Social influence, marriage, and the heart: cardiovascular consequences of interpersonal control in husbands and wives.

Human and experimental animal research suggests that social stress in general--and chronic, effortful attempts to exert social control in particular--may contribute to cardiovascular disease. We examined the effects of exerting social influence or control on cardiovascular responses in married couples. Compared to husbands discussing a problem with their wives, husbands attempting to influence or persuade their wives displayed larger increases in systolic blood pressure (SBP) before and during the discussion. Furthermore, these physiological effects were accompanied by increases in anger and a more hostile and coldly assertive interpersonal style. Although wives who engaged in social influence attempts displayed generally similar behavior, they did not show the elevated SBP response or anger. We discuss the results in terms of the social context of cardiovascular reactivity and potential marital factors in cardiovascular health.     

An inexpensive contact-sensing device

A detector is described that utilizes phase-shift techniques for the measurement of contact responses.     

Defining, Measuring, and Comparing Organisational Cultures

La littérature portant sur la culture des organisations souffre d'un manque manifeste d'enquêtes extensives débouchant sur des études comparatives. Afin de rendre plus comparables les cultures organisationnelles, nous proposons une définition et une série de dimensions. La culture organisationnelle renverrait aux perceptions communes des pratiques de travail dans le cadre des unités constitutives des organisations. A l'examen d'études empiriques, les cinq dimensions suivantes nous sont apparues: autonomie, orientation externe, coordination interdépartementale, orientation vers les ressources humaines et orientation vers le développement. L'utilisation de cette définition et de ces dimensions générales devrait faciliter la comparaison des cultures organisationnelles et l'accumulation de résultats.
Within the body of organisation culture literature, there is a conspicuous absence of large-scale studies reporting on comparative studies. In order to increase comparability of organisational cultures we propose a definition and a set of dimensions. Organisational culture is defined as shared perceptions of organisational work practices within organisational units. On the basis of empirical studies we discerned the following five dimensions: autonomy, external orientation, interdepartmental coordination, human resource orientation, and improvement orientation. Use of this definition and a set of such generic dimensions would facilitate the comparison of organisational cultures and the accumulation of research findings.     

Cognitive slowing in decision tasks in early and advanced Parkinson's disease.

Ten untreated patients with recently diagnosed Parkinson's disease (PD), 9 treated patients with more advanced pathology, and 17 matched normal controls were investigated with three reaction tasks with increasing cognitive load but identical motor requirements: simple reaction, choice reaction with indicative stimuli, and choice reaction with ambiguous stimuli. Times required until a home key was released (= reaction time) and from then until a response key was pressed (= movement time) were recorded. Estimates of pure decision time (overall response time minus movement time in a simple reaction time task) revealed a difference between advanced and early PD patients. Advanced PD patients showed an overall slowing of decision time in the reaction time tasks, but the effect of the cognitive load of the tasks on the decision time was comparable to a control group. The untreated early PD patients performed quite normally in the more simple decision tasks but showed a disproportionate slowing of decision time in tasks with higher cognitive load.     

Articulatory and Phonological Determinants of Word Length Effects in Span Tasks

Several previous studies have shown that memory span is greater for short words than for long words. This effect is claimed to occur even when the short and long words are matched for the number of syllables and phonemes and so to provide evidence for subvocal articulation as being one mechanism that underlies memory span (Baddeley, Thomson, & Buchanan, 1975). The three experiments reported in this paper further investigate the articulatory determinants of word length effects on span tasks. Experiment 1 replicated Baddeley et al.'s finding of an effect of word length on auditory and visual span when the stimuli consist of words that differ in terms of the number of syllables. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that the effects of word length are eliminated when the words in the span task are matched for the number of syllables and phonemes but differ with respect to the duration and/or complexity of their articulatory gestures. These results indicate that it is the phonological structure of a word and not features of its actual articulation that determines the magnitude of the word length effect in span tasks.