Do you see what I see? Co-actor posture modulates visual processing in joint tasks

ABSTRACT

Interacting with other people is a ubiquitous part of daily life. A complex set of processes enable our successful interactions with others. The present research was conducted to investigate how the processing of visual stimuli may be affected by the presence and the hand posture of a co-actor. Experiments conducted with participants acting alone have revealed that the distance from the stimulus to the hand of a participant can alter visual processing. In the main experiment of the present paper, we asked whether this posture-related source of visual bias persists when participants share the task with another person. The effect of personal and co-actor hand-proximity on visual processing was assessed through object-specific benefits to visual recognition in a task performed by two co-actors. Pairs of participants completed a joint visual recognition task and, across different blocks of trials, the position of their own hands and of their partner's hands varied relative to the stimuli. In contrast to control studies conducted with participants acting alone, an object-specific recognition benefit was found across all hand location conditions. These data suggest that visual processing is, in some cases, sensitive to the posture of a co-actor.     

Response selection during a joint action task

It has been suggested that a shared task representation is used to predict a coactors' needs and that these predictions influence each coactor's response selection in a joint action task. The authors tested this idea using a joint action task in which participants passed a jug to a confederate under different conditions. They hypothesized that if participants predicted the needs of their coactor and planned their movement according to these predictions, the jug would be passed with the handle available to the confederate. Consistent with this hypothesis, the jug was passed with the handle available on 86% of the trials. This strategy may be adopted to improve the efficiency of the whole task as opposed to each individual's portion of the task.     

Between Synergy and Conflict: Balancing the Processes of Organizational and Individual Resilience in an Afghan Women’s Community

This paper examines individual and organizational resilience processes among members of The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, (RAWA), an Afghan women's underground resistance organization located in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Since 1977, RAWA has used humanitarian and political means to educate, serve, and motivate women and to advocate for peace, secular democracy, and human rights. The authors analyzed 110 qualitative interviews, collected in Pakistan and Afghanistan between December 2001 and July 2002. An iterative coding framework identified processes of resilience and domain specific stressors (risks) and resources (protective factors) at the individual and organizational level. Further analysis found that these process codes clustered by function into components of an operational model of individual and organizational resilience. While individual and organizational resilience are described by the same model, these two levels of resilience were found to operate in synergy as well as in conflict. Although this paper explores a unique setting, we argue that a better understanding of resilience processes in general will come from increased attention to context.     

Religiosity and Intimacy with an Extradyadic Partner in Emerging Adulthood: A Developmental Perspective

The present study examined the relationship between intrinsic religious motivation and both physical and emotional intimacy with an extraydadic partner (i.e., infidelity) in a sample of emerging adults (ages 18–25, N = 188) who were involved in dating romantic relationships. The study uniquely conceptualized religiosity in terms of personal and internal connection with religion; additionally, the study included both physical and emotional aspects of extradyadic intimacy behaviors. Contrary to previous research with married adult couples, analyses revealed that intrinsic religious motivation significantly and positively predicted physical and emotional intimacy with an extradyadic partner. Developmental implications are discussed.     

Independent Development of Imagination and Perception of Fitts' Law in Late Childhood and Adolescence

Recent neurophysiological and behavioral research suggests perception-action systems are tightly coupled. Accordingly, Fitts' law has been observed when individuals execute, perceive, and imagine actions. Developmental research has found that (a) children demonstrate Fitts' law in imagined actions and (b) imagined movement time (MT) becomes closer to actual MT as age increases. However, action execution, imagination, and perception have yet to be assessed together in children. The authors investigated how imagined and perceived MTs related to actual MTs in children and adolescents. It was found that imagined MTs were longer than execution MTs were. Perception MTs were lower than execution MTs for children and more consistent with execution MTs for adolescents. These results suggest potential mechanistic differences in action imagination and perception.     

Seeing vs. believing: Is believing sufficient to activate the processes of response co-representation?

It has been suggested that the observation of another person's action affects the behavior of the observer because the observation of action leads to the excitation of similar response codes in the observer. It is unknown, however, if one must witness the action or if it is sufficient for one to believe that the other agent is responding for response co-representation to occur. To this end, participants in the present study performed a joint spatial-compatibility task with a confederate when: (1) the confederate sat beside the participant; and, (2) the confederate left the room and told the participant that they would continue to perform their component of the task on a networked computer in another room. Even though participants believed that the confederate performed the task in another room, joint spatial-compatibility was only observed when the confederate was present. These results reveal that the actions of another person may only be represented by the observer when the observer is able to witness a portion of the action.     

The Ethical Orientation of Russian Entrepreneurs

Ethics has been a significant concern in the management literature and recent efforts have investigated ethical orientations across culture. However, little, if any, work has looked at ethical orientations among entrepreneurs and managers in the transforming Russian economy. This study surveyed the ethical orientations of Russian owner-managers ( n =194) involved in entrepreneurial and privatisation activities. A cross-cultural comparison to US normative responses found no difference in Machiavellian orientation in general, though female Russian entrepreneurs perceived themselves as more likely to engage in opportunistic behaviour. Additionally, Russian entrepreneurs in general perceived themselves as more ethically rigid. These respondents also felt Russian organisations fostered more interpersonally collective but structurally opportunistic organisational climates.     

Situational variables related to aggression in institutional settings

For decades, aggressive behavior among psychiatric inpatients has been identified as disruptive to the therapeutic environment and a workplace hazard. Most previous research has focused on individual patient risk factors with less attention paid to the situational, environmental, or therapeutic milieu factors that could influence violence rates. This review outlines the prominent areas discussed in situational factor research and presents recent theoretical models that integrate these factors. Based on the identified shortcomings in the available literature, suggestions for future research directions are offered.