L’auto efficacité créative,la flexibilité cognitive et le soutien à l’innovation comme antécédents du comportement innovant

The necessity to innovate is a concern for many practitioners and researchers. This research aims to demonstrate the role of cognitive flexibility and of the climate of support for innovation in developing innovative behavior at work. The mediating role of creative self-efficacy is tested. The results confirm that cognitive flexibility and the climate for work group innovation are antecedents of the innovative behavior.     

The irrelevant sound effect in short-term memory: Is there developmental change?

With two experiments, effects of irrelevant speech and classroom noise on serial recall of common nouns presented pictorially were investigated in children and adults. Experiment 1 used fixed list lengths for children (first graders) and adults. Experiment 2 used list lengths adjusted to participants' (second–third graders, adults) individual spans. In both experiments, children and adults were equally impaired by irrelevant speech. This contrasts with a related study (differences in methodology) by Elliott (2002), who reported severe increase in the detrimental impact of irrelevant speech with decreasing age. In both experiments, classroom noise had no effect in overall analyses. For Experiment 1, however, separate group analyses revealed impairment in children. Results suggest that effects of irrelevant sounds on serial recall stem from two separate mechanisms: Specific interference due to the sounds' automatic access to short-term memory, and/or attention capture. Only for the latter there is developmental change.     

The phenomenology of self-reported body dysmorphic disorder by proxy

Body dysmorphic disorder by proxy (BDDBP), a preoccupation with a perceived defect in another person's appearance may represent a variant of BDD. However, BDDBP has received little empirical attention. We present here the phenomenology of 11 individuals with self-reported BDDBP. Participants completed an internet-based survey that assessed symptoms, psychosocial impact, and treatment history. Participants (8 females, 3 males) reported preoccupation with a wide array of individuals (e.g., spouse, stranger). Body parts of concern most commonly involved the face and head. Most participants spent several (e.g., 3–8) hours per day preoccupied by perceived defects in the person of concern (POC). All participants engaged in rituals to try to alleviate distress or improve the POC's appearance. Most avoided social/occupational activities, including contact with the POC. The impact of BDDBP was profound, particularly on relationships. Findings may help elucidate diagnostic criteria, course, and treatment.     

The relevance of sleep and circadian misalignment for procrastination among shift workers

This daily diary study contributes to current research uncovering the role of sleep for employees’ effective self‐regulation at work. We focus on shift workers’ effective self‐regulation in terms of their general and day‐specific inclination to procrastinate, that is, their tendency to delay the initiation or completion of work activities. We hypothesized that transitory sleep characteristics (day‐specific sleep quality and sleep duration) and chronic sleep characteristics in terms of circadian misalignment are relevant for procrastination. Sixty‐six shift workers completed two daily questionnaires over the course of one work week, resulting in 332 days of analysis. Results of multilevel regression analyses showed that on days when shift workers slept better and longer—compared to days when they slept worse and shorter—they had more energy and willpower available after sleep and subsequently were less prone to procrastination. Moreover, the more work times (permanent shift) were misaligned with employees’ sleep–wake preferences (chronotype) the more pronounced was shift workers’ inclination to procrastinate at work. The present findings provide important implications for shift workers’ effective functioning at work.

Practitioner Points

• To promote shift workers’ effective functioning at work, when scheduling shift work, circadian principles should be taken into account, and work times should be aligned with workers’ chronotypes.
• Day‐specific sleep quality and duration co‐vary with procrastination at work. Thus, on days on which procrastination would be especially harmful, sleep of good quality and of sufficient duration should be obtained.

     

How children perceive fractals: Hierarchical self-similarity and cognitive development

The ability to understand and generate hierarchical structures is a crucial component of human cognition, available in language, music, mathematics and problem solving. Recursion is a particularly useful mechanism for generating complex hierarchies by means of self-embedding rules. In the visual domain, fractals are recursive structures in which simple transformation rules generate hierarchies of infinite depth. Research on how children acquire these rules can provide valuable insight into the cognitive requirements and learning constraints of recursion.     

Modular Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Body Dysmorphic Disorder: A Randomized Controlled Trial

There are few effective treatments for body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) and a pressing need to develop such treatments. We examined the feasibility, acceptability, and efficacy of a manualized modular cognitive-behavioral therapy for BDD (CBT-BDD). CBT-BDD utilizes core elements relevant to all BDD patients (e.g., exposure, response prevention, perceptual retraining) and optional modules to address specific symptoms (e.g., surgery seeking).     

Forming and updating vaccination beliefs: does the continued effect of misinformation depend on what we think we know?

Cognitive Processing - People may cling to false facts even in the face of updated and correct information. The present study confronted misconceptions about the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine...     

Greater Intermanual Transfer in the Elderly Suggests Age-Related Bilateral Motor Cortex Activation Is Compensatory

ABSTRACT. Hemispheric lateralization of movement control diminishes with age; whether this is compensatory or maladaptive is debated. The authors hypothesized that if compensatory, bilateral activation would lead to greater intermanual transfer in older subjects learning tasks that activate the cortex unilaterally in young adults. They studied 10 young and 14 older subjects, learning a unimanual visuomotor task comprising a feedforward phase, where there is unilateral cortical activation in young adults, and a feedback phase, which activates the cortex bilaterally in both age groups. Increased intermanual transfer was demonstrated in older subjects during feedforward learning, with no difference between groups during feedback learning. This finding is consistent with bilateral cortical activation being compensatory to maintain performance despite declining computational efficiency in neural networks.