Do you see what I see? The effect of members’ cognitive styles on team processes and errors in task execution

This research investigates the effect of members’ cognitive styles on team processes that affect errors in execution tasks. In two laboratory studies, we investigated how a team’s composition (members’ cognitive styles related to object and spatial visualization) affects the team’s strategic focus and strategic consensus, and how those affect the team’s commission of errors. Study 1, conducted with 70 dyads performing a navigation and identification task, established that teams high in spatial visualization are more process-focused than teams high in object visualization. Process focus, which pertains to a team’s attention to the details of conducting a task, is associated with fewer errors. Study 2, conducted with 64 teams performing a building task, established that heterogeneity in cognitive style is negatively associated with the formation of a strategic consensus, which has a direct and mediating relationship with errors.     

Short‐term cognitive‐behavioral treatment in multicultural primary care of patients with longstanding backache

The efficacy of cognitive‐behavioral therapy in multi‐cultural primary care patients with longstanding backache is not evaluated. The purpose of this study was to investigate the outcome of a four weekly‐treatment given by primary care physicians regarding pain‐related worry, depression and severe pain and to determine which social, clinical or gender factors were associated with outcome.The study group consisted of 245 patients in consecutive order from 19 countries, 18 to 45 years, entering rehabilitation program because of longstanding backache. Prevalences of pain‐related worry and depression and severe pain was counted and compared before and after. Logistic regression was used to calculate the odds (OR; 95% CI) for persistent pain‐related worry and/or persistent depression and severe pain (VAS ≥ 50). The prevalences of pain‐related worry and depression were both significantly lower after treatment (pain‐related worry 83% before vs. 38% after; depression 43% before vs. 31% after). Also the number of patients scoring ≥ 50 VAS was a little, but significantly, fewer (68% vs. 61%). Use of interpreter doubled the risk of having persistent pain‐related worry (OR 2.1; 95% CI 1.1–4.1) but the risk was not significant regarding persistent depression (OR 1.8; 0.6‐5.4). The rating of VAS rating ≥ 50 after treatment was twice as high, OR 2.3 (95% CI 1.1–4.6) in the 38–45 year old age group. To conclude, a focus on pain ideas reduced pain‐related worry and depression in these patients with various sociocultural backgrounds and longstanding backache.     

Conceptualizations of Social Class in Afrtican American Women:

This article addresses the multiple definitions of social class in African American people and how the therapist's understanding of these definitions is important in therapeutic interventions with African American women. The article discusses: (a) the traditional ways in which social class has been defined in social science and the limits of these conceptualizations; (b) the multiple definitions of class within the African American community; and (c) treatment concerns for African American women based on class issues. Clinicians working with African American and other women who vary by class should be able to assess how class variables influence their therapeutic interventions with these women.     

Do perceived differences in religion matter at work?

Over 90% of the United States population affiliates with an organised religion. There has been, however, very little research regarding religion in work organisations. This study focuses on the effects of individual perceptions of religious dissimilarity, as a characteristic of deep-level diversity, on perceived cohesion. A scale is developed to measure individual perceptions of the dissimilarity of religion. Two different studies are used to establish reliability and validity of this scale. In addition, some implications of the negative relationship between individual perceptions of religious dissimilarity and perceived cohesion for organisations are discussed.     

Fostering innovation in functionally diverse teams: The two faces of transformational leadership

Empirical research on the effects of functional diversity on team innovation has yielded largely inconsistent results, showing positive, negative, as well as nonsignificant effects. For capitalizing on the positive potential inherent in functionally diverse teams, opening the black box between cross-functionality and team innovation by analysing mediating and moderating processes thus seems to be highly relevant. In this article, task and relationship conflicts are introduced as mediators of functional diversity and team innovation. Within this framework, transformational leadership is discussed as a moderator. It will become apparent that the role of transformational leadership in fostering the innovativeness of cross-functional teams is rather ambiguous. The discussed mediators and the moderator transformational leadership are integrated into a comprehensive framework and propositions for future research are derived.     

