Perceived support for mentoring: A multiple perspectives approach

Two studies were conducted to examine how perceptions of support for mentoring relate to mentoring attitudes and outcomes for both protégés and mentors, over and above established predictors. In study 1, protégés provided information on their perceptions of support for mentoring and mentoring received. As expected, perceived management support for mentoring was positively related to career-related and psychosocial support; and perceived mentor accountability for mentoring was negatively related to mentoring problems. In study 2, we examined mentors’ perceptions of support for mentoring in relation to their willingness to mentor others in the future and the extent to which they viewed their current relationship as complementary. Mentors’ perceptions of management support for mentoring were positively related to their belief that mentoring relationships were mutually beneficial. However, consistent with theories of self-determination, as mentors’ perceptions of their own accountability in the relationship increased their willingness to mentor others in the future decreased. Implications for mentoring theory, future research, and applied practice are discussed.     

Effects of management communication, opportunity for learning, and work schedule flexibility on organizational commitment

In the current career climate characterized by change and turbulence, employees may demonstrate limited organizational commitment to their employers. Rousseau (1998) suggests that two key ways to elicit loyalty from employees today are to reinforce perceptions of organizational membership and demonstrate organizational care and support for employees. Based on her conceptual framework, we examined the separate and synergistic effects of three valued aspects of the work environment—management communication, opportunity for learning, and work schedule flexibility—on organizational commitment. With 1770 full-time and 273 part-time workers of a large national retailer, we found that all three variables had positive main effects on organizational commitment. Also, they three-way interacted to affect part-time workers’ organizational commitment. The implications of these findings for research on organizational commitment and on comparisons of full-time and part-time workers are discussed.     

Personality in cyberspace: personal Web sites as media for personality expressions and impressions

This research examined the personality of owners of personal Web sites based on self-reports, visitors' ratings, and the content of the Web sites. The authors compared a large sample of Web site owners with population-wide samples on the Big Five dimensions of personality. Controlling for demographic differences, the average Web site owner reported being slightly less extraverted and more open to experience. Compared with various other samples, Web site owners did not generally differ on narcissism, self-monitoring, or self-esteem, but gender differences on these traits were often smaller in Web site owners. Self-other agreement was highest with Openness to Experience, but valid judgments of all Big Five dimensions were derived from Web sites providing rich information. Visitors made use of quantifiable features of the Web site to infer personality, and the cues they utilized partly corresponded to self-reported traits.     

The operant control of vocalization in the dog

Control over the vocal responses of three dogs was established using operant-conditioning procedures. Several points of interest were observed in the data. First, fixed-ratio schedules of reinforcement generated a vocal response topography which was similar in detail to that of a “motor” bar-nosing response. Second, vocal responding was brought under the control of external visual stimuli as a result of differential reinforcement. Third, good stimulus control was maintained on a multiple schedule containing a vocal-response component and a bar-response component. Fourth, the stimulus control on the multiple schedule transferred with minimal disruption to a chain schedule requiring a sequence of 10 bar responses followed by 10 vocal responses. Fifth, because vocal and bar responses are not mutually exclusive, concurrent responding tended to develop on the chain schedule.

These results were discussed with reference to the advisability of applying the terms operant and respondent to unconditioned behavior, and, particularly, to unconditioned verbal behavior.

     

The Resurgence of Anti-Semitism on American College Campuses

Few American college campuses have witnessed the number and intensity of anti-Semitic incidents reported at San Francisco State University, Columbia University, and the University of California at Irvine (2000–2005), however, dozens of American campuses every year experience at least some manifestation of this ugly problem, which is now undoubtedly national in scope. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) documents nearly 100 anti-Semitic incidents on American college campuses in 2005 alone. Most incidents are probably not reported to the ADL. The United States Commission on Civil Rights monitors anti-Semitic incidents on college campuses and will continue to do so.     

Excitotoxic lesions restricted to the dorsal CA1 field of the hippocampus impair spatial memory and extinction learning in C57BL/6 mice

Recent studies in patients with hippocampal lesions have indicated that the degree of memory impairment is proportional to the extent of damage within the hippocampus. Particularly, patients with damage restricted to the CA1 field demonstrate moderate to severe anterograde amnesia with only slight retrograde amnesia. Comparable results are also seen in other species such as non-human primates and rats; however, the effect of selective damage to CA1 has not yet been characterized in mice. In the present study, we investigated the effects of excitotoxic (NMDA) lesions of dorsal CA1 on several aspects of learning and memory performance in mice. Our data indicate that dorsal CA1 lesioned mice are hyperactive upon exposure to a novel environment, have spatial working memory impairments in the Y-maze spontaneous alternation task, and display deficits in an 8-arm spatial discrimination learning task. Lesioned mice are able to acquire an operant lever-press task but demonstrate extinction learning deficits in this appetitive operant paradigm. Taken together, our results indicate that lesions to dorsal CA1 in mice induce selective learning and memory performance deficits similar to those observed in other species, and extend previous findings indicating that this region of the hippocampus is critically involved in the processing of spatial information and/or the processing of inhibitory responses.     

Motor sequence learning and reading ability: is poor reading associated with sequencing deficits?

Although it is widely assumed that children with learning disabilities have "sequencing problems," these have not been well specified. A non-verbal serial reaction time (SRT) paradigm was used to evaluate motor sequence learning in 422 children between ages 7 and 11 in relation to reading, cognitive ability level, and attention problems. The children demonstrated the response profile typically associated with motor sequence learning, but the component of the profile indicative of implicit sequence learning was not reliably associated with any of the predictors. Cognitive ability predicted overall response time; cognitive ability, reading, and attention problems each predicted overall accuracy. Explicit learning was predicted by cognitive ability, but not by reading or attention problems. Thus, we found no evidence that poor reading is preferentially associated with a domain general deficit in sequential learning.     

Sensitivity of muscle force estimates to variations in muscle-tendon properties

The aim of this study was to determine the sensitivity of muscle force estimates to changes in some of the parameters which are commonly used to describe models of muscle-tendon actuation. The sensitivity analysis was performed on three parameters: optimal muscle-fiber length, muscle physiological cross-sectional area (PCSA), and tendon rest length. The muscles selected for the analysis were posterior gluteus medius/minimus, vasti, soleus, and sartorius. Each parameter was perturbed from its nominal value, and an optimization problem was solved to determine the relative influence of each parameter on the calculated values of muscle force. Muscle forces were calculated for a simulated cycle of normal walking. Parameter sensitivity was quantified using two new metrics: an integrated sensitivity ratio, which quantified the effect of changing a single parameter for any muscle on the time history of force developed by that muscle; and a summed cross-sensitivity ratio, which quantified the effect of changing one parameter for any muscle on the time histories of forces developed by all of the other muscles. The results showed that muscle force estimates for walking are most sensitive to changes in tendon rest length and least sensitive to changes in muscle PCSA. For soleus, for example, the integrated sensitivity ratios for tendon rest length were an order of magnitude greater than those for muscle-fiber length and PCSA. For vasti, the integrated sensitivity ratios for tendon rest length were twice as large as those for muscle-fiber length and nearly an order of magnitude greater than those for PCSA. Overall, changes in the tendon rest lengths of vasti and soleus and changes in the fiber length of vasti were most critical to model estimates of muscle force. Our results emphasize the importance of obtaining accurate estimates of tendon rest length and muscle-fiber length, particularly for those actuators that function as prime movers during locomotion (gluteus maximus, gluteus medius/minimus, vasti, soleus, and gastrocnemius).