Metacognitive monitoring of attention performance and its influencing factors

Metacognitive monitoring is a central element of metacognitive processing exerting widespread influences on information processing. Albeit being subject to numerous empirical investigations referring to memory performance, there is little research investigating metacognitive monitoring in other cognitive domains. The present study investigated in 45 healthy students whether factors that are known to influence monitoring of memory performance, i.e. task difficulty, time of assessment, and practice, also exhibit a significant impact on monitoring of attention performance. A multivariate analysis of variance with three within-subject repeated measures factors on two dependent variables (monitoring of (a) time, and (b) errors in an attention task) was conducted. Results showed that monitoring ability significantly decreased with increasing task difficulty, was significantly better for post than for pre-assessment, and significantly increased with practice. Therefore, results suggest that the examined factors influenced monitoring of attention performance equivalent to the influence of these factors found in metamemory research.     

Affect Regulation and Decision Making: Risk as a Social Constraint

The social constraints model of affect regulation is applied to decision making involving varying levels of risk in two studies. In Study 1 (N = 46) participants indicated a desire to attenuate both positive and negative induced moods when faced with a high-risk decision but not a low-risk decision. Study 2 (N = 64) provided evidence that attenuated affect helps individuals better identify decision-irrelevant information. Participants who were first made to feel happy or sad and then read a story that was incongruent with their mood were better at identifying decision-irrelevant information than participants who read a story that was congruent with their mood.     

Ceci n'est pas la mort: Evidence for the recruitment of self‐reference from surrealistic art under mortality salience

Previous research has demonstrated that death reminders influence how we perceive art. In the context of terror management theory, this has been explained by the death‐transcending quality of art to convey cultural meaning. In two studies, we examined psychological and neurocognitive responses to naturalistic and surrealistic art when death was primed. We found that naturalistic paintings were evaluated similarly in terms of personal reassurance in both mortality salience and control condition, whereas surrealistic paintings were evaluated as more reassuring in the mortality salience condition than in the control condition. Using high‐field functional magnetic resonance imaging in a second study, we found a similar pattern of results, showing specific activation in the precuneus, a brain area associated with self‐related operations, in all prime conditions for the viewing of naturalistic paintings, but only in the death and disgust prime conditions when viewing surrealistic paintings. Our results suggest motivated self‐reference when viewing both naturalistic and surrealistic artworks under mortality salience. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Do we map remembrances to the left/back and expectations to the right/front of a mental timeline? Space–time congruency effects with retrospective and prospective verbs

Recent experimental studies have shown that people code time in terms of a mental timeline which typically runs from left to right or from back to front. Determining the cognitive function of this mental timeline for language processing, however, is still an unsettled issue. Whereas the studies of Ulrich and Maienborn (2010) and Ulrich et al. (2012) argue against an automatic activation of the mental timeline for the interpretation of tense and temporal adverbials at sentence level, Sell and Kaschak (2011) observe an automatic activation for the processing of past- and future-related sentences in small stories. The present paper reports the results of three experiments which examine the processing of sentences with retrospective and prospective verbs (e.g., to remember, to regret vs. to expect, to announce) in present tense, which locate a second, embedded event in the past or the future. When temporal information was task-relevant, a space–time congruency effect emerged (Experiment 1). This suggests that the mental timeline is not only linked to overtly deictic linguistic material but may also be construed in a more intricate way through the compositional construction of sentence meaning. The congruency effect disappeared, however, when temporal information was task-irrelevant (Experiments 2 and 3), suggesting that the mental timeline is not functionally involved in the cognitive processing of these especially demanding two-event sentences. The results of the present study support the conclusion that the relevant factor driving an automatic activation of the mental timeline is not the number of linguistically expressed events, but might rather be the number of sentential units.     

The Role of Error Management Culture for Firm and Individual Innovativeness

To innovate at work is risky as every new endeavour is also error‐prone. Therefore, the way errors are managed in organisations may be related to organisations' innovativeness. We studied error management culture as one important and often overlooked organisational culture factor hypothesised to be related to organisational and individual innovativeness. Error management culture implies that a firm accepts that people make errors and uses “organizational practices related to communicating about errors, to sharing error knowledge, to helping in error situations, and to quickly detecting and handling errors” to deal with errors (Van Dyck, Frese, Baer, & Sonnentag, 2005 , p. 1229). Our sample consists of 30 companies with N = 227 employees. To decrease the problem of common method variance, we split the samples within each company into two subsamples: one subsample was used for the measurement of error management culture and the other one for the measure of organisational innovativeness. A multilevel structural equation modelling (MSEM) analysis showed error management culture to be related to organisational and individual innovativeness. Organisational innovativeness was a mediator for the relationship between error management culture and individual innovativeness. A potential implication is that organisations wanting to increase their innovativeness may need to examine their error management culture.     

Preschool executive control on the Shape School task: measurement considerations and utility

Executive functions (EF) necessary for purposeful goal-directed activities undergo rapid change and development during the preschool years. However, of the few psychometrically valid measures of EF suitable for use with preschoolers, information on task sensitivity and predictive validity is scant. The neurodevelopmental correlates of early executive difficulties are also largely unknown. In this study, the discriminant and predictive validity of the recently developed Shape School task (Espy, Bull, Martin, & Stroup, 2006) was examined with data from a regional sample of 209 preschool children at age 4 years. A 2-tiered measurement approach was used, with task completion examined in addition to efficiency. Children's performance was also examined in relation to functioning in a range of neurodevelopmental domains. The Shape School task showed some usefulness in capturing expected differences between at-risk and typically developing children. Performance loaded heavily on language and global cognitive abilities. However, several other factors were also implicated, including attention, motor skills, and ocular control. In addition, task completion and efficiency scores appeared to reflect different aspects of performance, and their associations with neurodevelopmental function and later academic achievement on the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement at age 6 years also differed. Implications for the application of the Shape School task are discussed.     

Activity experiences shape perceived fitness trajectories: results from a 6-month randomized controlled trial in older women

In this study we addressed the subjective benefits of activity interventions that were designed to improve cognitive fitness in old age. Two hundred and fifty-nine women (aged 70-93 years) were randomized to participate in an exercise or a computer course or a control condition for 6 months. Subjective ratings of the perceived change of cognitive and physical fitness components were captured before, during, after the intervention interval, and at a 10-month follow-up. Positive and negative affect levels and objective cognitive fitness parameters served as possible covariates. Multilevel modeling revealed that the computer group rated memory and concentration as having improved at 4 months and again at 6 months. The exercise group, in contrast, perceived physical capacities as maintained or improved. The characteristics of the activity experience seem to determine the perceived fitness changes. We conclude that actual learning experiences improve one's self-concept of abilities.