Bereavement anxieties and health amongst the Australian-Italian Catholic community

This article is based on survey of 269 households in the state of Victoria, Australia. It elicits some useful guidelines for professional caregivers in relation to eight cultural/religious groups including Australian-born Christians and Arab-born Muslims. The focus here is upon the relationships between the Australian Italian community and personal health outcomes during bereavement. The following sub-strata are examined: community differences in relation to grief and loss practices and traditions; the value of religious communal support and counseling; symptomatological differences from psychosocial and educational perspectives; psychopathological/psychiatric symptoms and beliefs and practice concerning the afterlife. Significant differences were revealed between the sexes on such matters as health problems, grief expressions, psychosomatic manifestations, communication with the dead, beliefs in the afterlife and interpretation of the meaning of loss. Differences in these findings will assist professional caregivers who deal with families experiencing personal death loss to broaden their own perspectives on bereavement, offering specific counselling strategies and care-giving interventions.     

Correspondence

Response to Chess Denman's review of Green, André and Stern, Daniel's Clinical and Observational Psychoanalytical Research: Roots of a Controversy. ( JAP , 46, 3)     

Transforming and Redescribing Critical Thinking: Constructive Thinking

The author describes a published symposium which debated “Is Critical Thinking Biased?” The symposium meant to address concerns about critical thinking that are being expressed by feminist and postmodern scholars. However, through the author's critique, and the symposium respondent's, we learn the participants ended up begging the question of bias. The author maintains that the belief that critical thinking is “unbiased” is based on an assumption that knowers can be separated from what is known. She argues that critical thinking is a tool which has no life of its own, it only has meaning and purpose when fallible, biased people use it (weak sense bias). She challenges the idea of a transcendental epistemological perspective, thus all knowledge is provisional and perspectival (strong sense bias). The author begins to redescribe a transformed critical thinking as constructive thinking.     

“Nobody Wants to Be an Outsider”: From Diversity Management to Diversity Engagement

This article develops an analysis of diversity in two ways. We start with a theoretical discussion of the ways in which diversity has been approached within psychology, showing the competing arguments that have been developed that connect diversity, community, and multiculturalism. We show that not only are there psychological consequences to contemporary experiences of increased diversity but also that fundamental psychological capacities—such as self‐consciousness, identity, and dialogue—actually stem from the experience of diversity. This has important implications for diversity management policies. The second part of the article gives an empirical illustration of how diversity is experienced in schools across England drawing on 13 interviews with senior staff and 11 focus groups with pupils aged between 12 and 14 years old. We discuss three themes related to experiences of diversity: (1) from difference to diversity, (2) real and imagined mobility across communities, and (3) collaborative practices, projects, and knowledge. What the empirical examples show is that critically engaging with diversity can be a more productive project than practices which construct diversity in terms of distinct groups that need respect and tolerance. Hence we argue approaches that promote engaging with diversity rather than traditional diversity management are more in line with foundational psychological insights as well as empirical research findings.     

Effects of contextual diversity on semantic decision and reading aloud: evidence from a word learning study in English as a second language / Efectos de la diversidad contextual en la decisión semántica y la lectura en voz alta: evidencia de un estudio de aprendizaje de palabras en inglés como segundo idioma

This experiment investigated contextual diversity effects on novel word learning in English as a second language (L2). A group of advanced English speakers, whose native language was Spanish, participated in the study. Participants learned the meaning of real but obscure words that were embedded in either two or 12 different sentences and learned over two days (frequency of exposure was kept constant). On day three, participants were tested using reading aloud and semantic decision tasks. The results showed that participants learned the meaning of words in both conditions fairly well as revealed by their accuracy in the semantic decision task. However, words experienced in 12 different contexts generated more accurate and faster reaction times (RTs), suggesting the acquisition of more robust semantic representations. Strikingly, reading latencies were also faster for the 12-sentence condition, which might imply that semantics has an effect on reading newly learned words in English as a second language. These results are discussed and accommodated in view of the DRC and the PDP models of single-word reading.