Coordinating cognition: the costs and benefits of shared gaze during collaborative search

Collaboration has its benefits, but coordination has its costs. We explored the potential for remotely located pairs of people to collaborate during visual search, using shared gaze and speech. Pairs of searchers wearing eyetrackers jointly performed an O-in-Qs search task alone, or in one of three collaboration conditions: shared gaze (with one searcher seeing a gaze-cursor indicating where the other was looking, and vice versa), shared-voice (by speaking to each other), and shared-gaze-plus-voice (by using both gaze-cursors and speech). Although collaborating pairs performed better than solitary searchers, search in the shared gaze condition was best of all: twice as fast and efficient as solitary search. People can successfully communicate and coordinate their searching labor using shared gaze alone. Strikingly, shared gaze search was even faster than shared-gaze-plus-voice search; speaking incurred substantial coordination costs. We conclude that shared gaze affords a highly efficient method of coordinating parallel activity in a time-critical spatial task.     

Taxometric analyses of borderline personality features in a large-scale male and female offender sample

Few studies to date have examined the extent to which borderline personality features are best construed as representing an underlying dimension or a discrete class or taxon. The authors conducted taxometric analyses using a large-scale sample of male (n=787) and female (n=368) prison inmates who had completed the Personality Assessment Inventory (L. C. Morey, 2007). Analyses based on the 4 subscales of the Borderline Features Scale offered compelling support for a dimensional structure in both the full sample and the female subsample--even after controlling for the potentially confounding effects of negative response distortion. Theoretical and pragmatic implications of these findings are reviewed.     

Clinical practice as natural laboratory for psychotherapy research: a guide to case-based time-series analysis

Both researchers and practitioners need to know more about how laboratory treatment protocols translate to real-world practice settings and how clinical innovations can be systematically tested and communicated to a skeptical scientific community. The single-case time-series study is well suited to opening a productive discourse between practice and laboratory. The appeal of case-based time-series studies, with multiple observations both before and after treatment, is that they enrich our design palette by providing the discipline another way to expand its empirical reach to practice settings and its subject matter to the contingencies of individual change. This article is a user's guide to conducting empirically respectable case-based time-series studies in a clinical practice or laboratory setting.     

Contextual control of slot-machine gambling: replication and extension

Participants were trained and tested to select stimuli of differing physical quantities in the presence of 2 color contextual cues for more than and less than. Following more than and less than relational training, participants allocated the majority of their responses to the slot machine that shared formal properties of color with the contextual cue for more than, despite the identical payout probabilities of the slot machines.     

Safety in work vehicles: a multilevel study linking safety values and individual predictors to work-related driving crashes

Although work-related driving is associated with high accident rates, limited research has investigated the factors influencing driving crashes in the work setting. This study explored multilevel influences on self-reported crashes in the workplace by surveying a sample of work-related drivers (n = 380), their workgroup supervisors (n = 88), and fleet managers (n = 47). At the driver level of analysis, safety motivation predicted self-reported crashes. In turn, drivers' perceptions of their fleet managers' safety values (but not drivers' perceptions of their supervisors' safety values), their own attitudes, and their own efficacy beliefs predicted motivation to drive safely. Furthermore, the influence of supervisors and fleet managers interacted such that drivers were more motivated to drive safely if they perceived both their supervisor and fleet manager to value safety. This study also explored the cross-level relationships between supervisors' and fleet managers' perceptions of organizational safety values and drivers' perceptions of managerial safety values and found a relationship between fleet managers' perceptions of organizational safety values and drivers' perceptions of fleet managers' safety values. These results illustrate that perceptions of workplace safety values are transmitted across levels of the organization.     

Prejudice as Self‐Control Failure1

Research has suggested that whereas stereotypical attitudes may be automatically activated, the response to these stereotypes can be controlled. Anything that interferes with self‐control may result in more biased behavior. The ego strength model hypothesizes that after exerting self‐control, subsequent self‐control performance will suffer. Hence, depletion of ego strength may lead to increased prejudice. In 2 studies, depletion was found only to affect individuals who normally try to control their prejudicial responses. Participants who do not normally try to control their use of stereotypes were equally prejudiced, regardless of their level of ego strength. The results have implications for prejudice and stereotyping, as well as models of self‐control.     

quantifying the level of congruence between two career measures: an exploratory study

This study investigated the level of congruency between scores on the Self‐Directed Search–Form R (J. L. Holland, 1994) and scores from an online instrument, both of which measure Holland types (J. L. Holland, 1985, 1997). A reasonably high level of congruence was found. Implications for career counselors are briefly delineated.     

The effect of gender stereotype activation on challenge and threat motivational states

The effect of gender stereotype activation on challenge/threat motivational states was examined. Male and female participants completed a difficult math test described as either gender-biased or gender-fair, while continuous cardiovascular data were recorded. During the math test, women in the gender-biased condition exhibited a threatened motivational state, whereas women in the gender-fair condition exhibited challenge. The cardiovascular pattern of data was reversed for men, with men exhibiting challenge when a gender bias was implied, but threat when it was not. Motivational implications of stereotype threat and psychophysiological measurement are discussed.     

Eye movements drive steering: reduced eye movement distribution impairs steering and driving performance

On a winding open road, a driver consistently looks to the inside of each bend before turning the steering wheel. When researchers disrupt this coordination by instructing drivers not to move their eyes, drivers' performance is impaired and their completion time during racing increases. The present authors examined whether changing internal states in a way that also restricts eye movements reduces coordination and affects performance. Participants (N = 24) completed a simulated rally stage under manipulation of their anxiety state through ego threat. Performance decreased under pressure, and the decrement was associated with a narrowing of the range of eye movements and a reduced correlation of eye movements with steering. The authors discuss the possibility that the deterioration in performance is a cost of maintaining steering when eye-movement driving input to the steering controller is reduced.