Exploring the Validity of the Values-In-Action Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS) in an African Context

This study explored the validity of the Values-In-Action Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS) in an African context. A convenience sample of 256 African students completed the VIA-IS in English. The majority of strengths subscales had good reliability coefficients and mean scores comparable to those reported in a Western context. Satisfactory criterion-related validity was established through correlations with other well-being indices. First and second order confirmatory factor analyses only partly supported construct validity. All strengths subscales consisted of more than one factor. The hypothesised six-virtue cluster pattern was partially supported. Exploratory factor analysis suggested the possibility of an emic factor pattern of strengths consisting of 3 components: Within the first factor, Intrapersonal and Relationship Strengths, two clusters are distinguished, namely, Intrapersonal Strengths, and Horizontal and Vertical Relationship Strengths. The second factor was Integrity in Group Context. Thus, the VIA-IS has merit, but is not completely valid in its original form.     

Character strengths and well-being among volunteers and employees: Toward an integrative model

The endorsement and deployment of character strengths in occupational contexts are two promising components for understanding how people create well-being. In this study, a model integrating character strengths, satisfaction with occupational activities, and meaning and well-being was proposed and tested in two samples of volunteers and a sample of working adults. The model fit the data well in all three samples. Results demonstrated that deploying strengths at work provided key links to satisfaction with voluntary and paid occupational activities and to meaning among both young and middle-aged volunteers, and adult working women. Among adult volunteers and paid workers, endorsing strengths was related to meaning, while both endorsing and deploying strengths were related to well-being. Together, these studies provide a model for understanding how strengths may play a role in how both volunteer and paid workers find meaning, well-being, and satisfaction.     

Carrying the height of the world on your ankles: Encumbering observers reduces estimates of how high an actor can jump

The authors investigated how changes in action capabilities affect estimation of affordances for another actor. Observers estimated maximum jumping-reach height for themselves and another actor. Half of the observers wore ankle weights that reduced their jumping ability. The ankle weights reduced estimates of maximum jumping-reach height that observers made for themselves and for the other actor, but only after observers had the opportunity to walk while wearing the weights. Changes in estimates closely matched changes in actual jumping-reach ability. Results confirm and extend recent investigations that indicate that perception of the spatial layout of surfaces in the environment is scaled to an observer's capacity to act, and they link that approach to another embodied cognition perspective that posits a link between one's own action capabilities and perception of the actions of other agents.     

Frontal and parietal lobe involvement in the processing of pretence and intention

We assessed whether different processes might be at play during pretence understanding by examining breakdowns of performance in participants with acquired brain damage. In Experiment 1 patients with frontal or parietal lesions and neurologically intact adults were asked to categorize videos of pretend and real actions. In Experiment 2 participants saw three types of videos: real intentional actions, real accidental actions, and pretend actions. In one session they judged whether the actions they saw were intentional or accidental, and in a second session they judged whether the actions were real or pretend. Parietal patients had particular difficulties in the identification of pretend actions, and both parietal and frontal patients were more impaired than controls in understanding the intentional nature of pretence. Analyses of individual patients’ performance revealed that parietal lesions, and in particular lesions to the temporo-parietal junction, impaired the ability to discriminate pretend from real actions. However, this did not necessarily affect the discrimination of intentional from unintentional actions, which instead may be independently disrupted by damage to frontal areas. Moreover, spared ability to discriminate pretend actions from real actions, and intentional actions from accidental actions, did not grant a full conceptual understanding of the intentional nature of pretence. The implications for pretence understanding are discussed.     

The temporal dynamics of effect anticipation in course of action planning

“Strong” versions of the ideomotor theory of action control claim that anticipations of the environmental effects that actions bring about are mandatory for response selection. This is considered to be the one and only way of how actions can be voluntarily selected. We studied this notion in a series of four experiments where we adapted the flanker paradigm to investigate the involvement of effect codes in the preparation of motor responses. Participants first learned that their responses to stimulus letters were contingently followed by the presentation of a new letter on the screen. In the second phase of the experiments, the action-demanding letters were presented together with the effects of the correct response, effects of other responses, or neutral letters. Varying the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between target stimuli and the flanking effect stimuli provides the opportunity to investigate the temporal dynamics of the activation of effect codes. Hence, flanker stimuli were presented before, simultaneously with, or after the onset of the target. The results indicate that effect-related information from the flanker stimuli is involved in the preparation process, but mainly in later phases of response preparation. The observed pattern of results suggests that, at least under conditions where responses are determined by stimuli, effect codes are activated in course of response planning to enable the evaluation of the executed response and the monitoring of response execution, but they do not automatically activate the responses themselves.     

