Team tenure and team performance: A meta-analysis and process model

Team tenure is a key component of models of team effectiveness. However, the nature of the relationship between team tenure and team performance is unclear due to underdeveloped theory on the nature of team tenure, various unintegrated theoretical conceptualizations of team tenure, and mixed empirical findings. Further, there is a lack of theory as to the intervening team processes and emergent states that account for the “black box” of the team tenure–team performance relationship. Accordingly, we conducted meta-analyses of the relationships of team tenure with team processes and performance. Our results, based on 622 effect sizes reported in 169 studies, show that team tenure, conceptualized as additive team tenure, collective team tenure, and team tenure dispersion, is positively related to team performance. Relative weights analysis found additive team tenure to be a relatively more important predictor of team performance than collective team tenure or team tenure dispersion. We found that team cognition, motivational-affective states, and behavioral processes mediate the relationships of additive team tenure, collective team tenure, and team tenure dispersion with team performance, respectively. We discuss the implications of these findings for research and practice.     

Stimulus Parameters Underlying Sound-Symbolic Mapping of Auditory Pseudowords to Visual Shapes

Sound symbolism refers to non-arbitrary mappings between the sounds of words and their meanings and is often studied by pairing auditory pseudowords such as “maluma” and “takete” with rounded and pointed visual shapes, respectively. However, it is unclear what auditory properties of pseudowords contribute to their perception as rounded or pointed. Here, we compared perceptual ratings of the roundedness/pointedness of large sets of pseudowords and shapes to their acoustic and visual properties using a novel application of representational similarity analysis (RSA). Representational dissimilarity matrices (RDMs) of the auditory and visual ratings of roundedness/pointedness were significantly correlated crossmodally. The auditory perceptual RDM correlated significantly with RDMs of spectral tilt, the temporal fast Fourier transform (FFT), and the speech envelope. Conventional correlational analyses showed that ratings of pseudowords transitioned from rounded to pointed as vocal roughness (as measured by the harmonics-to-noise ratio, pulse number, fraction of unvoiced frames, mean autocorrelation, shimmer, and jitter) increased. The visual perceptual RDM correlated significantly with RDMs of global indices of visual shape (the simple matching coefficient, image silhouette, image outlines, and Jaccard distance). Crossmodally, the RDMs of the auditory spectral parameters correlated weakly but significantly with those of the global indices of visual shape. Our work establishes the utility of RSA for analysis of large stimulus sets and offers novel insights into the stimulus parameters underlying sound symbolism, showing that sound-to-shape mapping is driven by acoustic properties of pseudowords and suggesting audiovisual cross-modal correspondence as a basis for language users' sensitivity to this type of sound symbolism.     

Which modality is best for presenting navigation instructions?

Three experiments involved college students receiving and following instructions of various lengths for navigating in a three-dimensional space displayed on a computer screen. The purpose was to evaluate which is the best modality for presenting navigation instructions so that they can be executed successfully. Single modalities (read, hear, and see) were considered along with dual modalities presented simultaneously or successively. It was found that when there were differences between single modalities, generally execution accuracy was best for see and worst for read. Information presented in two modalities did not yield better accuracy than information presented twice in a single modality. Also, the ordering of modalities depended on the extent of practice. Thus, presentation modality does not have a consistently large effect on receiving and following navigation instructions. Repetition and the amount of practice are much more important variables than is presentation modality in determining how well navigation instructions are followed.     

Enduring deficits in contextual and auditory fear conditioning after adolescent, not adult, social instability stress in male rats

Adolescence is a time of developmental changes and reorganization in the brain and stress systems, thus, adolescents may be more vulnerable than adults to the effects of chronic mild stressors. Most studies, however, have not directly compared stress experienced in adolescence to the same stress experience in adulthood. In the present study, adolescent (n=46) and adult (n=48) male rats underwent 16 days of social instability stress (daily 1h isolation and change of cage partners) or were non-stress controls. Rats were then tested on the strength of acquired contextual and cued fear conditioning, as well as extinction learning, beginning either the day after the stress procedure or 3 weeks later. No difference was found among the groups during the Training Phase of conditioning. Irrespective of the time between the social stress experience and fear conditioning, rats stressed in adolescence had decreased context and cue memory, and cue generalization compared to control rats, as measured by the percentage of time spent freezing in tests. Social instability stress in adulthood had no effect on any measure of fear conditioning. The results support the hypothesis that adolescence is a time of heightened vulnerability to stressors.     

