The influence of shared mental models on team process and performance

The influence of teammates' shared mental models on team processes and performance was tested using 56 undergraduate dyads who "flew" a series of missions on a personal-computer-based flight-combat simulation. The authors both conceptually and empirically distinguished between teammates' task- and team-based mental models and indexed their convergence or "sharedness" using individually completed paired-comparisons matrices analyzed using a network-based algorithm. The results illustrated that both shared-team- and task-based mental models related positively to subsequent team process and performance. Furthermore, team processes fully mediated the relationship between mental model convergence and team effectiveness. Results are discussed in terms of the role of shared cognitions in team effectiveness and the applicability of different interventions designed to achieve such convergence.     

Simultaneous completions of modal and amodal figures: Visual evoked potentials reveal asymmetrical interference effects

Modal and amodal completion processes are thought to affect the emergence and the potency of each other. To see whether one dominates over the other, we measured the Npd, that is, the negativity of visual-evoked potentials whose amplitude increases with perceptual difficulty. In the first experiment, the Npds to illusory (modal) squares and diamonds placed over amodal diamonds and squares, respectively, were found to be greater when targets were the amodal figures than when targets were the modal figures, thus suggesting that modal figures created more interference. A second experiment showed that greater Npds were specific to interference and not to the greater difficulty at focusing on amodal figures rather than on modal figures. A third experiment showed that the interference also occurs with real figures in replacement of modal ones. Overall, the results suggest a certain dominance of modal completion over amodal completion when both occur in the same display.     

Assessing the way people look to judge their intentions

Faces of unknown persons are processed to infer the intentions of these persons not only when they depict full-blown emotions, but also at rest, or when these faces do not signal any strong feelings. We explored the brain processes involved in these inferences to test whether they are similar to those found when judging full-blown emotions. We recorded the event-related brain potentials (ERPs) elicited by faces of unknown persons who, when they were photographed, were not asked to adopt any particular expression. During the ERP recording, participants had to decide whether each face appeared to be that of a positively, negatively, ambiguously, or neutrally intentioned person. The early posterior negativity, the EPN, was found smaller for neutrally categorized faces than for the other faces, suggesting that the automatic processes it indexes are similar to those evoked by full-blown expressions and thus that these processes might be involved in the decoding of intentions. In contrast, in the same 200-400 ms time window, ERPs were not more negative at anterior sites for neutrally intentioned faces. Second, the peaks of the late positive potentials (LPPs) maximal at parietal sites around 700 ms postonset were not significantly smaller for neutrally intentioned faces. Third, the slow positive waves that followed the LPP were larger for faces that took more time to categorize, that is, for ambiguously intentioned faces. These three series of unexpected results may indicate processes similar to those triggered by full-blown emotions studies, but they question the characteristics of these processes.     

Positive emotional context eliminates the framing effect in decision-making

Dual-process theories have suggested that emotion plays a key role in the framing effect in decision-making. However, little is known about the potential impact of a specific positive or negative emotional context on this bias. We investigated this question with adult participants using an emotional priming paradigm. First, participants were presented with positive or negative affective pictures (i.e., pleasant vs. unpleasant photographs). Afterward, participants had to perform a financial decision-making task that was unrelated to the pictures previously presented. The results revealed that the presentation framed in terms of gain or loss no longer affected subjects' decision-making following specific exposure to emotionally pleasant pictures. Interestingly, a positive emotional context did not globally influence risk-taking behavior but specifically decreased the risk propensity in the loss frame. This finding confirmed that a positive emotional context can reduce loss aversion, and it strongly reinforced the dual-process view that the framing effect stems from an affective heuristic belonging to intuitive System 1. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Phenomenal characteristics of autobiographical memories for social and non-social events in social phobia

Previous studies failed to show clear differences between people with social phobia and non-anxious individuals regarding the specificity and affective intensity of their autobiographical memories for social events. However, these studies did not assess the subjective experience associated with remembering. In this study, people with social phobia and non-anxious control participants recalled social and non-social events, and rated the phenomenal characteristics of their memories. The memories of people with social phobia for social events contained fewer sensorial details but more self-referential information than controls' memories. In addition, people with social phobia remembered social situations from an observer perspective, viewing themselves as if from outside, to a greater extent than controls. By contrast, the two groups did not differ concerning their memories for non-social events. These findings are discussed in relation to cognitive models of social phobia.     

An Examination of the Relative Impact of Normative Information and Self-Efficacy on Personal Goals and Performance Over Time1

A model of goal-setting processes was developed that depicted the influence of previous performance, normative information, and self-efficacy on personal goals and performance. Three levels of normative information were manipulated in a counter-balanced fashion across two trials. Norms were hypothesized to have a greater influence than self-efficacy on personal goals for the first trial, whereas efficacy was hypothesized to have a stronger influence than norms on Trial 2 goals. A sample of 135 undergraduates completed a practice and two performance trials of a word game, and the results were analyzed using LISREL structural modeling techniques. Although the general hypothesized model fit fairly well, the specific results concerning the relative impact of norms and self-efficacy were opposite of the expected direction. Potential explanations for these results, and recommendations for future research are offered.     

The development of facial emotion recognition: the role of configural information

The development of children's ability to recognize facial emotions and the role of configural information in this development were investigated. In the study, 100 5-, 7-, 9-, and 11-year-olds and 26 adults needed to recognize the emotion displayed by upright and upside-down faces. The same participants needed to recognize the emotion displayed by the top half of an upright or upside-down face that was or was not aligned with a bottom half that displayed another emotion. The results showed that the ability to recognize facial emotion develops with age, with a developmental course that depends on the emotion to be recognized. Moreover, children at all ages and adults exhibited both an inversion effect and a composite effect, suggesting that children rely on configural information to recognize facial emotions.     

Plagiarism: Words and Ideas

Plagiarism is a crime against academy. It deceives readers, hurts plagiarized authors, and gets the plagiarist undeserved benefits. However, even though these arguments do show that copying other people's intellectual contribution is wrong, they do not apply to the copying of words. Copying a few sentences that contain no original idea (e.g. in the introduction) is of marginal importance compared to stealing the ideas of others. The two must be clearly distinguished, and the 'plagiarism' label should not be used for deeds which are very different in nature and importance.