Better understanding the perceptions of organizational politics: its impact under different types of work unit structure

Research has uncovered inconsistent results regarding the influence of the perceptions of organizational politics (POP) on employee job performance, suggesting the existence of boundary conditions for such an influence. Drawing from uncertainty management theory, we investigated the interaction effect of POP and work unit structure on job performance, and examined the mediating role of taking charge. We tested the theoretical model with data gathered across three phases over 6 months from 577 individuals and their supervisors in 133 work units. Results showed that when the unit operated an organic structure, POP was significantly negatively related to job performance. In contrast, results demonstrated that when the unit operated a mechanistic structure, POP was significantly positively related to job performance. Furthermore, the results of the mediated moderation analysis revealed that POP was negatively associated with job performance through taking charge in an organic structure, and the indirect effect disappeared in a mechanistic structure.     

How suboptimal is suboptimal choice?

In a frequently used suboptimal‐choice procedure pigeons choose between an alternative that delivers three food pellets with p = 1.0 and an alternative that delivers ten pellets with p = 0.2. Because pigeons reliably choose the probabilistic (suboptimal) alternative, the procedure has been proposed as a nonhuman analog of human gambling. The present experiments were conducted to evaluate two potential threats to the validity of this procedure. Experiments 1 and 2 evaluated if pigeons obtained food at a lower unit price (i.e., pecks per pellet) on the suboptimal alternative than on the optimal alternative. When pigeons worked under this suboptimal procedure they all preferred the suboptimal alternative despite some pigeons paying a higher price for food on that alternative. In Experiment 2, when the unit price ratio more closely approximated the inverse of the expected value ratio, pigeons continued to prefer the suboptimal alternative despite its economic suboptimality. Experiment 3 evaluated if, in accord with the string‐theory of gambling, the valuation of the suboptimal alternative was increased when pigeons misattributed a subset of the suboptimal no‐food trials to the optimal alternative. When trial sequences were arranged to minimize these possible attribution errors, pigeons still preferred the suboptimal alternative. These data remove two threats to the validity of the suboptimal choice procedure; threats that would have suggested that suboptimal choice reflects economic maximization.     

Infant illness severity and family adjustment in the aftermath of NICU hospitalization

Up to 15% of parents have an infant who will spend time in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). After discharge, parents may care for a medically fragile infant and worry about their development. The current study examined how infant illness severity is associated with family adjustment. Participants included parents with infants who had been discharged from the NICU 6 months to 3 years prior to study participation (N = 199). Via a Qualtrics online survey, parents reported their infants’ medical history, parenting stress, family burden, couple functioning, and access to resources. Multivariable regression analyses revealed that more severe infant medical issues during hospitalization (e.g., longer length of stay and more medical devices) were associated with greater family burden, but not stress or couple functioning. Infant health issues following hospitalization (i.e., medical diagnosis and more medical specialists) were associated with greater stress, poorer couple functioning, and greater family burden. Less time for parents was associated with increased stress and poorer couple functioning. Surprisingly, parents of infants who were rehospitalized reported less stress and better couple functioning, but greater family burden. Family-focused interventions that incorporate psychoeducation about provider−patient communication, partner support, and self-care may be effective to prevent negative psychosocial sequelae among families.     

Counting to Infinity: Does Learning the Syntax of the Count List Predict Knowledge That Numbers Are Infinite?

By around the age of 5½, many children in the United States judge that numbers never end, and that it is always possible to add 1 to a set. These same children also generally perform well when asked to label the quantity of a set after one object is added (e.g., judging that a set labeled “five” should now be “six”). These findings suggest that children have implicit knowledge of the “successor function”: Every natural number, n, has a successor, n + 1. Here, we explored how children discover this recursive function, and whether it might be related to discovering productive morphological rules that govern language-specific counting routines (e.g., the rules in English that represent base-10 structure). We tested 4- and 5-year-old children’s knowledge of counting with three tasks, which we then related to (a) children’s belief that 1 can always be added to any number (the successor function) and (b) their belief that numbers never end (infinity). Children who exhibited knowledge of a productive counting rule were significantly more likely to believe that numbers are infinite (i.e., there is no largest number), though such counting knowledge was not directly linked to knowledge of the successor function, per se. Also, our findings suggest that children as young as 4 years of age are able to implement rules defined over their verbal count list to generate number words beyond their spontaneous counting range, an insight which may support reasoning over their acquired verbal count sequence to infer that numbers never end.     