Temporal coordination between performing musicians

Many common behaviours require people to coordinate the timing of their actions with the timing of others' actions. We examined whether representations of musicians' actions are activated in coperformers with whom they must coordinate their actions in time and whether coperformers simulate each other's actions using their own motor systems during temporal coordination. Pianists performed right-hand melodies along with simple or complex left-hand accompaniments produced by themselves or by another pianist. Individual performers' preferred performance rates were measured in solo performance of the right-hand melody. The complexity of the left-hand accompaniment influenced the temporal grouping structure of the right-hand melody in the same way when it was performed by the self or by the duet partner, providing some support for the action corepresentation hypothesis. In contrast, accompaniment complexity had little influence on temporal coordination measures (asynchronies and cross-correlations between parts). Temporal coordination measures were influenced by a priori similarities between partners' preferred rates; partners who had similar preferred rates in solo performance were better synchronized and showed mutual adaptation to each other's timing during duet performances. These findings extend previous findings of action corepresentation and action simulation to a task that requires precise temporal coordination of independent yet simultaneous actions.     

Delayed auditory feedback in repetitive tapping: A role for the sensory goal

The open-loop model by Wing and Kristofferson has successfully explained many aspects of movement timing. A later adaptation of the model assumes that timing processes do not control the movements themselves, but the sensory consequences of the movements. The present study tested direct predictions from this “sensory-goals model”. In two experiments, participants were instructed to produce regular intervals by tapping alternately with the index fingers of the left and the right hand. Auditory feedback tones from the taps of one hand were delayed. As a consequence, regular intervals between taps resulted in irregular intervals between feedback tones. Participants compensated for this auditory irregularity by changing their movement timing. Compensation effects increased with the magnitude of feedback delay (Experiment 1) and were also observed in a unimanual variant of the task (Experiment 2). The pattern of effects in alternating tapping suggests that compensation processes were anticipatory—that is, compensate for upcoming feedback delay rather than being reactions to delay. All experiments confirmed formal model predictions. Taken together, the findings corroborate the sensory-goals adaptation of the Wing–Kristofferson model.     

Embodied grounding of memory: Toward the effects of motor execution on memory consolidation

Behavioural and neuroscientific research has provided evidence for a strong functional link between the neural motor system and lexical–semantic processing of action-related language. It remains unclear, however, whether the impact of motor actions is restricted to online language comprehension or whether sensorimotor codes are also important in the formation and consolidation of persisting memory representations of the word's referents. The current study now demonstrates that recognition performance for action words is modulated by motor actions performed during the retention interval. Specifically, participants were required to learn words denoting objects that were associated with either a pressing or a twisting action (e.g., piano, screwdriver) and words that were not associated to actions. During a 6–8-minute retention phase, participants performed an intervening task that required the execution of pressing or twisting responses. A subsequent recognition task revealed a better memory for words that denoted objects for which the functional use was congruent with the action performed during the retention interval (e.g., pepper mill–twisting action, doorbell–pressing action) than for words that denoted objects for which the functional use was incongruent. In further experiments, we were able to generalize this effect of selective memory enhancement of words by performing congruent motor actions to an implicit perceptual (Experiment 2) and implicit semantic memory test (Experiment 3). Our findings suggest that a reactivation of motor codes affects the process of memory consolidation and emphasizes therefore the important role of sensorimotor codes in establishing enduring semantic representations.     

解魅、分化与现代性

在前现代社会里,由于人们对生活采取一种一体化的、富有意义的态度,一元论的世界观产生了。在那个时代,人们不能清楚地区分不同的行动和不同的领域。随着世界的“解魅”,这种整体性的“世界图景”开始消解,行动的模式和标准出现分化,与行动相关的制度和系统也相应地分立,这便是现代社会的本质。并且,由于客观的价值秩序消亡了,我们的时代目睹了价值多元论的趋势,而这与自由主义的价值中立的原则紧密相关。