The effect of job stress on self-reported safety behaviour in container terminal operations: The moderating role of emotional intelligence

This study empirically examined the moderating effects of emotional intelligence on job stress and self-reported safety behaviour in the context of container terminal operations using survey data collected from 430 respondents who worked in the container terminals in Taiwan. A hierarchical regression analysis was used for data analysis. The research findings indicate that job stress negatively affects safety behaviour in terms of safety compliance, as well as emotional intelligence positively affects safety behaviour in terms of safety participation and safety compliance. Results also indicated that emotional intelligence plays a moderating role on the relationships between job stress and safety compliance. The theoretical and practical implications from the research findings are discussed.     

Longitudinal effects of contextual and proximal factors on mother-infant interactions among Brazilian adolescent mothers

Adolescent mothers often come from vulnerable backgrounds which might impact the quality of both maternal and infant behavior. Despite the negative impact of adolescent motherhood for maternal and infant behavior, social support may decrease the risks and promote maternal behavior toward the infant. The aim of this study was to investigate longitudinally the effects of proximal (maternal behavior) and distal (mother’s perceived social support) variables on infant development in a sample of Brazilian adolescent mothers and their infants. Thirty-nine adolescent mothers (M_age = 17.26 years; SD = 1.71) were observed interacting with their infants at 3 and 6 months postpartum and reported on social support. Results revealed that maternal and infant behavior were associated within and across times. Mothers’ perceived social support at 3 months had an indirect effect on infant behavior at 6 months, totally mediated by maternal behavior at 6 months. Our findings revealed the mutual influence between maternal and infant behavior, revealing a proximal process. The results also underscored the importance of the passage of time in the interplay between mother-infant interactions and their developmental context.     

Is empathy necessary to comprehend the emotional faces? The empathic effect on attentional mechanisms (eye movements), cortical correlates (N200 event-related potentials) and facial behaviour (electromyography) in face processing

The present research explored the effect of social empathy on processing emotional facial expressions. Previous evidence suggested a close relationship between emotional empathy and both the ability to detect facial emotions and the attentional mechanisms involved. A multi-measure approach was adopted: we investigated the association between trait empathy (Balanced Emotional Empathy Scale) and individuals' performance (response times; RTs), attentional mechanisms (eye movements; number and duration of fixations), correlates of cortical activation (event-related potential (ERP) N200 component), and facial responsiveness (facial zygomatic and corrugator activity). Trait empathy was found to affect face detection performance (reduced RTs), attentional processes (more scanning eye movements in specific areas of interest), ERP salience effect (increased N200 amplitude), and electromyographic activity (more facial responses). A second important result was the demonstration of strong, direct correlations among these measures. We suggest that empathy may function as a social facilitator of the processes underlying the detection of facial emotion, and a general “facial response effect” is proposed to explain these results. We assumed that empathy influences cognitive and the facial responsiveness, such that empathic individuals are more skilful in processing facial emotion.     

Assessing collective affect recognition via the Emotional Aperture Measure

Curiosity about collective affect is undergoing a revival in many fields. This literature, tracing back to Le Bon's seminal work on crowd psychology, has established the veracity of collective affect and demonstrated its influence on a wide range of group dynamics. More recently, an interest in the perception of collective affect has emerged, revealing a need for a methodological approach for assessing collective emotion recognition to complement measures of individual emotion recognition. This article addresses this need by introducing the Emotional Aperture Measure (EAM). Three studies provide evidence that collective affect recognition requires a processing style distinct from individual emotion recognition and establishes the validity and reliability of the EAM. A sample of working managers further shows how the EAM provides unique insights into how individuals interact with collectives. We discuss how the EAM can advance several lines of research on collective affect.     

Disentangling fast and slow attentional influences of negative and taboo spoken words in the emotional Stroop paradigm

Although the influence of the emotional content of stimuli on attention has been considered as occurring within trial, recent studies revealed that the presentation of such stimuli would also involve a slow component. The aim of the present study was to investigate fast and slow effects of negative (Exp. 1) and taboo (Exp. 2) spoken words. For this purpose, we used an auditory variant of the emotional Stroop paradigm in which each emotional word was followed by a sequence of neutral words. Replicating results from our previous study, we observed slow but no fast effects of negative and taboo words, which we interpreted as reflecting difficulties to disengage attention from their emotional dimension. Interestingly, while the presentation of a negative word only delayed the processing of the immediately subsequent neutral word, slow effects of taboo words were long-lasting. Nevertheless, such attentional effects were only observed when the emotional words were presented in the first block of trials, suggesting that once participants develop strategies to perform the task, attention-grabbing effects of emotional words disappear. Hence, far from being automatic, the occurrence of these effects would depend on participants' attentional set.     