中医卒中单元之系统分析

卒中单元是目前最有效的卒中治疗方法。在卒中单元基础上,加入中医防治中风的理论和方法,构建中医卒中单元,具备坚实的的理论基础和深厚的临床积淀。中医卒中单元是中国引进、发展和完善卒中单元,符合中国国情的必然产物,具有强大的生命力。按“优化人力资源、发挥中医优势,实现卒中疗效最大化”原则,对中医卒中小组进行重组、优化。按中医与西医结合、急救与康复结合、针灸与药物结合、循证医疗与个体化医疗结合、饮食与心理调护结合、治疗与预防结合等原则,优化治疗方案。开展中医药及针灸治疗卒中的多中心随机对照研究,建立中医药治疗卒中资料库,可为中医卒中单元提供强有力循证医学证据。     

Referring patients to counsellors in primary care: Qualitative investigation of general practitioners’ perceptions

Despite growing evidence of the effectiveness of counselling in primary care, questions arise concerning the role of general practitioners in the referral process. This involves both liaison with counsellors and the management of people who do not wish to see counsellors. Respondents (n=23) in this qualitative study of general practitioners’ perceptions were clear about which patients should be referred to counsellors, based on guidelines. Additionally, these doctors perceived their role and skills as negotiating with their patients about referral to a counsellor, and managing patients who are either waiting to see a counsellor or who prefer not to see a counsellor. These doctors feel inadequately trained in managing this latter group, whose outcome they perceive as unclear. Despite this, respondents accept a role in ongoing support for their patients with consequent training issues for doctors and opportunities for liaison and mentoring by counsellors.     

扩展临床路径内涵 推进双向转诊开展

文章概括我国现阶段双向转诊状况及其存在的问题和问题产生原因,并在临床路径启示下,对寻找做好双向转诊工作的途径进行思考,探索全面长期深入开展双向转诊工作具体做法,论述了扩展临床路径内涵对推进双向转诊工作开展的意义,规范双向转诊,旨在形成推进双向转诊长效机制。     

Unit-price analysis of opioid consumption by monkeys responding under a progressive-ratio schedule of drug injection.

Several reports have indicated that drug consumption in self-administration procedures is a function of the ratio of the instrumental requirement to the dose of drug, a quantity termed unit price. We evaluated three predictions from this unit-price model in a reanalysis of data on opioid self-administration in rhesus monkeys responding under a progressive-ratio schedule (Hoffmeister, 1979). We evaluated whether consumption was inversely related to unit price, and compared the goodness of fit of an equation devised by Hursh, Raslear, Shurtleff, Bauman, and Simmons (1988) to that of a linear model predicting consumption as a function of dose. We also tested whether consumption was constant when the same unit price was comprised of different combinations of dose and instrumental requirement. Consumption declined overall as unit price increased. The equation devised by Hursh et al. and the linear model based on dose fit the data equally well. Drug consumption was not uniform at a given unit price. The analyses suggest limits on the unit-price model as a characterization of drug consumption.     

Normalized demand for drugs and other reinforcers.

The concepts of behavioral economics have proven to be useful for understanding the environmental control of overall levels of responding for a variety of commodities, including reinforcement by drug self-administration. These general concepts have implications for the assessment of abuse liability and drug abuse intervention and the formulation of public policy on drug abuse. An essential requirement is the ability to compare the demand for different drugs directly in order to assess relative abuse liability, and to compare demand for the same drug under different environmental and biological interventions to assess their ability to reduce demand. Until now, such comparisons were hampered by the confounding effect of varying drug doses and potencies that prevent quantitative comparisons of demand elasticity--sensitivity of consumption and responding to the constraint of price (effort). In this paper we describe a procedure to normalize demand-curve analysis that permits dose- and potency-independent comparisons of demand across drugs. The procedure is shown to be effective for comparing drug demand within and across the drug classes. The technique permits a quantitative ordering of demand that is consistent with the peak levels of responding maintained by the drugs. The same technique is generalized for the comparison of other types of reinforcers under different biological conditions.     

Vergence eye movements during figure-ground perception

Figure-ground, that is the segmentation of visual information into objects and their surrounding backgrounds, provides structure for visual attention. Recent evidence shows a novel role of vergence eye movements in visual attention. In the present work, vergence responses during figure-ground segregation tasks are psychophysically investigated. We show that during a figure-ground detection task, subjects convergence their eyes. Vergence eye movements are larger in figure trials than in ground trials. In detected figures trials, vergence are stronger than in trials where the figure went unnoticed. Moreover in figure trials, vergence responses are stronger to low-contrast figures than to high-contrast figures. We argue that these discriminative vergence responses have a role in figure-ground.