Employees' satisfaction with retention factors: Exploring the role of career adaptability

Given the rising concerns about staff retention and the increased importance attached to individuals' career adaptability, the present paper explored how career adaptability relates to employees' satisfaction with factors that organizations regard important for their retention. A canonical correlation analysis was conducted on a sample of 321 employees in a South African automotive industry. The results showed that career adaptability, especially career concern, significantly explained the participants' level of satisfaction with their experiences of the career opportunities, work–life balance, training and development opportunities and characteristics of the jobs offered by the company. The study findings suggest that employees' career concerns, goals and plans and how these relate to retention practices are important for retaining them. Black and white participants also differed significantly regarding the variables. This study extends prior research on career adaptability by adding insights about the usefulness of the construct in the retention context.     

The five connections: A human rights framework for psychologists

This article provides a brief introduction to human rights, describes why human rights are intrinsic to psychology, and introduces the “Five Connections Framework,” which was adopted by the American Psychological Association in 2021. This framework articulates five distinct relationships between human rights and psychology: (a) Psychologists possess rights by virtue of being human, as well as specific rights essential to their profession and discipline; (b) Psychologists apply their knowledge and methods to the greater realisation of human rights; (c) Psychologists respect human rights and oppose the misuse of psychological science; (d) Psychologists ensure access to the benefits of psychological science and practice; and, (e) Psychologists advocate for human rights. Each of the five connections is described, highlighting implications for psychological research, practice, training and advocacy, with suggestions for how these connections can guide and inspire individual psychologists and psychological associations worldwide.     

Accessing the asymmetrical representations of causal relations and hierarchical relations in semantic memory

In a speeded aiming task, participants were trained to move a cursor with a mouse from a start position to target locations when the mouse–cursor relationships were either normal or reversed (vertically, horizontally, or both vertically and horizontally). Testing, which occurred after a 5-min delay, involved either the same or a different reversal condition. Response times improved across training, but no transfer occurred when reversal conditions were changed between training and testing. Specificity of training effects extended even to performance with the highly familiar normal mouse. Normal mouse use was slowed by a factor of two to three with training on a reversed mouse although the effect was transient in that case. To contend with a reversed mouse, participants apparently adopt a global inhibition strategy, suppressing all normal movements (and replacing them with sensorimotor remapped movements) but disinhibiting movements along any nonreversed dimension (selectively disengaging the sensorimotor remapping).     

Perceptual expertise and the plasticity of other-race face recognition

In this paper, we argue that our ability to recognize own-race faces can be treated as a form of perceptual expertise. Similar to object experts (e.g., birdwatchers), people differentiate own-race faces at the subordinate level of categorization. In contrast, like novices, we tend to classify other-race faces at the basic level of race. We demonstrate that, as a form of perceptual expertise, other-race face recognition can be systematically taught in the lab through subordinate-level training. When participants learn to quickly and accurately differentiate other-race faces at the subordinate level of the individual, the individuating training transfers to improved recognition of untrained other-race faces, produces changes in event-related brain components, and reduces implicit racial bias. Subsequent work has shown that other-race learning can be optimized by directing participants to the diagnostic features of a racial group. The benefits of other-race training are fairly long-lived and are evident even 2 weeks after training. Collectively, the training studies demonstrate the plasticity of other-race face recognition. Rather than a process that is fixed by early developmental events, other-race face recognition is malleable and dynamic, continually being reshaped by the perceptual experiences of the observer.     

Jump performance and augmented feedback: Immediate benefits and long-term training effects

Drop jumps and their adaptations to training have been extensively investigated. However, the influence of augmented feedback (aF) on stretch-shortening cycle (SSC) was not scrutinized so far despite the well-known positive effects of aF on motor performance and motor learning. The aim of the present study was therefore to investigate the effects of aF by evaluating immediate within-session effects and long-term adaptations. 34 participants were assigned to three groups that trained drop jumps with different relative frequencies of aF about their jump height: 100%, 50%, or 0%. A significant within-session effect of aF on jump height was observed before and also after the training period (pre: +4.6%; post: +2.6%). In the long-term (comparing pre- to post-measurement), the 100% group showed the greatest increase in jump height (+14%), followed by the 50% (+10%) and the 0% group (+6%). The importance of aF on drop jumps is therefore twofold: (i) to immediately increase jump performance and (ii) to improve long-term training efficacy. In contrast to the proposition of the guidance hypothesis, high frequency of aF seems to be beneficial when maximizing SSC-performance. As jump height cannot be quantified without objective technical measures it is recommended to include them into daily training.     

