The future of workplace commitment: key questions and directions

This position paper presents the state-of-the art of the field of workplace commitment. Yet, for workplace commitment to stay relevant, it is necessary to look beyond current practice and to extrapolate trends to envision what will be needed in future research. Therefore, the aim of this paper is twofold, first, to consolidate our current understanding of workplace commitment in contemporary work settings and, second, to look into the future by identifying and discussing avenues for future research. Representative of the changing nature of work, we explicitly conceptualize workplace commitment in reference to (A) “Temporary work”, and (B) “Cross-boundary work”. Progressing from these two themes, conceptual, theoretical and methodological advances of the field are discussed. The result is the identification of 10 key paths of research to pursues, a shared agenda for the most promising and needed directions for future research and recommendations for how these will translate into practice.     

Role of matrix metalloproteinases in the acquisition and reconsolidation of cocaine-induced conditioned place preference

Persistent drug seeking/taking behavior involves the consolidation of memory. With each drug use, the memory may be reactivated and reconsolidated to maintain the original memory. During reactivation, the memory may become labile and susceptible to disruption; thus, molecules involved in plasticity should influence acquisition and/or reconsolidation. Recently, matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) have been shown to influence neuronal plasticity, presumably by their regulation of extracellular matrix (ECM) molecules involved in synaptic reorganization during learning. We hypothesized that inhibition of MMP activity would impair the acquisition and/or reconsolidation of cocaine-conditioned place preference (CPP) in rats. Intracerebral ventricular (i.c.v.) microinjection of a broad spectrum MMP inhibitor, FN-439, prior to cocaine training suppressed acquisition of CPP and attenuated cocaine-primed reinstatement in extinguished animals. In a separate experiment, the cocaine memory was reactivated on two consecutive days with a cocaine priming injection. On these two days, artificial cerebral spinal fluid (aCSF) or FN-439 was administered either 30 min prior to or 1 min after cocaine-primed reinstatement sessions. Infusion of FN-439 partially impaired retrieval of the cocaine-associated context when given 30 min prior to cocaine. In both groups, however, FN-439 suppressed reinstatement compared with controls on the third consecutive test for cocaine-primed reinstatement, when no FN-439 was given. Control experiments demonstrated that two injections of FN-439 + cocaine given in the home cage, or of FN-439 + saline priming injections in the CPP chambers did not disrupt subsequent cocaine-primed reinstatement. These results show for the first time that (1) MMPs play a critical role in acquisition and reconsolidation of cocaine-induced CPP, and (2) rats demonstrate apparent disruption of reconsolidation by an MMP inhibitor after extinction and while they are under the influence of cocaine during reinstatement.     

The wisdom of crowds in one mind: How individuals can simulate the knowledge of diverse societies to reach better decisions

The joint knowledge of many diverse individuals can outperform experts in estimation and decision-making problems. This wisdom of the crowd has been demonstrated in different societal areas such as internet search engines, political elections or stock markets. Recently, psychologists argued that humans may even simulate a diverse society in their own minds by drawing different answers from their brain (Vul &; Pashler, 2008). The underlying idea is that individuals can access different knowledge areas in their brain, whose joint evaluation yields better estimates than their separate consideration. This article presents a mathematical treatment of the wisdom of crowds and two potential mechanisms to quantify the wisdom of crowds in one mind. The implications of both methods are analyzed and applied to new experimental data (N=144), which contain five consecutive estimates from the same individuals. The theoretical and empirical analysis demonstrates limitations of the wisdom of crowds in one mind: Asking oneself several times is on average less powerful than asking only one other individual. This is due to the smaller diversity of estimates of similar individuals and the larger average bias to which they converge. Further, individuals cannot perform independent draws from an “internal distribution”. Hence, there may be other mechanisms at work such as talking oneself into believing initial guesses or eliciting progressively wilder ones.     

Unconscious activation of task sets

Using an explicit task cuing paradigm, we tested whether masked cues can trigger task-set activation, which would suggest that unconsciously presented stimuli can impact cognitive control processes. Based on a critical assessment of previous findings on the priming of task-set activation, we present two experiments with a new method to approach this subject. Instead of using a prime, we varied the visibility of the cue. These cues either directly signaled particular tasks in Experiment 1, or certain task transitions (i.e., task repetitions or switches) in Experiment 2. While both masked task and transition cues affected task choice, only task cues affected the speed of task performance. This observation suggests that task-specific stimulus–response rules can be activated only by masked cues that are uniquely associated with a particular task. Taken together, these results demonstrate that unconsciously presented stimuli have the power to activate corresponding task sets.     

