Effects of training condition on the contribution of specific items to relational processing in baboons (Papio papio)

Relational processing involves learning about the relationship between or among stimuli, transcending the individual stimuli, so that abstract knowledge generalizable to novel situations is acquired. Relational processing has been studied in animals as well as in humans, but little attention has been paid to the contribution of specific items to relational thinking or to the factors that may affect that contribution. This study assessed the intertwined effects of item and relational processing in nonhuman primates. Using a procedure that entailed both expanding and contracting sets of pictorial items, we trained 13 baboons on a two-alternative forced-choice task, in which they had to distinguish horizontal from vertical relational patterns. In Experiment 1, monkeys engaged in item-based processing with a small training set size, and they progressively engaged in relation-based processing as training set size was increased. However, in Experiment 2, overtraining with a small stimulus set promoted the processing of item-based information. These findings underscore similarities in how humans and nonhuman primates process higher-order stimulus relations.     

Not a Negation? A Logico-Philosophical Perspective on the Ugaritic Particles lā/ ’al

Topoi - The negative particles lā/ ’al in Ugaritic change from positive to negative in modal contexts, conditional, questions, disjunctions, etc. They have usually been studied from a...     

What chance-credence norms should be

Synthese - Multiple realizability says that the same kind of mental states may be manifested by systems with very different physical constitutions. Putnam (1967) supposed it to be...     

Followership at a distance: Follower adjustment to distal leadership during COVID-19

Leader distance theory has received scant empirical attention in the extant literature; however, the “work from home” orders associated with COVID-19 have made this theory and its empirical findings highly relevant for organizations. Our study integrates leader distance theory and followership theory to understand how follower role beliefs affect follower effort, performance, and withdrawal under physical leader distance and varying conditions of leader interaction frequency. Using a three-wave survey methodology with 260 adults working remotely, our study finds that followers' levels of effort, performance, and withdrawal were contingent on leader interaction frequency. Specifically, followers with a coproduction role orientation, who see their role as more collaborative, reported higher levels of effort under conditions of high leader interaction. Furthermore, the indirect effect of coproduction on follower performance and withdrawal via effort was moderated by leader interaction frequency. The results for followers with passive role orientations, however, were in the opposite direction. These followers reported less effort when leader interaction was high, and the mediational chain predicting performance and withdrawal was contingent on leader interaction frequency. Our study contributes to the ongoing conversation about the positive and negative effects of leader distance and positions followership characteristics as important boundary conditions of distal leadership.     

At the core of cyberaggression: A group-based explanation

In this study, prototypicality of the aggressor was tested as a group-level factor predicting social media users’ active participation in cyberaggression. Participants were exposed to a fictitious conversation, in which either a prototypical versus non-prototypical user posted an aggressive comment as a reply to a provocative comment. In line with self-categorization theory, we hypothesized that bystander participants would post an aggressive comment and rate the aggression as acceptable to a greater extent in the prototypical than in the non-prototypical condition. Furthermore, we predicted that perceived normativity of aggression would mediate the effect of prototypicality. Results supported these predictions and showed that prototypical members affect the extent to which collective aggressive behaviors in online interactions are approved and enacted. These findings highlight the importance of group-level factors in the study of cyberaggression and provide important information for understanding the psychological underpinnings of collective forms of online aggression.     

Longitudinal Associations Between the Five-Factor Model of Personality and The Bi-Factor Model of Psychopathology: Continuity,Pathoplasty and Complication Effects in Adolescents

The study of the bifactor structure of psychopathology, which includes a general factor of psychopathology (or p factor) in addition to the internalizing and externalizing factors, has gained attention. However, its associations with the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality has been addressed in few studies, and none has examined different plausible etiological models (i.e., continuity, pathoplasty, complication) to explain its relationship, which is the aim of the present research. Additionally, the longitudinal association of the General Factor of Personality (GFP) and the p factor will be also explored. Personality and psychopathological symptoms of high school students were assessed at three time points (once a year) (n?=?655; M?=?13.79, SD?=?1.24; 49.8% girls). Confirmatory Factor Analysis (and measurement invariance across waves) were tested for the traits, the GFP and the bifactor model of psychopathology. While the bifactor model and the one-factor solution for each personality trait displayed good fit to the data and remained invariant over time, the structure of the GFP was adequate and invariant in two of the three waves. The resulting factors were included in cross-lagged panel models and showed that the FFM traits and the psychopathology factors influenced each other reciprocally. Most associations fell in line with the continuity model, but minor pathoplastic and complication effects were also reported. Similar associations were found between the GFP and the p factor. These results suggest that interventions in riskier personality profiles might prevent the development of general and more specific psychopathology spectra.

     

The Relative Importance and Interaction of Contextual and Methodological Predictors of Mean rWG for Work Climate

A variety of collective phenomena are understood to exist to the extent that workers agree on their perceptions of the phenomena, such as perceptions of their organization’s climate or perceptions of their team’s mental model. Researchers conducting group-level studies of such phenomena measure individuals’ perceptions via surveys and then aggregate data to the group level if the mean within-group agreement for a sample of groups is sufficiently high. Despite this widespread practice, we know little about the factors potentially affecting mean within-group agreement. Here, focusing on work climate, we report an investigation of a number of expected contextual (social interaction) and methodological predictors of mean r_WG, a common statistic for judging within-group agreement in applied psychology and management research. We used the novel approach of meta-CART, which allowed us to assess the relative importance and possible interactions of the predictor variables. Notably, mean r_WG values are driven by both contextual (average number of individuals per group and cultural individualism-collectivism) and methodological factors (the number of items in a scale and scale reliability). Our findings are largely consistent with expectations concerning how social interaction affects within-group agreement and psychometric arguments regarding why adding more items to a scale will not necessarily increase the magnitude of an index based on a Spearman-Brown “stepped-up correction.” We discuss the key insights from our results, which are relevant to the study of multilevel phenomena relying on the aggregation of individual-level data and informative for how meta-analytic researchers can simultaneously examine multiple moderator variables.

     

Adversariality in Argumentation: Shortcomings of Minimal Adversariality and A Possible Reconstruction

Argumentation - Minimal adversariality consists in the opposition of contradictory conclusions in argumentation, and its usual metaphorical expression as a game between combating arguers has seen...     

Hesitancy to Return to the Pre-pandemic Routine

Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy - The goal of the present study was to explore COVID-19 related hesitancy, which represents the inability of people to return to...