Decent Work and Work Motivation in Knowledge Workers: the Mediating Role of Psychological Capital

This article aimed to investigate the role of Decent Work as a predictor of different types of Work Motivation and to explore the possible role of Psychological Capital in mediating this relationship. The Decent Work Questionnaire, the Multidimensional Work Motivation Scale, and the Psychological Capital Questionnaire were administered to 3004 knowledge workers, in Portugal and Brazil. Results from Structural Equation Modeling analyses support the hypothesized model, showing the predictor role of Decent Work and complete and partial mediation effects of PsyCap in different relationships between DW and Work motivation variables. The results also support the idea that a decent work context predicts more autonomous work motivations again with the mediation of PsyCap. In sum, the results suggest that decent work plays an important role in promoting a positive approach to work, and that Psychological Capital is an important mediating variable in the promotion of autonomous Work motivation. Limitations and practical implications conclude the article.     

Evaluating risk propensity using an objective instrument

Risk propensity is the stable tendency to choose options with a lower probability of success, but greater rewards. Its evaluation has been approached from various perspectives: from self-report questionnaires to objective tests. Self-report questionnaires have often been criticized due to interference from voluntary and involuntary biases, in addition to their lack of predictive value. Objective tests, on the other hand, require resources that make them difficult to administer to large samples. This paper presents an easy-to-administer, 30-item risk propensity test. Each item is itself an objective test describing a hypothetical situation in which the subject must choose between three options, each with a different gain function but equivalent in expected value. To assess its psychometric fit, the questionnaire was administered to 222 subjects, and we performed a test of its reliability as well as exploratory factor analysis. The results supported a three-factor model of risk (Sports and Gambling, Long-term Plans, and Loss Management). After making the necessary adjustments and incorporating a global factor of risk propensity, confirmatory factor analysis was done, revealing that the data exhibited adequate goodness of fit.     

Mechanisms of visuospatial orienting in deafness

The aim of this work was to explore the nature of elementary operations (engage, move, disengage, and filtering) of spatial attention in deaf experts in sign language. Good communication skills require deaf people to rapidly change attention to at least two separate spatial locations, the facial expression and the hand signs of the speaker. Overtraining imposed by sign language demands might have modified certain characteristics of the spatial attention operations. To test that, a spatial orienting task was used in two experiments. Experiment 1 showed that deaf subjects reoriented their attention to the target location faster than hearing subjects in invalid trials. Experiment 2 indicated that inhibition of return decays faster in deaf than in hearing people. These results suggest that deaf subjects can disengage their attention faster than hearing subjects, fostering search of relevant information in more spatial locations.     

The use of superficial and meaning-based representations in interpreting pronouns: Evidence from Spanish

Abstract

In this paper, we address the question of whether a representation of the surface form of a text is directly implicated in the interpretation of definite pronouns in that text. According to an influential theory proposed by Sag and Hankamer (1984), it should not be, because definite pronouns are model-interpretive anaphors that take their meaning from elements in a representation of content. We report three experiments in Spanish, a language with non-semantic gender, in which pronouns can match their antecedents on the basis of morphosyntactic properties alone. The first experiment suggested that a surface representation might not be implicated in the interpretation of pronouns, since a gender match speeded only the interpretation of pronouns referring to people and not those referring to things. However, a questionnaire study (Experiment 2) confirmed that our strategy of modelling the Spanish sentences in Experiment 1 on sentences used in English studies had affected the results, and a further on-line experiment provided evidence that the interpretation of pronouns referring to things can be speeded by a gender match (Experiment 3). We discuss the implication of these findings for theories of text comprehension.     

Updating mental models in predictive reasoning

Abstract

A mental model account for predictive judgement is proposed. According to this view, solving a predictive task involves the foundation ad updating of a mental he work as the relevant data are provided. The final model state determines the subject's predictive outcome. Two experiments examine the temporal course of reasoning in novices (Experiment 1) and experts (Experiment 2). Each task provided in succession a quantitative source (e.g. “Last year, of the vehidts that stopped at the cafe, 80% were cars and 20% were trucks”), a diagnostic source (e.g. “This vehide is mksy”) and a categorical choice (e.g. “What kind of vehicle was it?”). Two factors were manipulated: The order of sources aimed at analysing the contextual dependence of the updating processes, and the between-sources congruence (congruent or incongruent) in order to explore the integrative processes in model building. The pattern of the sources reading times, the choice times and the categorical choices suggested that: (1) the processing of a source depends on the previous one, (2) subjects try to integrste both sources into a single mental framework, and (3) experts and novices have a similar performance, although experts give more importance to the quantitative source in the diagnostic-quantitative order. These results are better accounted for by the mental model framework than both the heuristic and the formal view of prediction.     

