Mother‐child relationships and creativity

The present study focused on the relationship between young children's level of differentiation and creative potential as assessed by the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT). The mothers of high and low creative children were interviewed in order to establish the degree to which they encouraged differentiation in their children. Their level of involvement with their children was also evaluated using the Family Relations Test (FRT). Mothers of high creative children were less emotionally involved with their children than other mothers, less likely to be perceived as overprotective, and less likely to deny their feelings of hostility towards them. They were more self‐confident and self‐realized in their homes and had higher occupational levels than other mothers. The present study also assessed the level of differentiation in both creative and uncreative children with the Draw‐a‐Person and Kinetic Family Drawing Tests. Results indicated that highly creative children were more differentiated than uncreative children.     

Analogous mechanisms of selection and updating in declarative and procedural working memory: Experiments and a computational model

The article investigates the mechanisms of selecting and updating representations in declarative and procedural working memory (WM). Declarative WM holds the objects of thought available, whereas procedural WM holds representations of what to do with these objects. Both systems consist of three embedded components: activated long-term memory, a central capacity-limited component for building structures through temporary bindings, and a single-element focus of attention. Five experiments test the hypothesis of analogous mechanisms in declarative and procedural WM, investigating repetition effects across trials for individual representations (objects and responses) and for sets (memory sets and task sets), as well as set-congruency effects. Evidence for analogous processes was obtained from three phenomena: (1) Costs of task switching and of list switching are reduced with longer preparation interval. (2) The effects of task congruency and of list congruency are undiminished with longer preparation interval. (3) Response repetition interacts with task repetition in procedural WM; here we show an analogous interaction of list repetition with item repetition in declarative WM. All three patterns were reproduced by a connectionist model implementing the assumed selection and updating mechanisms. The model consists of two modules, an item-selection module selecting individual items from a memory set, or responses from a task set, and a set-selection module for selecting memory sets or task sets. The model codes the matrix of binding weights in the item-selection module as a pattern of activation in the set-selection module, thereby providing a mechanism for building chunks in LTM, and for unpacking them as structures into working memory.     

Gambling: Relationship Between the Frequency of Wins and Irrational Thinking

In this study, we evaluated the relationship between the number of wins and the number of irrational verbalizations on the part of individuals playing American roulette. We predicted that subjects who win frequently would make more irrational verbalizations than rational verbalizations compared to subjects who win infrequently. Twenty Canadian subjects (8 men, 12 women) were randomly divided into two experimental groups (frequent vs. infrequent wins). The subjects used the thinking aloud procedure to verbalize their thoughts, which were then classified according to degree of rationality or irrationality. The results showed that irrational verbalizations outnumbered rational verbalizations in both groups. A few wins were sufficient to evoke an illusory perception of control.     

Relationships Between Leader-Contingent and Non-contingent Reward and Punishment Behaviors and Subordinates’ Perceptions of Justice and Satisfaction, and Evaluation of the Moderating Influence of Trust Propensity, Pay Level, and Role Ambiguity

Purpose

This research evaluates how reward and punishment behaviors are related to employee satisfaction, and how perceptions of justice mediate the effects of these behaviors. This study also seeks to examine the connection between some boundary conditions and the efficacy of reward and punishment behaviors.

Design/Methodology/Approach

Data were collected using questionnaires, and hypotheses were tested using a sample of 3,065 managers from 41 business units.

Findings

We found that contingent financial and social rewards were positively related to fairness and satisfaction, whereas punishment behaviors exert a negative influence. Findings reveal that high-trust propensity and low-pay level strengthen the positive influence of rewards on distributive justice, whereas high role ambiguity increases the positive effect of reward behaviors and the negative influence of non-contingent punishment (NCP) on superior satisfaction.

Implications

This study provided evidence that using contingent rewards is more effective in promoting positive attitudes at work than using contingent punishments. Our findings add to the evidence that organizations would benefit from encouraging their managers to use financial and social rewards and reducing the administration of NCP among performing employees.

Originality/Value

This study represents a first attempt to examine an integrated model of the effects of reward and punishment behaviors. It also contributes to this field by empirically evaluating the impact of individual and situational boundary conditions in the efficacy of these leader behaviors.     

Dialectic,the Dictum de Omni and Ecthesis

In this paper, we provide a detailed critical review of current approaches to ecthesis in Aristotle’s Prior Analytics, with a view to motivate a new approach, which builds upon previous work by Marion & Rückert (2016) on the dictum de omni. This approach sets Aristotle’s work within the context of dialectic and uses Lorenzen’s dialogical logic, hereby reframed with use of Martin-Löf's constructive type theory as ‘immanent reasoning’. We then provide rules of syllogistic for the latter, and provide proofs of e-conversion, Darapti and Bocardo and e-subalternation, while showing how close to Aristotle’s text these proofs remain.     

Institutional Barriers to Participation in Adult Education Among African Americans within Religious Institutions

Numerous studies have identified deterrents to participation in adult education among adult learners, mainly in formal settings. The purpose of this study was to examine institutional deterrents to participation as identified among African Americans who are members of religious institutions, specifically African American Christian churches. Institutional deterrents were classified into six different rubrics. Results from the study suggest African American Christian churches should closely examine their policies and procedures for developing and marketing their educational programs and developing or enhancing teacher preparation techniques.     

The roles of leader emotion management and team conflict for team members' personal initiative: A multilevel perspective

Employees' personal initiative (i.e., their active and future-oriented engagement at work) is of high relevance to organizations that strive for innovation and competitiveness. To better understand its drivers and diminishers, the present study refers to Affective Events Theory and examines the impact of leader emotion management, team conflict, and affective well-being on personal initiative. Data from 300 members of 59 work teams in Germany were gathered from multiple sources at three points in time over the course of 2 weeks. Multilevel analyses indicated that leader emotion management positively affected team members' personal initiative and that this effect was mediated by team members' affective well-being. Data also revealed a contrasting negative indirect effect of task conflict within the team on team members' personal initiative via team members' affective well-being. The study's results suggest that the improvement of leaders' emotion management as well as the establishment of work conditions and experiences that foster affective well-being should be seriously considered by organizations wishing to facilitate personal initiative in team settings.     

Objective age-of-acquisition (AoA) norms for a set of 230 object names in French: Relationships with psycholinguistic variables,the English data from Morrison et al. (1997), and naming latencies

Picture naming speed is strongly influenced by the age of acquisition (AoA) of words. Most studies of AoA have relied on adults' AoA ratings. However, objective AoA has been found to be a stronger determinant of picture naming latencies. Whereas objective AoA norms for words have been collected for some language communities, no objective AoA measures for words were previously available in French. The study provides objective AoA norms for a set of 230 object names following the procedures used by Morrison, Chappell, and Ellis (1997) to collect objective AoA measures in English. The relationships between objective AoA measures, rated AoA, other variables used in psycholinguistic experiments (name agreement, image agreement, conceptual familiarity, etc.), the English data collected by Morrison et al., and naming latencies are analysed and discussed. In addition, reanalyses of data on picture naming latencies (Bonin, Chalard, Méot, & Fayol, 2002) with the use of objective AoA norms are provided. Stepwise multiple analyses show that objective AoA is a stronger determinant of (spoken and written) naming latencies than rated AoA, whereas objective word frequency is not a reliable independent determinant and does not interact reliably with AoA in any of the analyses.