The mediating role of affective commitment in the relation of the feedback environment to work outcomes

The Feedback Environment, as opposed to the formal performance appraisal process, is comprised of the daily interactions between members of an organization (Steelman, Levy, & Snell, in press). Relations between the feedback environment and work outcome variables such as Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) were examined through the mediating effects of affective commitment. Results indicate that affective commitment mediates the relation between the feedback environment and organizational citizenship behavior, and this mediated relation is stronger for OCBs directed at individuals than directed at the organization as a whole. Conclusions and implications are discussed.     

用双任务测定技术测量手-脚协调水平

基于多重任务的心理信息加工原理,提出一种可以更好地利用分离的双重任务操作绩效测量和计算操作者手脚协调能力的方法,并提出手-脚协调估计值K的计算方法。经手脚协调任务实验验证,手-脚协调估计值K可以较好地用于测量操作者的手脚协调能力。     

One night of sleep deprivation affects reaction time, but not interference or facilitation in a Stroop task

The Stroop color-naming task is one of the most widely studied tasks involving the inhibition of a prepotent response, regarded as an executive function. Several studies have examined performance on versions of the Stroop task under conditions of acute sleep deprivation. Though these studies revealed effects on Stroop performance, the results often do not differentiate between general effects of sleep deprivation on performance and effects specifically on interference in the Stroop task. To examine the effect of prolonged wakefulness on performance on the Stroop task, we studied participants in a 40-h "constant routine" protocol during which they remained awake in constant conditions and performed a Stroop color-naming task every two hours. We found that reaction time was slowest when the color and word did not match (incongruent), fastest when the color and word did match (congruent), and intermediate when participants named the color of the non-word stimulus (neutral). Performance on all three trial types degraded significantly as a function of time awake. Extended wakefulness did not significantly change the additional time needed to respond when the color and word did not match (Stroop interference), nor did it change the amount of facilitation when color and word matched. These results indicate that one night of sleep deprivation influences performance on the Stroop task by an overall increase in response time, but does not appear to impact the underlying processes of interference or facilitation. The results suggest that the degree to which an "executive function" is affected by sleep deprivation may depend on the particular executive function studied and the degree to which it is subserved by the prefrontal cortex.     

The influence of relational complexity and strategy selection on children's reasoning in the Latin Square Task

The present study focused on children's deductive reasoning when performing the Latin Square Task, an experimental task designed to explore the influence of relational complexity. Building on Birney, Halford, and Andrew's (2006) research, we created a version of the task that minimized nonrelational factors and introduced new categories of items. The results of two experiments conducted with school-aged children yielded an apparent dilution of complexity effects and suggest that specific inferential strategies can reduce the relational complexity that children need to process. A theoretical account is proposed emphasizing the influence of adaptive selection of strategies that mediate processing capacity constraints in reasoning development.     

Sequencing and Optimization Within an Embodied Task Dynamic Model

A model of gestural sequencing in speech is proposed that aspires to producing biologically plausible fluent and efficient movement in generating an utterance. We have previously proposed a modification of the well‐known task dynamic implementation of articulatory phonology such that any given articulatory movement can be associated with a quantification of effort ( Simko & Cummins, 2010 ). To this we add a quantitative cost that decreases as speech gestures become more precise, and hence intelligible, and a third cost component that places a premium on the duration of an utterance. Together, these three cost elements allow us to derive algorithmically optimal sequences of gestures and dynamical parameters for generating articulator movement. We show that the optimized movement displays many timing characteristics that are representative of real speech movement, capturing subtle details of relative timing between gestures. Optimal movement sequences also display invariances in timing that suggest syllable‐level coordination for CV sequences. We explore the behavior of the model as prosodic context is manipulated in two dimensions: clarity of articulation and speech rate. Smooth, fluid, and efficient movements result.     

“儿童认知发展水平诊断工具”动态测验的初步编制与应用

本研究旨在将“儿童认知发展水平诊断工具” (Inventory of Piaget’s Developmental Task, IPDT)中的守恒与关系领域分测验改编成动态测验, 并应用于不同程度学业成绩儿童当中以探查其认知发展的潜在水平。在实验研究基础上结合以往动态测验的编制技术, 把动态施测过程分为“前测—干预—迁移—后测”4个阶段, 分别确定各阶段的测题并构建了6等级提示系统。在中等学业成绩儿童(n = 33)和低学业成绩儿童(n = 35)中的应用发现, 动态测验测得的能力获得变量对儿童的学业成绩具有重要的预测作用, 证实了所改编测验的有效性; 动态测验情境下中、低学业成绩儿童的潜在认知水平基本相同, 所改编的动态测验有助于发掘儿童的潜在认知发展水平。     

Self-reflection and the temporal focus of the wandering mind

Current accounts suggest that self-referential thought serves a pivotal function in the human ability to simulate the future during mind-wandering. Using experience sampling, this hypothesis was tested in two studies that explored the extent to which self-reflection impacts both retrospection and prospection during mind-wandering. Study 1 demonstrated that a brief period of self-reflection yielded a prospective bias during mind-wandering such that participants’ engaged more frequently in spontaneous future than past thought. In Study 2, individual differences in the strength of self-referential thought — as indexed by the memorial advantage for self rather than other-encoded items — was shown to vary with future thinking during mind-wandering. Together these results confirm that self-reflection is a core component of future thinking during mind-wandering and provide novel evidence that a key function of the autobiographical memory system may be to mentally simulate events in the future.     

Lexical processing while deciding what task to perform: reading aloud in the context of the task set paradigm

The results of two experiments provide the first direct demonstration that subjects can process a word lexically despite concurrently being engaged in decoding a task cue telling them which of two tasks to perform. These results, taken together with others, point to qualitative differences between the mind‘s ability to engage in lexical versus sublexical processing during the time they are engaged with other tasks. The emerging picture is one in which some form of resource(s) plays little role during lexical processing whereas the need for some form of resource(s) during sublexical processing serves to bottleneck performance.     

Mismatch of vocational graduates: What penalty on French labour market?

This study explores individual effects of educational mismatch on wages, job satisfaction and on-the-job-search on French labour market. We distinguish between horizontal matches (job matches with field of studies) and vertical matches (job matches the level of qualification) on the one hand and skills matches (worker's assessment) on the other hand. We use data from the French survey “Generation 98,” conducted among a sample of 22780 young vocational graduates asked about their employment situation 3 years after leaving school. We show that whatever the criterion chosen, there is a minority of matched situations. We find that situations of vertical mismatch and skill mismatch have strong negative effects on wages, while situations of horizontal mismatch have not. However, horizontal mismatch increases both job dissatisfaction and the desire to find another job, even if their job is qualified, permanent and reasonably well paid. Implications for the evaluation of vocational training programs are discussed.