Context cue focality influences strategic prospective memory monitoring

Monitoring the environment for the occurrence of prospective memory (PM) targets is a resource-demanding process that produces cost (e.g., slower responding) to ongoing activities. However, research suggests that individuals are able to monitor strategically by using contextual cues to reduce monitoring in contexts in which PM targets are not expected to occur. In the current study, we investigated the processes supporting context identification (i.e., determining whether or not the context is appropriate for monitoring) by testing the context cue focality hypothesis. This hypothesis predicts that the ability to monitor strategically depends on whether the ongoing task orients attention to the contextual cues that are available to guide monitoring. In Experiment 1, participants performed an ongoing lexical decision task and were told that PM targets (TOR syllable) would only occur in word trials (focal context cue condition) or in items starting with consonants (nonfocal context cue condition). In Experiment 2, participants performed an ongoing first letter judgment (consonant/vowel) task and were told that PM targets would only occur in items starting with consonants (focal context cue condition) or in word trials (nonfocal context cue condition). Consistent with the context cue focality hypothesis, strategic monitoring was only observed during focal context cue conditions in which the type of ongoing task processing automatically oriented attention to the relevant features of the contextual cue. These findings suggest that strategic monitoring is dependent on limited-capacity processing resources and may be relatively limited when the attentional demands of context identification are sufficiently high.     

Valuing Values: Better Public Engagement on Nanotechnology Demands a Better Understanding of the Diversity of Publics

As public attitude research evolves, often becoming more complex and variable, we are coming to understand that public attitudes are also more complex and variable than can often be captured by a single opinion poll, and more sophisticated forms of analyses are needed that look not just at a breadth of attitudes, but at a breadth of publics. The Australian Department of Industry undertook a public attitude study in 2012 that was not only longitudinal, looking at changes in attitudes towards nanotechnologies, but also looking at the values or worldviews that influence attitudes. The findings allowed for a segmentation of the public, into four key segments, with distinct homogenous attitudes. This allows for not just a deeper understanding of the diversity of views that exist and the worldviews that influence them, but challenges engagement practitioners to ensure they have a broad representation of participants with different attitudes and do not favour one or two segments only.     

Linking team resources to work-family enrichment and satisfaction

Work-family scholars now recognize the potential positive effects of participation in one life domain (i.e., work or family) on performance in other life domains. We examined how employees might benefit from team resources, which are highly relevant to the modern workplace, in both work and nonwork domains via work-family enrichment. Using the Resource-Gain-Development model (Wayne, Grzywacz, Carlson, & Kacmar, 2007), we explored how team resources contribute to enrichment and resulting project and family satisfaction. Using multilevel structural equation modeling (ML-SEM) to analyze student data (N = 344) across multiple class projects, we demonstrated that individuals with team resources were more likely to experience both work-to-family and family-to-work enrichment. Further, enrichment mediated the relationship between team resources and satisfaction with the originating domain.     

Self-disclosure and liking: Effects for senders and receivers1

This experiment tested the social reward potential of self-disclosure and its impact on a receiver's attraction towards the sender. Further, a sender self-perception effect was tested. Just as a receiver is speculated to use the intimacy level of a disclosure as an indication of sender regard and trust, the self-perception hypothesis maintains that the sender also uses intimacy level to self-attribute liking and trust for the receiver. A forced-compliance procedure with college males was used to have a sender subject send either a high or low intimacy self-disclosure essay. Consistent with the social reward and self-perception hypotheses were measures of sender's behavior as trusting and measures of feelings during the disclosure process. General measures of liking and trust were not successful, however.     

General mental ability in the world of work: occupational attainment and job performance

The psychological construct of general mental ability (GMA), introduced by C. Spearman (1904) nearly 100 years ago, has enjoyed a resurgence of interest and attention in recent decades. This article presents the research evidence that GMA predicts both occupational level attained and performance within one's chosen occupation and does so better than any other ability, trait, or disposition and better than job experience. The sizes of these relationships with GMA are also larger than most found in psychological research. Evidence is presented that weighted combinations of specific aptitudes tailored to individual jobs do not predict job performance better than GMA alone, disconfirming specific aptitude theory. A theory of job performance is described that explicates the central role of GMA in the world of work. These findings support Spearman's proposition that GMA is of critical importance in human affairs.     

