An eye fixation analysis of choice and judgment with multiattribute stimuli

The present paper examined the selection of processing heuristics for choice and judgment across a range of stimuli. Eye fixations were monitored while six subjects made choices or judgments of pairs of gambles, vacations, or gifts. Each stimulus was represented by three attributes that varied in the amount of dimensional interdependency. The two heuristics of interest were dimensional and holistic evaluation. Each manifested a characteristic pattern of eye fixations. Dimensional evaluation required alternating fixations from a single attribute of one stimulus to the same attribute of the other stimulus. Holistic evaluation was characterized by transitions from attribute to attribute within a single stimulus. The results demonstrated that when the stimulus attributes were either interdependent (gambles) or dissimilar (gifts), the processing heuristic was determined by stimulus characteristics. When the stimulus dimensions were neither interdependent nor dissimilar (vacations), the selection of a processing strategy was determined by the prescribed task. This study suggests that any global theory of choice or judgment must be validated over a wide range of stimuli.     

Why and for whom does the pressure to help hurt others? Affective and cognitive mechanisms linking helping pressure to workplace deviance

Scholars are paying increasing attention to the “dark side” of citizenship behavior. One aspect of this dark side that has received relatively scant attention is “helping pressure”—an employee's perception that s/he is being encouraged to, or otherwise feels that s/he should, enact helping behavior at work. Drawing from theory associated with work stress, we examine affective and cognitive mechanisms that potentially explain why helping pressure, counterintuitively, may lead employees to engage in deviant behavior instead. Beyond examining these possible mechanisms, we also answer calls to identify a potential buffer to these effects. Drawing from self-determination theory, we examine how an employee's intrinsic motivation for citizenship may lessen the deleterious consequences of helping pressure at work. In two studies (a within-individual experience-sampling study and a two-wave between-individual study), we find consistent evidence that helping pressure has a positive indirect relationship with deviant behavior through increased negative affect. Further, we find evidence that intrinsic motivation for citizenship weakens the positive relationship of helping pressure with negative affect, buffering the indirect effect on subsequent deviant behavior. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings for the study of helping pressure at work are discussed.     

Grammatical language impairment and the specificity of cognitive domains: relations between auditory and language abilities

Grammatical-specific language impairment (G-SLI) in children, arguably, provides evidence for the existence of a specialised grammatical sub-system in the brain, necessary for normal language development. Some researchers challenge this, claiming that domain-general, low-level auditory deficits, particular to rapid processing, cause phonological deficits and thereby SLI. We investigate this possibility by testing the auditory discrimination abilities of G-SLI children for speech and non-speech sounds, at varying presentation rates, and controlling for the effects of age and language on performance. For non-speech formant transitions, 69% of the G-SLI children showed normal auditory processing, whereas for the same acoustic information in speech, only 31% did so. For rapidly presented tones, 46% of the G-SLI children performed normally. Auditory performance with speech and non-speech sounds differentiated the G-SLI children from their age-matched controls, whereas speed of processing did not. The G-SLI children evinced no relationship between their auditory and phonological/grammatical abilities. We found no consistent evidence that a deficit in processing rapid acoustic information causes or maintains G-SLI. The findings, from at least those G-SLI children who do not exhibit any auditory deficits, provide further evidence supporting the existence of a primary domain-specific deficit underlying G-SLI.     

Neurocognitive mechanisms of cognitive control: the role of prefrontal cortex in action selection, response inhibition, performance monitoring, and reward-based learning

Convergent evidence highlights the differential contributions of various regions of the prefrontal cortex in the service of cognitive control, but little is understood about how the brain determines and communicates the need to recruit cognitive control, and how such signals instigate the implementation of appropriate performance adjustments. Here we review recent progress from cognitive neuroscience in examining some of the main constituent processes of cognitive control as involved in dynamic decision making: goal-directed action selection, response activation and inhibition, performance monitoring, and reward-based learning. Medial frontal cortex is found to be involved in performance monitoring: evaluating outcome vis-a-vis expectancy, and detecting performance errors or conflicting response tendencies. Lateral and orbitofrontal divisions of prefrontal cortex are involved in subsequently implementing appropriate adjustments.