Differences between multimedia and text-based assessments of emotion management: An exploration with the multimedia emotion management assessment (MEMA)

People process emotional information using visual, vocal, and verbal cues. However, emotion management is typically assessed with text based rather than multimedia stimuli. This study (N?=?427) presents the new multimedia emotion management assessment (MEMA) and compares it to the text-based assessment of emotion management used in the MSCEIT. The text-based and multimedia assessment showed similar levels of cognitive saturation and similar prediction of relevant criteria. Results demonstrate that the MEMA scores have equivalent evidence of validity to the text-based MSCEIT test scores, demonstrating that multimedia assessment of emotion management is viable. Furthermore, our results inform the debate as to whether cognitive saturation in emotional intelligence (EI) measures represents “noise” or “substance”. We find that cognitive ability associations with EI represent substantive variance rather than construct-irrelevant shared variance due to reading comprehension ability required for text-based items.     

汉语儿童语素意识与词汇知识的双向关系:一项追踪研究

以399名小学一、三、五年级学生为被试,进行为期一年的追踪研究,通过分层回归,系统考察了汉语儿童同音、同形和复合三类语素意识与词汇知识的双向关系。结果发现:(1)儿童语素意识和词汇知识随时间均有显著增长;(2)控制词汇知识的自回归效应后,一年级儿童的同音和复合语素意识对其二年级的词汇知识、三年级儿童的复合语素意识对其四年级的词汇知识、五年级儿童的同形和复合语素意识对其六年级的词汇知识有显著的预测作用;(3)分别控制三类语素意识的自回归效应后,一年级和五年级儿童的词汇知识可以显著预测其二年级和六年级的三类语素意识,三年级儿童的词汇知识对其四年级的同形和复合语素意识有显著预测作用。结果表明汉语儿童语素意识与词汇知识存在双向关系,且不同类型的语素意识与词汇知识的关系随年级的升高呈现规律性的变化。     

Individual differences and correlates of highly superior autobiographical memory

Highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM) is a recently identified ability that has been difficult to explain with existing memory science. The present study measured HSAM participants’ and age/gender-matched controls’ on a number of behavioural measures to test three main hypotheses: imaginative absorption, emotional arousal, and sleep. HSAM participants were significantly higher than controls on the dispositions absorption and fantasy proneness. These two dispositions also were associated with a measure of HSAM ability within the hyperthymesia participants. The emotional-arousal hypothesis yielded only weak support. The sleep hypothesis was not supported in terms of quantity, but sleep quality may be a small factor worthy of further research. Other individual differences are also documented using a predominantly exploratory analysis. Speculative pathways describing how the tendencies to absorb and fantasise could lead to enhanced autobiographical memory are discussed.     

Stress and emotional valence effects on children's versus adolescents’ true and false memory

Despite considerable interest in understanding how stress influences memory accuracy and errors, particularly in children, methodological limitations have made it difficult to examine the effects of stress independent of the effects of the emotional valence of to-be-remembered information in developmental populations. In this study, we manipulated stress levels in 7–8- and 12–14-year-olds and then exposed them to negative, neutral, and positive word lists. Shortly afterward, we tested their recognition memory for the words and false memory for non-presented but related words. Adolescents in the high-stress condition were more accurate than those in the low-stress condition, while children's accuracy did not differ across stress conditions. Also, among adolescents, accuracy and errors were higher for the negative than positive words, while in children, word valence was unrelated to accuracy. Finally, increases in children's and adolescents’ cortisol responses, especially in the high-stress condition, were related to greater accuracy but not false memories and only for positive emotional words. Findings suggest that stress at encoding, as well as the emotional content of to-be-remembered information, may influence memory in different ways across development, highlighting the need for greater complexity in existing models of true and false memory formation.     

Emotional disturbances and their interaction with neuropsychological deficits

The interaction and relationships between neuropsychological tests (which are principally oriented to intellectual and cognitive abilities) and tests of personality and emotional status are complex, but nevertheless important in the clinical assessment of brain-damaged persons. Are indications of emotional disturbances to be expected as a direct consequence of brain damage? If so, how can the indications of emotional disturbances be differentiated from results obtained with psychiatrically disturbed (non-brain-damaged) subjects? Some authors have presumed that emotional disturbances, such as depression, acute anxiety, etc., in their own right cause impaired performances on neuropsychological tests, whereas other authors have proposed that brain damage predisposes the individual to demonstrate evidence of emotional disturbances. If emotional disturbances cause impairment on neuropsychological tests, why is it that so many emotionally disturbed persons without brain damage tend to perform normally on neuropsychological tests? This review of relevant publications considers (1) different general approaches to these questions and their implications for neuropsychology, (2) evidence of differential sensitivity to brain damage of neuropsychological and emotional instruments, (3) the sensitivity and specificity of self-assessments and complaints of head-injured subjects, (4) MMPI findings among head-injured subjects and in interaction with neuropsychological measurements, and (5) principles and guidelines that may be of value in clinical application of findings reported in the literature.