Colour vision brings clarity to shadows

We have revealed a new role for colour vision in visual scene analysis: colour vision facilitates shadow identification. Shadows are important features of the visual scene, providing information about the shape, depth, and movement of objects. To be useful for perception, however, shadows must be distinguished from other types of luminance variation, principally the variation in object reflectance. A potential cue for distinguishing shadows from reflectance variations is colour, since chromatic changes typically occur at object but not shadow boundaries. We tested whether colour cues were exploited by the visual system for shadow identification, by comparing the ability of human test subjects to identify simulated shadows on chromatically variegated versus achromatically variegated backgrounds with identical luminance compositions. Performance was superior with the chromatically variegated backgrounds. Furthermore, introducing random colour contrast across the shadow boundaries degraded their identification. These findings demonstrate that the visual system exploits inbuilt assumptions about the relationships between colour and luminance in the natural visual world.     

The long-term effects of coping strategy use in victims of bullying

The ways in which children appraise and cope with school bullying are likely to influence the long-term outcomes experienced. To examine this possibility, 219 Spanish undergraduate students (73 male, 146 female) aged between 18 and 40, completed an adapted version of the Retrospective Bullying Questionnaire (RBQ; Sch?fer et al., 2004) and a distress scale (Rivers, 1999). Results indicated that neither coping strategies reported by victims of bullying nor the match between control appraisal and coping strategy influenced levels of distress experienced as adults. Control, threat and challenge appraisals did, however, influence long-term distress. Explanations for these effects are discussed, and include the possibility that appraisals may directly influence levels of distress and the quality of emotions experienced by victims during the actual bullying episode. Active strategies were perceived by students to be effective in dealing with bullying, whereas those centered on avoiding the conflict, or which involved aggression, were considered ineffective.     

Gaze-contingent displays: a review.

Gaze-contingent displays (GCDs) attempt to balance the amount of information displayed against the visual information processing capacity of the observer through real-time eye movement sensing. Based on the assumed knowledge of the instantaneous location of the observer's focus of attention, GCD content can be "tuned" through several display processing means. Screen-based displays alter pixel level information generally matching the resolvability of the human retina in an effort to maximize bandwidth. Model-based displays alter geometric-level primitives along similar goals. Attentive user interfaces (AUIs) manage object- level entities (e.g., windows, applications) depending on the assumed attentive state of the observer. Such real-time display manipulation is generally achieved through non-contact, unobtrusive tracking of the observer's eye movements. This paper briefly reviews past and present display techniques as well as emerging graphics and eye tracking technology for GCD development.     

Discriminative taste aversion learning: a learning task for older chickens

The study of learning and memory using the chicken model has relied on three learning paradigms, passive avoidance learning, imprinting and the pebble floor task. Passive avoidance learning and imprinting have been used predominantly in very young chickens and cannot be used to access learning and memory in older chickens. We have established a new behavioural learning paradigm, Discriminative Taste Aversion Learning (DTAL), that can be used with both young and older animals. The task requires chickens to discriminate between food crumbs dyed either red or yellow with one colour being associated with the aversive tasting substance, methylanthranilate. Learning can be tested at various times after the training session by presenting chickens with the coloured food crumbs without an aversive taste. Both chickens tested at 5 and 15 days post-hatch learned to avoid the aversive crumbs. Furthermore, the protein synthesis inhibitor anisomycin (30 mM; 10 microl per hemisphere) injected into the intermediate medial hyperstriatum ventrale 15 min pre-training or 45 min post-training blocked long-term memory for the DTAL task when tested 24 h later. Memory for the task was unaffected by anisomycin injection 120 min post-training or in control animals injected with saline at similar times. The timing of the cellular processes of protein synthesis needed for consolidation of the DTAL appears to be similar to those described for the other behavioural paradigms in young chickens.     

Are there critical bands in kinesthesia?

The effect of changing the bandwidth of noise on the ability of human subjects to detect a 10-Hz sinusoidal movement signal was measured in two experiments. The objective of these studies was to investigate whether critical bands exist for the kinesthetic system, as has been demonstrated for the auditory and tactile systems. It was found that subjects' ability to detect a 10-Hz sinusoidal movement stimulus embedded in noise was not influenced by the bandwidth of the noise over a range of 4-10 Hz. These findings suggest that, if a critical filter does exist for this system, it would have to be greater than 10 Hz.