How linguistic and cultural forces shape conceptions of time: English and Mandarin time in 3D

In this paper we examine how English and Mandarin speakers think about time, and we test how the patterns of thinking in the two groups relate to patterns in linguistic and cultural experience. In Mandarin, vertical spatial metaphors are used more frequently to talk about time than they are in English; English relies primarily on horizontal terms. We present results from two tasks comparing English and Mandarin speakers' temporal reasoning. The tasks measure how people spatialize time in three-dimensional space, including the sagittal (front/back), transverse (left/right), and vertical (up/down) axes. Results of Experiment 1 show that people automatically create spatial representations in the course of temporal reasoning, and these implicit spatializations differ in accordance with patterns in language, even in a non-linguistic task. Both groups showed evidence of a left-to-right representation of time, in accordance with writing direction, but only Mandarin speakers showed a vertical top-to-bottom pattern for time (congruent with vertical spatiotemporal metaphors in Mandarin). Results of Experiment 2 confirm and extend these findings, showing that bilinguals' representations of time depend on both long-term and proximal aspects of language experience. Participants who were more proficient in Mandarin were more likely to arrange time vertically (an effect of previous language experience). Further, bilinguals were more likely to arrange time vertically when they were tested in Mandarin than when they were tested in English (an effect of immediate linguistic context).     

Contrast polarity preservation's role in perception: explained and unexplained stimuli

Roncato and Casco (2003, Perception & psychophysics 65 1252-1272) had shown that in situations where the Gestalt principle of good continuity is put into conflict with preservation of contrast polarity (CP) the perception that preserves CP prevails. Parlangeli and Roncato (2010, Perception 39 255-259) have studied this question of preservation of CP more closely and have added an addendum to the rule. They have used stimuli consisting of a checkerboard of perpendicularly arranged rectangular bricks (white, gray, or black) and draughtsmen white, gray, or black disks placed at the corners of the bricks. This study has caused them to add an addendum to the rule of CP-preserved path-conjunction binding: if there are two contour completions that preserve the CP, the one with the higher contrast will prevail. Parlangeli and Roncato find that, for certain shades of the disks and bricks, the perpendicular lines of the checkerboard appear strikingly to be slanted or undulating. Here we consider all possible arrangements of relative magnitudes of checkerboards consisting of bricks of two different shades and disks of two shades as well, as such arrangements with widely varying differences in the magnitude of brightness. We have found a number of cases where the perception is not explained by the rule and addendum of Roncato and Casco, and Parlangeli and Roncato, and a case where preservation of "distant" as well as local CP plays a role in perception. The previously known cases, and the new exceptional unexplained stimuli we have found, warrant further study.     

Eye gaze metrics reflect a shared motor representation for action observation and movement imagery

Action observation (AO) and movement imagery (MI) have been reported to share similar neural networks. This study investigated the congruency between AO and MI using the eye gaze metrics, dwell time and fixation number. A simple reach-grasp-place arm movement was observed and, in a second condition, imagined where the movement was presented from the first person perspective (1PP) and the third person perspective (3PP). Dwell time and number of fixations were calculated for whole scene and regions of interest (ROIs). For whole scene, no significant differences were found in the number of fixations for condition (AO, MI) or perspective. Dwell time, however, was significantly longer in AO than MI. For ROIs, the number of fixations was significantly greater in 1PP than 3PP. The data provide support for congruence between motor simulation states but also indicate some functional differences.