Self-control trumps work motivation in predicting job search behavior

Current labor market entrants face an increasingly challenging job search process. Effective guidance of job seekers requires identification of relevant job search skills. Self-control (i.e., the ability to control one's thoughts, actions, and response tendencies in view of a long-term goal, such as finding employment) is assumed to be one such relevant job search skill. The current study is the first to empirically assess the importance of self-control in the job search process. This is compared to the role of motivation, which is generally considered a crucial predictor of job searching. Based on a sample of 403 Dutch prospective vocational training graduates, we found that higher levels of self-control were related to higher levels of preparatory job search behavior and job search intentions half a year later, shortly before labor market entrance. Self-control was a significantly stronger predictor of job searching than work motivation. Moreover, relations between self-control and job searching were largely independent of motivation, which may suggest that job-seekers benefit from self-control through adaptive habits and routines that are unaffected by motivation. We propose that job search interventions, which traditionally focus on strengthening motivation, may benefit from a stronger focus on improving self-control skills.     

Effects of Music Training on Attention,Processing Speed and Cognitive Music Abilities—Findings from a Longitudinal Study

The present study addresses visual attention and processing speed in primary school children (N = 345; 7–8 years of age) who received either music (MC) or natural science training (NC) over a period of 18 months. Dependent variables were collected three times (T1–T3) and included measures for processing speed, visual attention and cognitive music abilities. They were submitted to latent or manifest change models including socioeconomic status and basic cognitive functions as covariates. Groups performed similarly in all dependent tasks at baseline (T1). MC showed significant increases in processing speed as well as in music abilities from T2 to T3 and increases in rhythmic abilities from T1 to T2. Although MC also showed increases in both processing speed and visual attention over time, they were at a small advantage with respect to the former and at a clear disadvantage with respect to the latter measure as compared to NC. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A within-person approach to the relation between quality of task motivation,performance and job satisfaction in everyday working life

Research generally shows that autonomous forms of motivation are associated with higher performance and job satisfaction, whereas controlled forms of motivation are linked to worse outcomes. These relationships are largely based on between-persons data from cross-sectional studies or longitudinal studies with few measurement points. However, motivation quality, performance, and job satisfaction can vary considerably from day to day and from task to task. It is unclear whether and how these experiences and behaviors covary over time within individuals at work in daily life. The present study assessed this using a diary approach. With a default protocol of 30 working days, an ecological momentary assessment application prompted 19 white-collar workers five times a day to report their autonomous and controlled motivation for work tasks and their productivity and job satisfaction at the end of each day. Fourteen participants gathered sufficient data to compute within-person relations and individual networks. At the between-person level, results were somewhat in line with prior survey-based research, whereas results at the within-person level present more nuanced findings and demonstrate that these will not inherently align with previous between-person findings. Individual network analyses indicated considerable interindividual heterogeneity, especially in the relationships between motivation and job satisfaction. In conclusion, these findings point to significant variability in the observed relations between task-related motivation, performance and job satisfaction in everyday life, and highlight the added value of a within person approach and individual networks in addition to between-persons approaches. The implications of these findings for occupational wellbeing research are discussed.

     

The anaphase promoting complex is required for memory function in mice

Learning and memory processes critically involve the orchestrated regulation of de novo protein synthesis. On the other hand it has become clear that regulated protein degradation also plays a major role in neuronal plasticity and learning behavior. One of the key pathways mediating protein degradation is proteosomal protein destruction. The anaphase-promoting complex/cyclosome (APC/C) is an E3 ubiquitin ligase that targets proteins for proteosomal degradation by the 26S proteasome. While the APC/C is essential for cell cycle progression it is also expressed in postmitotic neurons where it has been implicated with axonal outgrowth and neuronal survival. In this study we addressed the role of APC/C in learning and memory function by generating mice that lack the essential subunit APC2 from excitatory neurons of the adult forebrain. Those animals are viable but exhibit a severe impairment in the ability to extinct fear memories, a process critical for the treatment of anxiety diseases such as phobia or post-traumatic stress disorder. Since deregulated protein degradation and APC/C activity has been implicated with neurodegeneration we also analyzed the effect of Apc2 deletion in a mouse model for Alzheimer's disease. In our experimental setting loss of APC2 form principle forebrain neurons did not affect the course of pathology in an Alzheimer's disease mouse model. In conclusion, our data provides genetic evidence that APC/C activity in the adult forebrain is required for cognitive function.     

