TASK-RELEVANT CONTROL IN ORGANIZATIONS1

Studies of organizational power using questionnaire measures of perceived control have usually asked respondents, “How much influence do (various groups in the hierarchy) have on what goes on in your organization?” The present study measured such general control, plus control over specific task-relevant responsibilities. Data were obtained from 526 individuals at four hierarchical levels in 20 regional offices of an insurance company. Predicted relationships between total general control and task-relevant control and an independent measure of effectiveness were only partially supported. The general manager's control was more important than expected. However, measuring task-relevant control could be a useful management tool, and could help future research explicate relationships between control and effectiveness.     

Children's attention to stimulus components with variation in relative salience of components and degree of stimulus integration

A total of 400 children at ages 5, 9, and 12 years were given a component selection task with stimuli differing in color and shape. Relative salience of these two stimulus components was manipulated across subjects in two ways: the standard shapes and colors from previous studies were compared with standard shapes in fluorescent colors, and the latter materials were compared with nonsense shapes in fluorescent colors. While fluorescence of color had little effect, the replacement of standard shapes with nonsense figures caused attention to be redirected from shape to color as the primary cue for learning. This effect was more pronounced at age 9 than at age 5. Apparently there is a greater tendency for older than for younger children to withdraw attention from a normally dominant component such as shape, when it is advantageous to adopt another feature such as color as the primary functional cue. An additional variable was integration of components (color within shape vs color as background for shape). Integration produced generally greater attention to color but did not affect the general pattern of salience effects.     

Influence of linguistic complexity,rate of presentation,and interphrase pause time on auditory-verbal comprehension of adult aphasic patients

Among the variables affecting comprehension of linguistic stimuli by aphasic subjects are syntactic complexity and processing time. Comprehension performance of 15 aphasic adults was studied while altering the rate of speech presentation and varying the pause time between the major phrases within sentences of increasing grammatical complexity.Simple Active Affirmative Declarative Sentences, Negative, and Passive sentences were presented (1) at the rate of 150 words per minute (wpm) with 1-sec interphrase pause time (IPT); (2) 150 wpm with no pauses; (3) 120 wpm with 1-sec IPT; (4) 120 wpm with no pauses added.Performance was seen to vary with increasing syntactical complexity and as a function of processing time. Greater comprehension was seen with active affirmative than negative; greater with passive affirmative than with active negative. Clinical implications are discussed. Subjects demonstrated greater comprehension when sentences were presented at slower than normal rate; addition of interphrase pause time intervals aided comprehension. Combining slower rate of presentation and IPT intervals provided greatest increase in auditory processing time and showed concomitant increase in comprehension performance.     

组织微阵列方法检测CD105、VEGF-C在肝癌组织中的表达

新生血管生成不仅为肿瘤组织提供营养支持,而且是肿瘤细胞进入循环系统的途径.CD105仅在激活的上皮细胞表达;VEGF-C为重要的血管生成因子之一,但二者与肝癌转移是否存在关联尚不明晰.探讨CD105及VEGF-C表达与肝癌肝内转移的关联.构建承载37例肝癌及癌旁组织的组织微阵列,免疫组织化学方法检测CD105及VEGF-C的表达.存在肝内转移的肝癌组织MVD-CD105均值为28.4±19.4,而无肝内转移的肝癌组织MVD-CD105均值为5.4±5.2,差异显著(P＜0.01);VEGF-C在存在肝内转移的肝癌组织表达率为46.15%(6/14),无肝内转移的肝癌组织中表达率为41.67%(10/24),二者无显著差异.MVD-CD105分值与肝癌肝内转移密切相关;血管生成可能在肝癌肝内转移过程中起重要作用.     

Comparing Chinese youth with American youth on adjustment: An illustration of measurement issues in cross-cultural research

In this article, we used results from two studies to show the need to go beyond linguistic equivalence to establish construct validity and measurement invariance in cross-cultural research. Study 1 examined Rosenberg Self-Esteem (RSE; 10 items) data from 156 Mainland Chinese youth (M = 13.8 years, SD = .53) and 213 Chinese-American youth (M = 13.6 years, SD = 2.1) from high socioeconomic status (SES) families. The Chinese translation of the RSE has been widely used. Study 2 included 1060 Mainland Chinese youth (M = 15.6 years, SD = 2.3) and 412 racially diverse American youth (M = 16.0, SD = 2.9) from all SES backgrounds. Data were collected with the third and newest edition of the Behavioural Assessment System for Children-Self Report of Personality (BASC-3-SRP; 189 items). We translated and back-translated the BASC-3-SRP between English and Chinese to establish linguistic equivalence. All participants were females. Study 1 showed that the RSE had acceptable internal consistency but lacked construct validity. Study 2 showed that the original and the translated BASC-3-SRP had good internal consistency and construct validity, but nine of its 16 subscales lacked measurement invariance. These results highlight measurement issues facing international and cross-cultural research.