Temporal-range estimation of multiple objects: evidence for an early bottleneck

When making parallel time-to-contact (TTC) estimates of two approaching objects, the two respective TTC estimates interfere with one another in an asymmetric fashion. The TTC of the later-arriving object is systematically overestimated, while the estimated TTC for the first-arriving object is as accurate as in a condition presenting only a single object. This asymmetric interference points to a processing bottleneck that could be due to early (e.g., during the estimation of the TTC from the optic flow) or late (e.g., during the timing of the response or the motor execution) constraints in the TTC estimation process. We used a Sperling-like prediction-motion task to differentiate between these two possibilities. Participants produced an absolute estimate of the TTC of only one of two objects approaching a target line. The target object to which the response was to be made was indicated by an auditory cue that occurred either at motion-onset or at the instant at which the two objects disappeared from the screen (occlusion-onset). The cue at motion-onset should disengage visual processing of the irrelevant stimulus. The cue at occlusion-onset, in contrast, requires visual processing of both relevant and irrelevant stimulus until occlusion. A single-object condition was introduced as a control condition. Results show symmetric interference in the motion-onset condition. In the occlusion-onset condition however, the results were congruent with asymmetric interference. Thus, the processing bottleneck in TTC estimation is originating at the earlier stages.     

Judging body weight from faces: the height-weight illusion

Being able to exploit features of the human face to predict health and fitness can serve as an evolutionary advantage. Surface features such as facial symmetry, averageness, and skin colour are known to influence attractiveness. We sought to determine whether observers are able to extract more complex features, namely body weight. If possible, it could be used as a predictor for health and fitness. For instance, facial adiposity could be taken to indicate a cardiovascular challenge or proneness to infections. Observers seem to be able to glean body weight information from frontal views of a face. Is weight estimation robust across different viewing angles? We showed that participants strongly overestimated body weight for faces photographed from a lower vantage point while underestimating it for faces photographed from a higher vantage point. The perspective distortions of simple facial measures (e.g., width-to-height ratio) that accompany changes in vantage point do not suffice to predict body weight. Instead, more complex patterns must be involved in the height-weight illusion.     

Slope estimation and viewing distance of the observer

The overestimation of geographical slant is one of the most sizable visual illusions. However, in some cases estimates of close-by slopes within the range of the observer’s personal space have been found to be rather accurate. We propose that the seemingly diverse findings can be reconciled when taking the viewing distance of the observer into account. The latter involves the distance of the observer from the slope (personal space, action space, and vista space) and also the eye-point relative to the slope. We separated these factors and compared outdoor judgments to those collected with a three-dimensional (3D) model of natural terrain, which was within arm’s reach of the observer. Slope was overestimated in the outdoors at viewing distances between 2 m and 138 m. The 3D model reproduced the errors in monocular viewing; however, performance was accurate with stereoscopic viewing. We conclude that accurate slant perception breaks down as soon as the situation exits personal space, be it physically or be it by closing one eye.     

Visual discrimination thresholds for time to arrival

In a seminal article, Todd (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 7:795-810, 1981) reported a difference threshold of about 50 ms to discriminate the times of arrival of two differently sized objects that simultaneously approached head-on at constant but different velocities. Subsequent investigators, however, have often found much higher thresholds. We did one complete replication of Todd’s experiment, and then modified his stimuli and experimental regime, which we hypothesized may have been responsible for some of the discrepancies reported in the literature. Unlike Todd and most other researchers, we exclusively used untrained observers. Several of our participants performed almost as well as the trained observers used by Todd and others, but the performance of most of our participants fell short of this standard. Furthermore, thresholds were affected by the experimental regimes, with large differences between objects’ sizes and speeds compromising performance. Analyses of the response patterns revealed that the responses were driven mainly by the objects’ relative apparent sizes.     

Retinal,attentional, and causal aspects of illusory-motion directionality

Extended objects presented instantaneously appeared to propagate or grow into their final shape. A strong bias was found toward perceiving straight lines to grow away from the observer's point of fixation. If attention and fixation were not directed to the same point of the visual field, both influenced illusory motion directionality, and if another small object was present on the screen at a location that was neither fixated nor attended to, the object that was instantaneously presented seemed to grow away from this point. Thus, three factors are involved in illusory-motion directionality: biases toward perceiving objects spreading away from the fixation point, away from an attended area, and away from preexisting objects. The experiments indicate that a satisfactory explanation of the illusion has to include bottom-up and top-down processes. They also challenge existing theories of motion detection.