Evidence for the Impact of Organisational Resources Versus Job Characteristics in Assessments of Occupational Stress Over Time

Considerable evidence demonstrates the importance of both job demands and job resources in the prediction of employee health and motivational outcomes. However, scant empirical evidence explains how broader organisational factors can also have an impact on these outcomes. Utilising the job demands-resources (JD-R) model as a theoretical explanation of occupational stress, we examined the impact of employees’ alignment with their organisation's strategic objectives (strategic alignment) in predicting long-term occupational health outcomes. The sample consisted of 1,601 police officers employed in one Australian police service, who completed two self-report surveys over 12 months. Results of the study indicated that strategic alignment was the only resource to reduce psychological strain, and to increase work engagement over time. Job demands were not found to be significantly associated with either psychological strain or work engagement over time. There was also no evidence of the moderating effects of job resources on health and motivational outcomes. The theoretical and practical implications of the inclusion of strategic alignment as an organisational resource are discussed.     

Decoding emotions from nonverbal vocalizations: How much voice signal is enough?

Motivation and Emotion - How much acoustic signal is enough for an accurate recognition of nonverbal emotional vocalizations? Using a gating paradigm (7 gates from 100 to 700 ms), the...     

Organ Donation After Death — Should I Decide,or Should My Family?

Who should decide about organ donation after death, the individual or the family? This paper examines why this practical question can be difficult to resolve. A comparison is made between standard decision-making in medicine and decision-making about organ donation. The questions are raised of the connection of the dead body to the person, and of who properly has autonomous control over the dead body. To understand the issues, an exploration of autonomy is needed, but at the same time this shows that a resolution depends on addressing complex spiritual and cultural issues, and questions about the autonomy of the individual versus that of the group.     

Does emotion influence visual perception? Depends on how you look at it

ABSTRACT

One of the biggest challenges in the study of emotion–cognition interaction is addressing the question of whether and how emotions influence processes of perception as distinct from other higher-level cognitive processes. Most theories of emotion agree that an emotion episode begins with a sensory experience – such as a visual percept – that elicits a cascade of affective, cognitive, physiological, and/or behavioural responses (the ordering and inclusion of those latter components being forever debated). However, for decades, a subset of philosophers and scientists have suggested that the presumed perception → emotion relationship is in fact bidirectional, with emotion also altering the perceptual process. In the present review we reflect on the history and empirical support (or, some might argue, lack thereof) for the notion that emotion influences visual perception. We examine ways in which researchers have attempted to test the question, and the ways in which this pursuit is so difficult. As is the case with the ongoing debate about the cognitive penetrability of perception, we conclude that nothing is conclusive in the debate about the emotional penetrability of perception. We nonetheless don rose-coloured glasses as we look forward to the future of this research topic.     

Robustness of the cognitive gains in 7-month-old bilingual infants: A close multi-center replication of Kovács and Mehler (2009)

We present an exact replication of Experiment 2 from Kovács and Mehler's 2009 study, which showed that 7-month-old infants who are raised bilingually exhibit a cognitive advantage. In the experiment, a sound cue, following an AAB or ABB pattern, predicted the appearance of a visual stimulus on the screen. The stimulus appeared on one side of the screen for nine trials and then switched to the other side. In the original experiment, both mono- and bilingual infants anticipated where the visual stimulus would appear during pre-switch trials. However, during post-switch trials, only bilingual children anticipated that the stimulus would appear on the other side of the screen. The authors took this as evidence of a cognitive advantage. Using the exact same materials in combination with novel analysis techniques (Bayesian analyses, mixed effects modeling and cluster based permutation analyses), we assessed the robustness of these findings in four babylabs (N = 98). Our results did not replicate the original findings: although anticipatory looks increased slightly during post-switch trials for both groups, bilingual infants were not better switchers than monolingual infants. After the original experiment, we presented additional trials to examine whether infants associated sound patterns with cued locations, for which we did not find any evidence either. The results highlight the importance of multicenter replications and more fine-grained statistical analyses to better understand child development.

Highlights

• We carried out an exact replication across four baby labs of the high-impact study by Kovács and Mehler (2009).
• We did not replicate the findings of the original study, calling into question the robustness of the claim that bilingual infants have enhanced cognitive abilities.
• After the original experiment, we presented additional trials to examine whether infants correctly associated sound patterns with cued locations, for which we did not find any evidence.
• The use of novel analysis techniques (Bayesian analyses, mixed effects modeling and cluster based permutation analyses) allowed us to draw better-informed conclusions.

     

Aggression and the Risk for Suicidal Behaviors among Children

Two subtypes of aggression—reactive and proactive—were examined to see how they relate to suicidal behaviors among young children admitted for acute psychiatric inpatient care. The children and their parents completed self‐report questionnaires/interviews. Regression analyses revealed that depressed girls who scored higher on reactive aggression reported more suicidal behaviors; whereas proactive aggression did not relate to suicidal behaviors for either boys or girls.