Corporate Social Responsibility Practices of Colombian Companies as Perceived by Industrial Engineering Students

Science and Engineering Ethics - This work describes the perceptions that Industrial Engineering students have regarding Colombian firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices. It...     

Stroop interference is a composite phenomenon: Evidence from distinct developmental trajectories of its components

Only one previous developmental study of Stroop task performance (Schiller, 1966) has controlled for differences in processing speed that exist both within and between age groups. Therefore, the question of whether the early developmental change in the magnitude of Stroop interference actually persists after controlling for processing speed needs further investigation; work that is further motivated by the possibility that any remaining differences would be caused by process(es) other than processing speed. Analysis of data from two experiments revealed that, even after controlling for processing speed using z‐transformed reaction times, early developmental change persists such that the magnitude of overall Stroop interference is larger in 3rd‐ and 5th graders as compared to 1st graders. This pattern indicates that the magnitude of overall Stroop interference peaks after 2 or 3 years of reading practice (Schadler & Thissen, 1981). Furthermore, this peak is shown to be due to distinct components of Stroop interference (resulting from specific conflicts) progressively falling into place. Experiment 2 revealed that the change in the magnitude of Stroop interference specifically results from joint contributions of task, semantic and response conflicts in 3rd‐ and 5th graders as compared to a sole contribution of task conflict in 1st graders. The specific developmental trajectories of different conflicts presented in the present work provide unique evidence for multiple loci of Stroop interference in the processing stream (respectively task, semantic and response conflict) as opposed to a single (i.e. response) locus predicted by historically – favored response competition accounts.     

Ethnic-racial identity,relatedness, and school belonging for adolescent New Zealanders: does student gender make a difference?

Social Psychology of Education - Attitudes toward ethnic and racial identity have been linked to both wellbeing and maladaptive outcomes that affect belonging at school. Further, relatedness (or...     

Emotional adjustment in victims and perpetrators of cyberbullying and traditional bullying

Given the rise in cyberbullying among secondary education students and the importance of certain psychological adjustment variables for the comprehension of this type of violent behavior, both in bullies and in victims, the purpose of the present study was to analyse the emotional adjustment of those involved in cyber- and traditional bullying. The adjustment variables studied were self-concept, perceived stress, loneliness, depressive symptomatology, social anxiety, life satisfaction, and emotional intelligence. Using a sample of 1318 adolescents (47% boys), aged between 11 and 17 years, four groups were established to compare victims and cybervictims (uninvolved students, traditional victims, cybervictims, and traditional–cybervictims). The analysis of variance showed that students who performed the same role (bully or victim) in both contexts (at school and online). In particular, those who suffered traditional or cyberbullying or both conjointly presented lower scores in physical and social self-concept, life satisfaction, emotional clarity, and emotion regulation, as well as higher scores in perceived stress, loneliness, depression, and social anxiety. In bullies—traditional, cyberbullying or both simultaneously—higher scores were observed in perceived stress, loneliness, depressive symptomatology, fear of negative assessment, avoidance, and general social anxiety, and lower scores in the dimensions of academic and family self-concept, life satisfaction, emotional clarity, and emotion regulation. In general, the findings indicate that students who were involved in bullying situations, both victims and bullies, presented more damaged emotional profiles than those who are uninvolved, especially students who performed the same role (bully or victim) in both contexts (at school and online).

     

Does classroom social comparison bias students’ evaluation of their own competence?

Social Psychology of Education - Overestimation and underestimation of students’ own competence result from social comparison in the classroom. There is some evidence that secondary school...     

Time estimation: does the reference memory mediate the effect of knowledge of results?

This study presents evidence for the role of knowledge of results (KR) in the estimation of medium time intervals (4-12 s durations). Experiment 1 tested the hypothesis that KR operates at the same stage of temporal processing as attention. The absence of an interaction of attention and KR is taken as evidence against this hypothesis. Experiments 2 and 3 further studied the effects of KR in a reproduction and a production task, respectively. The effects of KR were small in the reproduction and substantial in the production task. The results are interpreted in terms of a clock-based timing model and the findings taken together converge on the interpretation that KR affects the reference memory (RM), rather than the other components of the model.     

False memories and lexical decision: even twelve primes do not cause long-term semantic priming

Semantic priming effects are usually obtained only if the prime is presented shortly before the target stimulus. Recent evidence obtained with the so-called false memory paradigm suggests, however, that in both explicit and implicit memory tasks semantic relations between words can result in long-lasting effects when multiple 'primes' are presented. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether these effects would generalize to lexical decision. In four experiments we showed that even as many as 12 primes do not cause long-term semantic priming. In all experiments, however, a repetition priming effect was obtained. The present results are consistent with a number of other results showing that semantic information plays a minimal role in long-term priming in visual word recognition.     

Aging and rule learning: the case of the multiplicative law

This work examined the effect of age on the ability to learn multiplicative combination rules. Participants learned the multiplicative relationship between daily tobacco intake, daily alcohol intake, and risk of esophageal cancer. The hypothesis was that younger adults would learn to implement a multiplicative combination rule and older adults would not, despite feedback. Among the younger adults, complete rule learning took place. Before receiving feedback, they used an underadditive rule, a result consistent with previous studies. After only a limited amount of feedback, they learned to use a multiplicative rule. Even after receiving feedback, however, the older adults still showed difficulties in using the multiplicative rule. These results strengthen the proposition by Chasseigne, Mullet, and Stewart (1997) that the differences between younger and older adults in function learning are related mainly to flexibility of functioning.     

Context and the interpretation of likelihood information: the role of intergroup comparisons on perceived vulnerability

Four experiments investigated how people's perceptions about a group's (e.g., women's) vulnerability to a disease are influenced by information about the prevalence of the disease in a comparable group (e.g., men). Participants read symptom and prevalence infomation about fictitious diseases before answering questions regarding target group vulnerability. Participants used the prevalence rate for a nontarget group as an immediate comparison standard for intuitively interpreting the degree of vulnerability of a target group, resulting in robust contrast effects. Experiments 3 and 4 illustrated that these contrast effects can cause a person's intuitive perceptions about a group's vulnerability to selected diseases to conflict with his or her knowledge of the prevalence rates for the diseases. The results support a distinction between 2 components of psychological uncertainty-beliefs in objective probability and more intuitive perceptions of certainty.