Repetition and form priming interact with neighborhood density at a brief stimulus onset asynchrony

The relationships between repetition- and form-priming effects and neighborhood density were analyzed in two masked priming experiments with the lexical decision task. Given that form-priming effects appear to be influenced by a word’s orthographic neighborhood, it is theoretically important to find out whether repetition priming also differs as a function of the word’s orthographic neighborhood. Within an activation framework, repetition- and form-priming effects are just quantitatively different phenomena, whereas the two effects are qualitatively different in a serial-ordered model of lexical access (theentry-opening model). The results show that repetition- and form-priming effects were stronger forhermit words than for words with many neighbors. These results pose some problems for both activation and serial-ordered models. The implications of these results for determining how neighbors affect the identification of a word are discussed.     

ROC and z-ROC parameters in word memory: experimental and pre-experimental effects

In this study, ROC and z-ROC parameters are applied in word recognition memory, with words classified according to frequency and class. In doing so, unbiased techniques can be used to assess hits and false alarms and to obtain standardized distributions for each experimental condition. Our results confirm the existence of differences in word recognition memory for experimental exposition time, type of words and other pre-experimental effects. These data are consistent with familiarity and recollection models when words' frequency is used, and with familiarity, recollection and dual-route models when words are organized according to class. Finally, we argue in favour of an interactive processing model (words organized according to frequency) versus a processing model nearer to modularity (words organized according to class).     

Affective priming with pictures of emotional scenes: the role of perceptual similarity and category relatedness

Prime pictures portraying pleasant or unpleasant scenes were briefly presented (150-ms display; SOAs of 300 or 800 ms), followed by probe pictures either congruent or incongruent in emotional valence. In an evaluative decision task, participants responded whether the probe was emotionally positive or negative. Affective priming was reflected in shorter response latencies for congruent than for incongruent prime-probe pairs. Although this effect was enhanced by perceptual similarity between the prime and the probe, it also occurred for probes that were physically different, and the effect generalized across semantic categories (animals vs. people). It is concluded that affective priming is a genuine phenomenon, in that it occurs as a function of stimulus emotional content, in the absence of both perceptual similarity and semantic category relatedness between the prime and the probe.     

Parafoveal semantic processing of emotional visual scenes

The authors investigated whether emotional pictorial stimuli are especially likely to be processed in parafoveal vision. Pairs of emotional and neutral visual scenes were presented parafoveally (2.1 degrees or 2.5 degrees of visual angle from a central fixation point) for 150-3,000 ms, followed by an immediate recognition test (500-ms delay). Results indicated that (a) the first fixation was more likely to be placed onto the emotional than the neutral scene; (b) recognition sensitivity (A') was generally higher for the emotional than for the neutral scene when the scenes were paired, but there were no differences when presented individually; and (c) the superior sensitivity for emotional scenes survived changes in size, color, and spatial orientation, but not in meaning. The data suggest that semantic analysis of emotional scenes can begin in parafoveal vision in advance of foveal fixation.     

Perceptions of and satisfaction with retirement: a comparison of six European union countries

The main aim of this study was to assess perceptions of and satisfaction with retirement among 1,686 recently retired people from 6 European Union countries. The authors compared their responses to a set of questions taken from the Retirement Satisfaction Inventory (F. J. Floyd et al., 1992). The first significant result was that Belgian, British, Finnish, French, and Spanish retirees all expressed very similar assessments of life satisfaction, whereas Portuguese retirees expressed a lower level of satisfaction. The 2nd result was that the major determinants of overall satisfaction in the 6 countries were (a) health and resources and (b) anticipated satisfaction. Finally, the data revealed that cultural background only accounted for a limited amount of variance in overall satisfaction with retirement.