Unraveling the relationship between organizational career management and the need for external career counseling

This article unravels the relationship between organizational career management and the need for external career counseling. We conducted a path analysis using data of 803 Flemish employees. The results indicate a three-way relationship between organizational career management and external career counseling. First, experiencing organizational career management reduces the need for external career counseling by enhancing career satisfaction. Second, it also reinforces the need for career counseling by encouraging employees to invest in their external employability. Finally, organizational career management and external career counseling are complementary as well. The implications of the results and the directions to be taken in future research are discussed.     

Investigating the role of conflict resolution in memory updating by means of the one-back choice RT task

The current study is inspired by recent findings, which suggest that conflict is involved in the updating of memory representations. It directly addresses the relation between memory updating and conflict resolution by means of the one-back choice reaction time (RT) task, an updating task, which requires participants to postpone their response to stimulus n until the subsequent stimulus n + 1 has been presented. In three experiments, a more detailed analysis of the one-back choice RT task is presented in order to further identify the role of conflict resolution in memory updating. The findings demonstrate that the one-back choice RT task, which allows motor preparation just like a simple RT task, is in fact performed slower than a simple RT task because it additionally involves conflict resolution. It is further shown that also the response–stimulus interval of the one-back task involves processes that affect the amount of conflict in the task. In the "General discussion", the theoretical relevance of these findings for the concept of updating is discussed.

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Top-down and bottom-up sequential modulations of congruency effects

Several studies have demonstrated reduced congruency effects after incongruent trials. The conflict monitoring hypothesis (Botvinick, Braver, Barch, Carter, & Cohen, 2001) assumes that this sequential modulation is based on top-down cognitive control and suggests that more control is engaged after the detection of conflict. An alternative account is based on repetition effects of stimulus and response features and can be considered bottom up. This study investigates both modulatory sources. In a Stroop task with two response-stimulus intervals (RSIs), we demonstrate that top-down modulation does not occur with a very short RSI, suggesting that it takes some time before the system can be reconfigured. Bottom-up modulation is observed for both RSIs. This finding demonstrates that two different sources simultaneously reduce congruency effects after incongruent trials.     

Stimulus- and response-conflict-induced cognitive control in the flanker task

Recently, several studies have been conducted to investigate the top-down adjustments made after incongruent trials during conflict tasks. In the present study, we investigated conflict monitoring with different types of conflict. In a modified version of the flanker task, a distinction was made between stimulus—stimulus conflict and stimulus—response conflict. Six colors were mapped to three responses in order to exclude all sequences in which a relevant or an irrelevant stimulus- or response-related feature was repeated from trialn−1 to trialn. An analysis of the effect of the congruency of the previous trial demonstrated that conflict adaptation was present. The stimulus congruency effect was reduced after both a stimulus-incongruent trial and a response-incongruent trial. The response congruency effect did not vary as a function of previous congruency. These findings are discussed in relation to the distinction between conflict detection and conflict regulation.     

Disruption of writing by background speech: Does sound source location and number of voices matter?

It is not unusual that people have to write in an environment where background speech is present. Background speech can vary in both speech intelligibility and location of the sound source. Earlier research has shown disruptive effects of background speech on writing performance. To expand and reinforce this knowledge, the present study investigated the role of number of voices and sound source location in the relation between background speech and writing performance. Participants wrote texts in quiet or in background speech consisting of one or seven voices talking simultaneously located in front of or behind them. Overall, one voice was more disruptive than seven voices talking simultaneously. Self‐reports showed that sound from the front was more disruptive compared with sound from behind. Results are in line with theory of interference‐by‐process, attentional capture, and the cross‐modal theory of attention. The relevance of the results for open‐office environments is discussed.     

Tscope: A C library for programming cognitive experiments on the MS Windows platform

Tscope is a C/C11 programming library designed for programming experiments that run on Windows 2000/XP. It is intended for a public of experimental psychologists with moderate programming skills, who are accustomed to writing their own experimental programs for DOS but have not made the step to Windows-based programming yet. It provides molecular functions for graphics, sound, timing, randomization, and response registration. Together with ANSI-C standard library functions and the powerful C syntax, this set of functions gives the experimenter the opportunity to program virtually any experiment one can come up with. Tscope is completely based on free software, is distributed under the GNU General Public License, and is available at expsy.ugent.be/tscope. An integrated development environment for compiling and running Tscope programs is also freely available.     

The interaction between stop signal inhibition and distractor interference in the flanker and Stroop task

In the present study, two experiments were conducted to investigate the interaction between the behavioral inhibition, measured by the stop signal task, and distractor interference, measured by the flanker task and the Stroop task. In the first experiment, the stop signal task was combined with a flanker task. Analysis revealed that participants responded faster when the distractors were congruent to the target. Also, the data suggest that it is more difficult to suppress a reaction when the distractors were incongruent. Whether the incongruent distractor was part of the response set (i.e. the distractor could also be a target) or not, had no influence on stopping reactions. In the second experiment, the stop signal task was combined with a manual version of the Stroop task and the degree of compatibility was varied. Even though in the second experiment of the present study interference control is differently operationalized, similar results as in the first experiment were found, indicating that inhibition of motor responses is influenced by the presentation of distracting information that is not part of the response set.     

Inaction inertia in retirement saving

In retirement saving, many people miss out on early opportunities to save and subsequently fail to take adequate actions for a long time thereafter. We examined whether these two observations—the initial failure to act and the subsequent inertia—could be related through the phenomenon of inaction inertia. In Experiment 1 (N = 180), participants were less likely to save for retirement when the difference in annual return between the current opportunity and the missed opportunity was large versus small. In Experiment 2 (N = 180), participants were less likely to start saving for retirement when reminded of a missed opportunity 10 years ago versus 1 year ago. These data constitute the first demonstration of inaction inertia in retirement saving: People's reluctance to act on attractive saving opportunities may be induced by their previous inaction. In Experiment 3 (N = 340) and Experiment 4 (N = 628), we find that the observed inertia is the product of a tendency to underestimate exponential growth combined with a focus on past opportunities. Building on this mechanism, Experiment 5 (N = 916) provided evidence for a potential remedy; the inaction inertia effect completely disappeared when focus was shifted from required contributions to future outcomes.     

Decoupling the past from the present attenuates inaction inertia

Inaction inertia is the phenomenon that one is not likely to act upon an attractive opportunity after having bypassed an even more attractive opportunity. We investigated the boundary conditions of this inaction inertia effect. Based on the mental accounting literature and the transaction decoupling literature we predicted and found in three experiments that tight coupling of the forgone to the current opportunity is a necessary condition for inaction inertia to occur. Inaction inertia decreased when information about the missed opportunity was ambiguous (Experiment 1), when the past opportunity required an extra step to obtain (Experiment 2) and when the past and present opportunity decreased in comparability (Experiment 3). The theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed in view of the literature on inaction inertia and on judgment and decision-making. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.