Time course of attentional bias to emotional scenes in anxiety: Gaze direction and duration

Pictures of emotionally neutral, positive, and negative (threat‐ or harm‐related) scenes were presented for 3 seconds, paired with nonemotional control pictures. The eye fixations of high and low trait anxiety participants were monitored. Intensity of stimulus emotionality was varied, with two levels of perceptual salience for each picture (colour vs. greyscale). Regardless of perceptual salience, high anxiety was associated with preferential attention: (a) towards all types of emotional stimuli in initial orienting, as revealed by a higher probability of first fixation on the emotional picture than on the neutral picture of a pair; (b) towards positive and harm stimuli in a subsequent stage of early engagement, as shown by longer viewing times during the first 500 ms following onset of the pictures; and with (c) attention away from (i.e., avoidance) harm stimuli in a later phase, as indicated by shorter viewing times and lower frequency of fixation during the last 1000 ms of picture exposure. This suggests that the nature of the attentional bias varies as a function of the time course in the processing of emotional pictures.     

Genuine memory bias versus response bias in anxiety

Low and high trait anxiety undergraduates were presented with physical‐threat, ego‐threat, positive, and neutral words. Following an orienting task promoting lexical—but not semantic—processing, unexpected free recall or recognition tests were presented. High anxiety participants showed increased correct recall of both types of threat‐related words, but also increased incorrect recall (intrusions) and incorrect recognition (false alarms) of these words. Furthermore, participants high in anxiety had reduced sensitivity (d′) for ego‐threat words, and reduced cautiousness (β) for physical‐threat words. This tendency to report threat‐related information regardless of prior presentation suggests that there is a response bias rather than a memory bias in anxiety. In addition, this bias is likely to be mediated by depression insofar as physical‐threat information is concerned, although the bias can be attributed to trait anxiety insofar as ego‐threat information is concerned.     

Assessing Private and Public Need for Uniqueness: Validation of French Versions of the Need for Uniqueness (NfU) and Self-Attributed Need for Uniqueness (SANU) Scales

Need for uniqueness represents the need for people to feel different and distinguish themselves from others. Two major scales exist that measure this need: the Need for Uniqueness scale (NfU; Snyder &; Fromkin, 1977 Snyder, C. R., &; Fromkin, H. L. (1977). Abnormality as a positive characteristic: The development and validation of a scale measuring need for uniqueness. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 86, 518–527. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.86.5.518[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and the Self-Attributed Need for Uniqueness scale (SANU; Lynn &; Harris, 1997b Lynn, M., &; Harris, J. (1997b). Individual differences in the pursuit of self-uniqueness through consumption. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 27, 1861–1883. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1997.tb01629.x[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). We propose here a French version of both scales. Through a dual approach of exploratory and confirmatory factorial analyses, we investigated the scales' structure in student samples from two French-speaking countries (France and Switzerland, N = 1,348) as well as measures of internal and external validity. Both scales presented good psychometric properties in French. Additionally, we investigated differences between the scales, as literature suggests that the NfU relies mostly on public and risky displays of uniqueness, whereas the SANU focuses on private and more socially acceptable means to acquire a feeling of uniqueness. Differences arose in the links with several personality characteristics (emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, sensation seeking, and self-consciousness), suggesting that the NfU corresponds rather to a need to demonstrate uniqueness through public displays and the SANU to a need to feel unique through more private means. We discuss implications for research and provide advice on choosing by the scale most appropriate to the researcher's aims.     

Impact of Culture on Human Resource Management Practices: A 10‐Country Comparison

Le Mode`le de Culture Fit explique la manie`re dont l'environnement socio‐culturel influence la culture interne au travail et les pratiques de la direction des ressources humaines. Ce mode`le a e´te´ teste´ sur 2003 salarie´s d'entreprises prive´es dans 10 pays. Les participants ont rempli un questionnaire de 57 items, destine´ a` mesurer les perceptions de la direction sur 4 dimensions socio‐culturelles, 6 dimensions de culture interne au travail, et les pratiques HRM (Management des Ressources Humaines) dans 3 zones territoiriales. Une analyse ponde´re´e par re´gressions multiples, au niveau individuel, a montre´ que les directeurs qui caracte´risaient leurs environnement socio‐culturel de fac¸on fataliste, supposaient aussi que les employe´s n'e´taient pas malle´ables par nature. Ces directeurs ne pratiquaient pas l'enrichissement des postes et donnaient tout pouvoir au contrôle et a` la re´mune´ration en fonction des performances. Les directeurs qui appre´ciaient une grande loyaute´ des employe´s supposaient qu'ils remplissent entre eux des obligations re´ciproques et s'engagaient dans la voie donnant pouvoir aux pratiques HRM. Les directeurs qui percevaient le paternalisme et une forte distance de l'autorite´ dans leur environnement socio‐culturel, supposaient une re´activite´ des employe´s, et en outre ne pourvoyaient pas a` l'enrichissement des postes et a` la de´le´gation. Des mode`les spe´cifiques a` la culture qui mettent en relation ces 3 groupes de variables ainsi que les applications de ces recherches pour la psychologie industrielles trans‐culturellesont e´te´ de´battus.     

An individual differences perspective on pragmatic abilities in the preschool years

Pragmatic abilities are fundamental to successful language use and learning. Individual differences studies contribute to understanding the psychological processes involved in pragmatic reasoning. Small sample sizes, insufficient measurement tools, and a lack of theoretical precision have hindered progress, however. Three studies addressed these challenges in three- to 5-year-old German-speaking children (N = 228, 121 female). Studies 1 and 2 assessed the psychometric properties of six pragmatics tasks. Study 3 investigated relations among pragmatics tasks and between pragmatics and other cognitive abilities. The tasks were found to measure stable variation between individuals. Via a computational cognitive model, individual differences were traced back to a latent pragmatics construct. This presents the basis for understanding the relations between pragmatics and other cognitive abilities.

Research Highlights

• Individual differences in pragmatic abilities are important to understanding variation in language development.
• Research in this domain lacks a precise theoretical framework and psychometrically high-quality measures.
• We present six tasks capturing a wide range of pragmatic abilities with excellent re-test reliability.
• We use a computational cognitive model to provide a substantive theory of individual differences in pragmatic abilities.