Antecedents and Consequences of Perceived Barriers to Obtaining Mentoring: A Longitudinal Investigation

Mentoring is prototypically intended to advance the personal and professional growth of new employees at work. Although meta‐analyses have found that receiving mentoring can result in beneficial outcomes for employees' career success, employees may perceive barriers to obtaining a mentor. The present research examined antecedents and consequences to perceived barriers to mentoring in business and administrative jobs in a field study over 2 years. Socioeconomic origin, positive affectivity, organizational development culture, and previous mentoring experience predicted perceived barriers to mentoring after 2 years. New employees' perceived barriers to mentoring at Time 1 predicted changes in mentoring received and income after 2 years. Implications of this study, including a proposed mentoring training program, and directions for future research are discussed.     

Nomnetric scaling of loudness and pitch using similarity and difference estimates

In Experiment 1, nonmetric analyses of estimates of similarity and difference were used to generate a scale of loudness for 1,200-Hz tones varying in intensity. For both similarity and difference estimates, loudness was found to grow approximately as the 0.26 power of sound pressure. In Experiment 2, nomnetric analyses of estimates of similarity and difference were used to generate a scale of pitch for 83.3-dB pure tones varying in frequency. For both similarity and difference estimates, pitch was found to vary with frequency in accordance with the mel scale.     

John dewey in france

The present article on John Dewey aims at pursuing the traces of the reception of Dewey’s work in France. It is intended as a survey of the writers who have taken note of Dewey and his ideas, and is meant to function as a sort of additive inventory, with no claim to comprehensiveness. Some of the articles mentioned were unfortunately unavailable for direct examination and are thus listed merely for purposes of information. Although the educational and philosophical writings of John Dewey are actually indivisible, Dewey’s oeuvre has not been read in France and Europe generally as of a piece, but has largely been registered in terms of those parts which have relevance to education and teaching. Indicative of this is the fact that it took until 1975 forDemocracy and Education (1916)-the book which, in Dewey’s own view, most clearly presented his linking of pedagogy and philosophy (Delledalle, 1975; Suhr, 1994) — to be published in France. Gérard Delledalle, the translator ofDemocracy and Education, is the only person so far in France to have dealt systematically with the whole of Dewey’s writings. He has translated other works by Dewey and has written several books on him, dealing expressly with Dewey’s philosophy of pragmatism as the foundation of his theory of education. It is actually inadequate to restrict the reception of Dewey’s work to France alone. Rather, one should speak of francophone Europe, for the first translations of Dewey’s educational writings into French were made by Adolphe Ferrière, Ovide Decroly and édouard Claparède — a Swiss, a Belgian, and a Frenchman. It was thanks to them that Dewey’s thoughts on education began to make an impact on the francophone movement for school reform in the early twentieth century. Discussion of his theory of education is typified in France as well by a division into proponents of a concept of ‘learning by doing’ indebted to Dewey (particularly in France) and representatives of authoritarian forms of education, which reject Dewey. Although French thought has not yet concerned itself closely with pragmatism, Dewey’s opponents believed (and still believe) that they could denounce him and his theories simply by levelling the charge of “pragmatism.” This dualistic mode of thinking which appears to be deeply rooted in France has proved to be an obstacle to the reception of Dewey and has led to neglect and rejection of his theories.     

Space-based visual attention models and object selection: Constraints,problems, and possible solutions

Summary One of the functions of visual attention is the selection of object information. This seems to be in line with an influential group of attentional models that assume that attentional selection is space based. These models assume that the selection of an object in vision is realized by selection of the location of that object. Whether this relatively simple idea of space-based attention and the corresponding, more elaborated space-based models are sufficient to handle selected constraints and problems of object selection is the main issue of this article. The first step toward an answer is to describe the common computational structure of space-based attentional models. Two model classes will be distinguished: capacity-limited models (e.g., Treisman, 1988; LaBerge & Brown, 1989) and models that do not assume a capacity limitation (e. g., Van der Heijden, 1992). Next, three kinds of task and data on object selection are introduced that are especially challenging for space-based models. The first type of data refers to experiments that require selection between overlapping objects. The second type of data concerns the influence of early perceptual grouping - a strong object-defining factor- on late response competition, and the third type consists of a selection task in which a high-level (semantic) attribute defines an object and controls selection. In all three cases, problems of space-based models are analyzed and possible solutions are sketched. Finally, a brief evaluative summary is given.     

Category and word search: generalizing search principles to complex processing

This research examines how the major phenomena of visual search for single characters generalize to word search and word-category search. Experiment 1 examined word and category visual search when the target and distractor sets had a varied mapping (VM) across trials. Reaction time was a linear function of the number of comparisons with a positive slope of 48 msec per word, 92 msec per category. The VM reaction time data indicated a self-terminating comparison process, and there was little or no improvement with practice. Experiment 2 examined search with a consistent mapping (CM) between targets and distractors. Category search slope dropped to 2 msec, and the function became nonlinear. Word search slope dropped to 18 msec, but the function became nonlinear. Word search slope dropped to 18 msec, but the function was still linear. Experiment 3 examined category detection carried out concurrently with serial recall of digits, allowing assessment of search performance under high workload. High workload caused a severe performance reduction in VM category search, and this decrement did not decrease with practice. High workload reduced initial performance in CM category search, but this decrement was eliminated with practice. The present category search results are similar to previous letter search results. Four principles of search are discussed in the context of a theory of automatic/control processing.     

Enhancing a standard experimental delivery system (MEL) for advanced psychological experimentation

Enhancements to the Micro Experimental Laboratory (MEL) and the ways in which they facilitate development of psychological experiments are discussed in this paper. New procedures are described for (1) presenting and manipulating pictorial graphics, (2) inputting response box, voice key, joystick, digitized speech, and mouse responses, (3) outputting lights, speech, and tone stimuli, (4) editing and analyzing digitized speech, and (5) implementing multitask processing. Methods for extending the language, developing test batteries, sequencing subjects, and managing and analyzing data are described.