Ambition as a motivational basis of organizational and professional commitment: preliminary analysis of a proposed career advancement ambition scale

This study proposes that the ambition to advance in one's career may serve as a motivational basis of organizational and professional commitment. In support of this notion, preliminary evidence of the reliability and construct validity of a proposed Career Advancement Ambition Scale is presented, and exploratory analyses of a secondary data set show that the scale and original scales of organizational and professional commitment can predict turnover intentions. Limitations and implications for future research are discussed.     

Challenge and hindrance stress: relationships with exhaustion, motivation to learn, and learning performance

In a study of 696 learners, the authors found that stress associated with challenges in the learning environment had a positive relationship with learning performance and that stress associated with hindrances in the learning environment had a negative relationship with learning performance. They also found evidence suggesting that these stress-learning performance relationships were partially mediated by exhaustion and motivation to lean. Both forms of stress were positively related to exhaustion, and exhaustion was negatively related to learning performance. Hindrance stress was negatively related to motivation to learn, challenge stress was positively related to motivation to learn, and motivation to learn was positively related to learning performance. Implications with respect to theory and practice are discussed.     

Back to the future: A review essay of paul hawken, amory lovins and L. Hunter Lovins’ Natural capitalism and Bjørn Lomberg’s The skeptical environmentalist

Conclusion Despite all the hyperbole, Natural Capitalism is not a great book and even less of a radical concept. Indeed, the "natural" is wholly unnecessary, for most of its "radical insights" amounts to nothing more than a rediscovery of the fundamental tenets of a market economy. Good capitalist entrepreneurs have always been able to figure out that pollution and waste are both inefficient and expensive. They never needed government officials or business consultants to tell them that you can do well financially and environmentally at the same time. In spite of all this, if Natural Capitalism succeeds in convincing a large segment of the population that economic growth needn’t coincide with environmental degradation, it will have played a useful role—perhaps one that long-time advocates of market economies simply cannot play. One nonetheless hopes that Hawken and the Lovins will one day take a good look at what their ancestors achieved and give some credit to writers who made all of their good points—and most of their bad ones—long before they were born. He received his Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Montreal and recently completed a two year post-doctoral fellowship at the Johns Hopkins University. His main research interests are environmental and economic development issues and intellectual property. Much of the research leading to this article was completed while the author was a research fellow at the Political Economy Research Center (Bozeman, Montana) in the Summer of 2000.     

Subjective frequency and imageability ratings for 3,600 French nouns

Subjective frequency and imageability estimates for a sample of 3,600 French nouns were collected from two independent groups of 72 young adults each. Both groups received standard instructions and provided their ratings on a 7-point scale. The timing, sequencing, presentation of lexical stimuli, and recording of responses were controlled by a computer. All estimates of internal consistency and test—retest reliability (≥.98) confirm the high level of precision and reliability of the ratings. Correlations with ratings drawn from similar studies were found to be positive and significant for subjective frequency (r ≥ .85) and for imageability (r ≥ .69). Subjective frequency was positively and significantly correlated with objective frequency estimates drawn from 10 different sources (r ≥ .42). Subjective frequency and imageability were significantly correlated (r=.26), a relationship that was driven primarily by a sudden drop in imageability ratings for words with a subjective frequency rating below 2.5. The methodological implications of these findings are discussed. The ratings can be downloaded as supplemental materials from brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

Subjective frequency norms for 330 Spanish simple and compound words

Ratings were collected from 102 native speakers of Spanish on the subjective frequency of occurrence of 330 Spanish words, including 120 deverbal compounds and their constituents. These ratings were found to be highly reliable, whether items were analyzed together or separately by type (i.e., compounds, nouns, verbs), as evidenced by indexes of internal consistency and test-retest reliability that were equal to or greater than.98. The validity of the normative ratings was attested to by statistically significant correlations with objective frequency, estimated at.63 for all items together, and.41,.51, and.78 for compounds, nouns, and verbs, respectively. Among the substantive issues addressed was the potential dependency in ratings for compounds and their associated verb-noun constituents. No relationship was discerned, supporting the idea that compound and constituent ratings are statistically independent in this experimental task. The theoretical and methodological implications of the findings are discussed. The ratings can be downloaded from http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

A Social Constructivism Decision-Making Approach to Managing Incidental Findings in Neuroimaging Research

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a powerful tool used in cognitive neuroscientific research. fMRI is noninvasive, safe, and relatively accessible, making it an ideal method to draw inferences about the brain–behavior relationship. When conducting fMRI research, scientists must consider risks associated with brain imaging. In particular, the risk of potentially identifying an abnormal brain finding in an fMRI research scan poses a complex problem that researchers should be prepared to address. This article illustrates how a social constructivism decision-making model can be used as a framework to guide researchers as they develop protocols to address this issue.     

The Impact of Facilitation by Museum Educators on Family Learning at Interactive Math Exhibits: A Quasi-Experimental Study

Although discussions of museums often revolve around exhibits, educators in these spaces have the potential to create in-depth, social learning experiences beyond what is possible at exhibits alone. There is still little empirical research, however, to inform how we understand, approach, and improve museum facilitation practices. In this study, we sought to address this gap by quantifying the impact of facilitation by trained educators working with visitors at interactive museum exhibits and comparing this to visitor engagement and learning outcomes for families without educator support. Using a quasi-experimental design, we measured the impact of staff facilitation on visitor engagement time, mathematical reasoning, math awareness, satisfaction, and intergenerational communication across three different exhibits, four trained educators, and two experimental conditions. Multivariate regression modeling showed that staff facilitation had a positive impact on engagement time, mathematical reasoning, and satisfaction, a negative impact on intergenerational communication, and no impact on math awareness.     

Finding parallels in fronto-striatal organization

Evidence suggests that lateral frontal cortex is hierarchically organized such that rostral frontal regions support more abstract representations than caudal regions. A recent fMRI study of language processing proposes that striatum may exhibit an analogous organization. We consider this hypothetical correspondence at both the cognitive and anatomical levels.     

Infants' Processing of Causal and Noncausal Events at 3.5 Months of Age

Infants' processing of causal (direct launching) and noncausal (delayed reaction, launching without collision) events was investigated with 30 infants who were 3.5 months old. The habituation-dishabituation technique was used. Results showed that the infants did not process direct launching as causal. However, their pattern of responding revealed a tendency to key on the spatial and temporal properties of the events. Those findings are discussed in terms of their compatibility with a modular, an information-processing, and a Piagetian framework.