Employability during unemployment: Adaptability, career identity and human and social capital

Recently, Fugate et al. [Fugate, M., Kinicki, A. J., & Ashforth, B. E. (2004). Employability: A psycho-social construct, its dimensions, and applications. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 65(1), 14] defined employability as a psycho-social construct comprised of three dimensions: (i) adaptability; (ii) career identity; and (iii) human and social capital. The aim of the current paper was to empirically test Fugate et al.’s model in a sample of 416 unemployed Australians (n = 126 for longitudinal sample). Specifically, this research explored employability in relation to three aspects of unemployment: (1) self-esteem during unemployment; (2) job search during unemployment; and (3) re-employment (at a 6-month follow-up). Overall, the results of this longitudinal study provide broad support for the psycho-social construct of employability and demonstrate its applicability to the unemployment context.     

A variable neighborhood search method for generalized blockmodeling of two-mode binary matrices

The clustering of two-mode proximity matrices is a challenging combinatorial optimization problem that has important applications in the quantitative social sciences. We focus on one particular type of problem related to the clustering of a two-mode binary matrix, which is relevant to the establishment of generalized blockmodels for social networks. In this context, clusters for the rows of the two-mode matrix intersect with clusters of the columns to form blocks, which should ideally be either complete (all 1s) or null (all 0s). A new procedure based on variable neighborhood search is presented and compared to an existing two-mode K-means clustering algorithm. The new procedure generally provided slightly greater explained variation; however, both methods yielded exceptional recovery of cluster structure.     

视觉工作记忆在视觉搜索中的作用

视觉工作记忆在视觉搜索中的作用远比偏向竞争模型所描述的要复杂,个体能根据当前任务要求灵活地利用工作记忆来引导注意选择。在系统回顾已有研究的基础上,从客体工作记忆、空间工作记忆和执行工作记忆3个方面探讨了视觉工作记忆在视觉搜索中的作用。根据近期的研究,文章在最后对视觉工作记忆在视觉搜索中的作用做了7点总结,并对已往研究中存在的若干问题给予了解释,指出未来应该从前瞻记忆和内隐记忆等角度对视觉搜索中所涉及的视觉记忆进行深入研究     

Numerical order and quantity processing in number comparison

We investigated processing of numerical order information and its relation to mechanisms of numerical quantity processing. In two experiments, performance on a quantity-comparison task (e.g. 2 5; which is larger?) was compared with performance on a relative-order judgment task (e.g. 2 5; ascending or descending order?). The comparison task consistently produced the standard distance effect (faster judgments for far relative to close number pairs), but the distance effect was smaller for ascending (e.g. 2 5) compared to descending pairs (e.g. 5 2). The order task produced a pair-order effect (faster judgments for ascending pairs) and a reverse distance effect for consecutive pairs in ascending order. The reverse effect implies an order-specific process, such as serial search or direct recognition of order for successive numbers. Thus, numerical quantity and order judgments recruited different cognitive mechanisms. Nonetheless, the reduced distance effect for ascending pairs in the quantity task implies involvement of order-related processes in magnitude comparison. Accordingly, distance effects in the quantity-comparison task are not necessarily a process-pure measure of magnitude representation.     

Attentional capture within and between objects

The present study addressed the question whether attentional capture by abrupt onsets is affected by object-like properties of the stimulus field. Observers searched for a target circle at one of four ends of two solid rectangles. In the focused attention condition the location of the upcoming target was cued by means of a central arrowhead, whereas in the divided attention condition, the target location was not cued. Irrelevant abrupt onsets could appear either within the attended or within the non-attended object. The results showed that in the focused attention condition, onsets ceased to capture attention irrespective of whether the onset appeared within an attended object or within a non-attended object.     