工作记忆训练对药物成瘾者认知功能的改善及其机制

对处于戒断期的各类药物成瘾群体进行认知训练，训练后药物成瘾个体认知能力得到改善，成瘾症状也得到了一定缓解。认知训练能够加速药物成瘾者大脑受损区域的自发性恢复，尤其是使影响个体抑制控制能力的中脑边缘多巴胺系统和前额叶系统发生功能性和结构性的积极变化，实现药物成瘾个体高级认知能力的改善。今后可以从不同类别的药物成瘾是否全部具有可逆性，设置的认知训练任务能否起到改善认知能力的效果，药物成瘾个体训练的性别差异以及训练效果的保持时间等角度进行研究。     

Plasticity in attention: implications for stress response in children

Attention bias has been suggested as an etiological and maintaining factor in anxiety. However, empirical evidence establishing this causal association is scarce and has been provided only in adults. In this preliminary study, we tested whether an induction of attentional bias can cause changes in vulnerability to stress in children reporting normal anxiety levels. Twenty-six 7-12 year-old children were randomly assigned to two groups. One group was exposed to a training condition designed to induce an attentional bias away from threat. The other group was exposed to a training condition designed to induce an attentional bias toward threat. Children who were trained to attend to threat developed attentional vigilance to threat-related information. The training procedure was ineffective with children who were trained to avoid threat, and their attention remained unbiased. Children from both training groups reported elevated depression scores following stress-induction. However, only the children who were trained to attend to threat subsequently reported elevations in anxiety. The findings suggest that biased attentional responses to threat, among children, can exert a specific influence on the tendency to experience anxiety in the face of stress.     

How robust are the deviations in haptic parallelity?

Several studies have shown that physically parallel bars do not feel parallel and vice versa. The most plausible cause of this deviation is the biasing influence of an egocentric reference frame. The aim of the present study was to assess the strength of this egocentric contribution. The deviations from veridicality were measured in six experiments where subjects were presented with either haptic or visual information about parallelity or their deviations. It was found that even direct error feedback (either haptically or visually) did not even nearly result in veridical performance. The improvements found were attributed to a shift in focus towards a more allocentric reference frame, possibly reflecting the same mechanisms as found in delay and noninformative vision studies. We conclude that the illusionary percept of haptic parallelity is rather robust and is indeed caused by a strong reliance on an egocentric reference frame.     

Physical activity in infants with Down syndrome receiving a treadmill intervention

Despite the recognized relevance of physical activity in the development and health of children, assessment of physical activity levels (PA-level) in infancy is limited, especially in infants with Down syndrome (DS). Increasing PA-level using a treadmill training (TMT) intervention may benefit infants with motor delays. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether a higher intensity, individualized TMT protocol (HI) would elicit immediate and short-term higher PA-level in infants with DS than a lower intensity, generalized training protocol (LG).Thirty infants with DS were randomly assigned to the LG or the HI group. Training was terminated when the infants could walk three steps independently. Activity monitors were placed on infants’ trunks and legs for a 24-h period every other month during the intervention phase, and at set intervals 1-year post-independent walking onset. Data were analyzed to separate sedentary-to-light activity (Lowact) and moderate-to-vigorous activity (Highact).Overall our results demonstrate that infants receiving the HI TMT had higher levels of Highact than infants in the LG group, factoring out the activity produced by the intervention itself. Infants in the LG group spent more time in Lowact than the HI group. In addition, these results seemed to be retained during the post-intervention follow-up. Despite these exciting results, more work is needed to understand the relationship of the intensity of TMT on PA-level in infants with DS, and whether PA-level and TMT are related to motor milestone achievement and/or health benefits.     

Krankheitsbewältigung bei multipler Sklerose

Zusammenfassung Obwohl ein erheblicher psychosozialer Versorgungsbedarf bei Patienten mit multipler Sklerose (MS) unstrittig ist, stehen die theoretische Aufarbeitung belastender Aspekte des Krankheitsverlaufs wie die Entwicklung standardisierter Interventionsmaßnahmen nach wie vor am Beginn. In vorliegendem Beitrag werden Konzepte und Modelle der Krankheitsbewältigung als geeigneter theoretischer Bezugsrahmen charakterisiert. Im Anschluss an eine knappe Bestandsaufnahme von Versorgungsbedarf und vorhandenen Versorgungsansätzen werden zunächst kurz Modelle der Krankheitsbewältigung (Coping) vorgestellt, die zur Abbildung spezifischer belastender Folgen der MS geeignet erscheinen. Weiterhin werden in einer Befundübersicht neuere Ergebnisse bewältigungsorientierter Forschung dargestellt, die auch erste Berichte zur Evaluation von Bewältigungstrainings einschließen. Ferner werden Ziele und Techniken, die als Bausteine eines umfassenden Trainings zur Bewältigung von Folgen der MS unverzichtbar erscheinen, erörtert. Abschließend werden offene Forschungsfragen, die die Gestaltung von Bewältigungstrainings betreffen, diskutiert.