparagus), and there was a greater proportion of these errors made to living things. Importantly, there were also more visual-semantic errors to animals than to fruit and vegetables. In addition, there were a smaller number of pure semantic errors (e.g., nut-bolt), which were made predominantly to nonliving things. The different kinds of error were correlated with different variables. Overall, visual-semantic errors were associated with visual complexity and visual similarity, whereas pure semantic errors were associated with imageability and age of acquisition. However, for animals, visual-semantic errors were associated with visual complexity, whereas for fruit and vegetables they were associated with visual similarity. We discuss these findings in terms of theories of category-specific semantic impairment and models of picture naming.     

Clergymen and clergywomen: the same inclusive gospel?

Some commentators suggest that clergywomen bring a different perspective to ministry in comparison with that brought by clergymen. This paper explores the extent to which clergywomen bring a more inclusive set of values and beliefs to the pulpit. Data from the Church Times Survey conducted in April 2001 enable this question to be examined across four main areas: inclusive beliefs, pastoral inclusivity, inclusive views on ordained ministry, and social inclusivity. The analysis suggests that clergywomen do bring a more inclusive perspective to ministry than clergymen across the four areas explored in this study.     

Measuring Big-Five personality dimensions with the implicit association test – Implicit personality traits or self-esteem?

We examined whether the implicit association test (IAT) could serve as an implicit measure of the dimensions of the Five-Factor Model of Personality. In the first study (N = 84) IAT-effects of the Big-Five (Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism and Openness) were found and the IAT showed good internal consistencies and convergent validity with an explicit Big-Five questionnaire (NEO-FFI-30). In a second study (N = 50), conducted to determine the overlap of the personality-IATs with implicit self-esteem, the Extraversion and the Neuroticism-IAT were shown to correlate with a self-esteem-IAT only moderately.