Age-related effects of attentional and oculomotor capture by onsets and color singletons as a function of experience

The present experiment examined the degree to which experience with different stimulus characteristics affects attentional capture, particularly as related to aging. Participants were presented with onset target/color singleton distractor or color singleton target/onset distractor pairs across three experimental sessions. The target/distractor pairs were reversed in the second session such that the target in the first session became the distractor in the second and third sessions. For both young and old adults previous experience with color as a target defining feature influenced oculomotor capture with task-irrelevant color distractors. Experience with sudden onsets had the same effect for younger and older adults, although capture effects were substantially larger for onset than for color distractors. Experience-based capture effects diminished relatively rapidly after target and distractor-defining properties were reversed. The results are discussed in terms of top-down and stimulus-driven effects on age-related differences in attentional control.     

Memory development in the second year: for events or locations?

We employed an object-placement/object-removal design, inspired by recent work on 'episodic-like' memory in scrub jays (Clayton, N. S., & Dickinson, A. (1998). Episodic-like memory during cache recovery by scrub jays. Nature, 395, 272-274), to examine the possibility that children in the second year of life have event-based memories. In one task, a successful search could have been due to the recall of an object-removal event. In the second task, a successful search could only have been caused by recall of where objects were located. Success was general in the oldest group of children (21-25 months), while performance was broadly similar on the two tasks. The parsimonious interpretation of this outcome is that the first task was performed by location memory, not by event memory. We place these data in the context of object permanence development.     

The influence of working memory on the anger superiority effect

The anger superiority effect shows that an angry face is detected more efficiently than a happy face. However, it is still controversial whether attentional allocation to angry faces is a bottom-up process or not. We investigated whether the anger superiority effect is influenced by top-down control, especially working memory (WM). Participants remembered a colour and then searched for differently coloured facial expressions. Just holding the colour information in WM did not modulate the anger superiority effect. However, when increasing the probabilities of trials in which the colour of a target face matched the colour held in WM, participants were inclined to direct attention to the target face regardless of the facial expression. Moreover, the knowledge of high probability of valid trials eliminated the anger superiority effect. These results suggest that the anger superiority effect is modulated by top-down effects of WM, the probability of events and expectancy about these probabilities.     

Better safe than sorry: Simplistic fear-relevant stimuli capture attention

It has been consistently demonstrated that fear-relevant images capture attention preferentially over fear-irrelevant images. Current theory suggests that this faster processing could be mediated by an evolved module that allows certain stimulus features to attract attention automatically, prior to the detailed processing of the image. The present research investigated whether simplified images of fear-relevant stimuli would produce interference with target detection in a visual search task. In Experiment 1, silhouettes and degraded silhouettes of fear-relevant animals produced more interference than did the fear-irrelevant images. Experiment 2, compared the effects of fear-relevant and fear-irrelevant distracters and confirmed that the interference produced by fear-relevant distracters was not an effect of novelty. Experiment 3 suggested that fear-relevant stimuli produced interference regardless of whether participants were instructed as to the content of the images. The three experiments indicate that even very simplistic images of fear-relevant animals can divert attention.     

工作记忆表征引导视觉注意选择的眼动研究

工作记忆表征能否引导视觉注意选择？目前实验结果尚不一致。有研究者认为能否观察到注意引导效应取决于视觉搜索类型。研究采用工作记忆任务与视觉搜索任务相结合的双任务范式, 结合眼动追踪技术, 对不同视觉搜索类型下的注意引导效应进行验证。实验1结果发现, 不管视觉搜索任务的靶子是否变化, 在早期的眼动指标上都发现了显著的注意引导效应, 但注意引导效应在靶子固定的视觉搜索任务下表现得更强。实验2在平衡两种视觉搜索任务中的工作记忆负载后发现, 两种视觉搜索任务下都出现了显著的注意引导效应, 但没有发现实验1中所出现的任务间差异。实验结果否定了视觉搜索类型对注意引导效应的决定性影响, 同时也提示工作记忆负载可能在注意引导效应中起重要作用。