Revisiting the association of aggression and suicidal behavior in schizophrenic inpatients

Our study investigated the association of aggression and suicidal behavior in schizophrenic inpatients. Eight thousand nine hundred one admissions for schizophrenia (1998-2007) to a psychiatric university hospital were included. Schizophrenic suicides (n = 7)/suicide attempters (n = 40) were compared to suicides (n = 30)/suicide attempters (n = 186) with other diagnoses and to schizophrenic non-attempters regarding aggression. Logistic regression analysis was performed to explore risk factors for attempted suicide. Schizophrenic suicides/suicide attempters did not differ from other suicides/suicide attempters or from schizophrenic non-attempters with regard to aggression. Risk of inpatient suicide attempt was increased for patients with attempted suicide at admission, high school graduation, and disorganized subtype. Aggression could not be found to be a predictor of attempted suicide. Aggression seems to have a minor role for suicidal behavior in schizophrenia.     

Religion and Addiction

Religion with its rituals can become an object of addiction, especially when a child while growing up experiences neglect and abuse. It is also very common that such individuals transfer their feelings of anger, rage and sometimes even true hatred to God. Then God becomes the substitute for their displaced vengeance (upon those who abused them as children).     

Disagreement, Error and Two Senses of Incompatibility—The Relational Function of Discursive Updating

In Between Saying and Doing: Towards an Analytic Pragmatism, Robert B. Brandom puts forward a general method of formally representing relations between meaning and use (between vocabularies and practices-or-abilities) and shows how discursive intentionality can be understood as a pragmatically mediated semantic relation. In this context, the activity that pragmatically mediates the semantic relations characteristic of discursive intentionality is specified as a practice of discursive updating—a practice of rectifying commitments and removing incompatibilities. The aim of the paper is to take a closer look at the practice of discursive updating and to show that the role of inconsistencies and disagreements in discursive practice can only be fully understood if the interactional dimension of updating processes is taken into account—i.e. if one looks at the explicitly social, interactional role of discursive updating in cases of disagreements between different subjects.     

Prominence vs. aboutness in sequencing: A functional distinction within the left inferior frontal gyrus

Prior research on the neural bases of syntactic comprehension suggests that activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (lIFG) correlates with the processing of word order variations. However, there are inconsistencies with respect to the specific subregion within the IFG that is implicated by these findings: the pars opercularis or the pars triangularis. Here, we examined the hypothesis that the dissociation between pars opercularis and pars triangularis activation may reflect functional differences between clause-medial and clause-initial word order permutations, respectively. To this end, we directly compared clause-medial and clause-initial object-before-subject orders in German in a within-participants, event-related fMRI design. Our results showed increased activation for object-initial sentences in a bilateral network of frontal, temporal and subcortical regions. Within the lIFG, posterior and inferior subregions showed only a main effect of word order, whereas more anterior and superior subregions showed effects of word order and sentence type, with higher activation for sentences with an argument in the clause-initial position. These findings are interpreted as evidence for a functional gradation of sequence processing within the left IFG: posterior subportions correlate with argument prominence-based (local) aspects of sequencing, while anterior subportions correlate with aboutness-based aspects of sequencing, which are crucial in linking the current sentence to the wider discourse. This proposal appears compatible with more general hypotheses about information processing gradients in prefrontal cortex (Koechlin & Summerfield, 2007).     

Learning and development of embodied numerosity

Recent empirical evidence indicates that seemingly abstract numerical cognitions are rooted in sensory and bodily experiences. In particular in finger counting finger-based representations reflect a specific case of embodied cognition, we termed embodied numerosity. Furthermore, we suggest that finger-based representations should be considered a distinct representation of number (magnitude) and argue that this representation is activated automatically whenever we encounter a number. We discuss in what way such a theoretical framework can account for the associations of fingers and numbers observed so far. In the final part, we evaluate whether the concept of embodied numerosity should be generalized beyond finger-based representations with particular focus on whether bodily-sensory experiences (such as moving the whole body along the mental number line) may corroborate numerical capabilities. In a series of intervention studies, we consistently observed more pronounced training effects for our embodied numerosity trainings for different age groups, different digital media, different number ranges, and different control conditions. Taken together, we conclude that embodied representations of number (magnitude) exist, are not limited to finger-based representations, and influence number processing in a systematic and functional way that can be used to foster the efficiency of numerical trainings.     

Factor Structure and Psychometric Properties of the Modified Childhood Anxiety Sensitivity Index in a Sample of Croatian Children and Adolescents

Anxiety sensitivity (AS) refers to a person’s tendency to fear anxiety-related symptoms due to the belief that they have harmful consequences. The Childhood Anxiety Sensitivity Index (CASI) is a well accepted operationalization of the AS construct in children and adolescents. This study evaluated the factor structure, gender stability and psychometric properties of the CASI, modified to a 5-point scale, in a sample of Croatian children and adolescents (N = 1,679). Exploratory and confirmatory analysis and a Schmid-Leiman solution confirmed the multidimensional and hierarchical structure of the CASI, which consisted of three lower-order factors and a single higher-order factor. Further, the modification of the CASI to a 5-point scale resulted in higher reliability, while maintaining acceptable levels of factor stability and validity.