Pointing Disrupts Preschoolers' Ability to Discriminate Between Knowledgeable and Ignorant Informants

By 4 years of age, children have been reinforced repeatedly for searching where they see someone point. In two studies, we asked whether this history of reinforcement could interfere with young children's ability to discriminate between a knowledgeable and an ignorant informant. Children watched as one informant hid a sticker while another turned around, and then both informants indicated where they though the sticker was, either by pointing or by using a less practiced means of reference. Children failed to discriminate between the two informants when they pointed, but they chose the location indicated by the knowledgeable informant when the informants used a cue other than pointing. Pointing can disrupt as basic an understanding as the link between seeing and knowing.     

20 Years of workplace bullying research: A review of the antecedents and consequences of bullying in the workplace

Research on workplace bullying, which has just recently passed the 20 year mark, has grown significantly over this duration of time. We provide an extensive review of the extant literature, with a focus on the antecedents and consequences of workplace bullying. We organize our review of the extant literature by level of analysis, which allows us to understand workplace bullying from each major level of analysis, while simultaneously identifying those levels at which research has been sparse. We then develop a conceptual model based on our review that similarly depicts theoretical and/or empirical findings from the extant literature, but in a succinct manner. Based on our review and conceptual model, we identify and highlight a number of key avenues for future research that will help extend the current workplace bullying literature.     

PERSONALITY AND DRUGS IN VISUAL FIGURAL AFTEREFFECTS

The effects of dexedrine and phenobarbitone on visual figural aftereffect (VFAE) were examined in 32 postgraduate students selected after a preliminary testing with the Maudsley Personality Inventory. Calcium tablets were used as placebos. The subjects were repeatedly tested under each of the treatment conditions. The results supported the following conclusions: (1) extraverted subjects relative to introverted ones had larger VFAE; (2) the size of VFAE increased under the influence of phenobarbitone in all personality groups except N+E+ and N-E-; (3) interactions between the drug treatments and personality variables in effects on VFAE did not occur.     

A STIMULUS CONTROL ANALYSIS OF THE PICTURE-WORD PROBLEM IN CHILDREN WHO ARE MENTALLY RETARDED: THE BLOCKING EFFECT

Conditioning to one member of a compound stimulus can be blocked by the presence of a second member to which the response was previously conditioned. This account of selective stimulus control can be used to explain the finding that pictures inhibit learning of written words if the relevant pictures and their verbal equivalents have been paired previously. We tested the blocking explanation of the picture-word problem with 8 mentally retarded students. Following baseline, each student was presented daily with four conditions in an alternating treatments design. In Condition A (blocking), a picture was presented alone and then was followed by the presentation of a picture and written word compound stimulus; in Condition B (blocking/control), a word was presented alone; in Condition C (blocking minimized), a word was enhanced in size and presented alone followed by the word and a picture; and, in Condition D (blocking minimized/control), the enhanced word was presented alone. Each stimulus was presented for 15 s. All students had the lowest percentage of words read correctly in the blocking condition, and all improved when blocking was minimized. Six of 8 students reached their highest percentage of words read correctly in the two control conditions when the words were presented as a single stimulus without pictures. These results indicate that pictures inhibit some students' learning of new words; this may be due to the blocking of conditioning to written words by prior conditioning to pictures.     

Reading/writing vs handedness influences on line length estimation

Left- and right-handed school children with differing reading/writing experiences (unidirectional left-to-right vs bidirectional) were asked to draw 3-cm lines from right-to-left or from left-to-right with each hand. With either hand, lines drawn from left to right were more accurate than those drawn from right to left, particularly for right-handed left-to-right users; bidirectional readers showed no directional bias. Moreover, bidirectional readers were more accurate than unidirectional readers. The findings support a greater influence of directional scanning effects than handedness on the task of line length estimation.     

DISCRIMINANT FUNCTION IN A PROFILE PATTERN OF KEY-COMMUNICATORS IN AN INDIAN VILLAGE

On sélectionne deux groupes distincts (les “ communicateurs ”-clefs et les non “ communicateurs ”) dans une communauté villageoise de L'Inde sur la base des interactions personnelles qui déterminent la diffusion à L'intérieur du village de trois nouvelles techniques agricoles. Les deux types de personnes diffèrent (.01) relativement à 8 variables : statut socio-économique, relation avec L'origine du changement, comportement vis-à-vis de L'innovation, popularité, personnification du fermier idéal, aptitude à la communication, taille de L'exploitation, autorité en matière d'opinion, mais ne présentent pas de différences relativement à quatre autres (amour du changement, conservatisme, fatalisme, cosmopolitisme). Une analyse de type D² portant sur six de ces variables prises ensemble donne un F significatif; sur la base de ces résultats, on peut établir un profil caractéristique des “ communicateur ”-clefs.     

Multiple Mediators of the Attitude Similarity-Attraction Relationship: Dominance of Inferred Attraction and Subtlety of Affect

The authors examined the mediation of the attitude similarity–attraction relationship. When affect was the sole measured mediating variable, the hypothesized partial mediation held in Experiment 1 (N = 60). In Experiment 2 (N = 96), ratings of the 3 potential mediators (affect, inferred attraction, and cognitive evaluation) and of an irrelevant variable (inferred cognitive evaluation) were taken at 2 orders of mediator measurement. The attitude similarity-attraction link was more strongly mediated by inferred attraction than by cognitive evaluation. Surprisingly, however, the effect of affect on attraction was reversed in the multiple-mediation analysis. Post hoc analyses disclosed that affect transmitted the similarity effect from its preceding variable only to the succeeding one. Theoretical and methodological implications of the dominance of inferred attraction and the subtlety of affect are discussed.