Transition to Crisis-Free Development: A Myth or Reality?

This article substantiates the thesis that the outlines of the future and present can be made visible and comprehensible by applying a new methodology for cognition of regularities in the human community development. This methodology made it possible to define that there have been and are only two paradigms of the human system development in the entire multicentury course of the human community development. Cycles, crises, chaos, and all negative phenomena are nothing else but natural products of the second, indirect paradigm of development. The new model of life organization at each local level is at the same time the former, first development paradigm, based on the direct interconnection between production and consumption of specific human beings, but raised onto the new high-tech level. Practical realization of this model is the only feasible precondition for the transition to sustainable and crisis-free development.     

Connecting Personal History and Organizational Context: Suggestions for Developing Educational Programs for Youth Soccer Coaches

Literature underscores the complex role of coaches in sport organizations, especially in youth sectors. Their need for support, not only on the technical level, is emerging. In recent years an interesting international debate has evolved regarding what education is most suitable to support coach development. The article intends to enter this debate by proposing an educational model for youth soccer coaches. This educational proposal is the outcome of reflection that originated from various experiences with about 110 Italian youth soccer coaches over the past six years. The first part is dedicated to a review of the literature on coaching education, and the second to the educational model presented (e.g., theoretical background, characteristics, setting, outcomes, and considerations regarding the management of this educational process). The strength of this model was precisely to have put some recurrent issues in dialogue with the specific organizational contexts in which the educational programs were implemented.     

L’intention de se maintenir dans une carrière atypique : quels déterminants individuels et contextuels ?

This study seeks to identify the determinants of turnover intention at women in male- dominated occupations, and namely, attitude-based (job satisfaction and organisational commitment), identity-based (self-efficacy and perceived gender-identity conflict), and context-based factors (perceived social support, induction practices and job design). The survey (N=131) reveals that affective commitment predicts two types of turnover intention: job retention and occupation retention. As regards job retention, affective commitment is related to job satisfaction and job-context structure ; as to occupation retention, affective commitment is linked to self-efficacy and perceived social support material from colleagues and superiors.     

不同认知成分在图形推理测验项目难度预测中的作用

理解项目难度变异的来源是实现计算机自动化项目生成的第一步。通过文献综述, 总结出影响图形推理测验项目难度的四个方面的因素, 再通过操控构图元素熟悉性、属性的抽象性、知觉组织的和谐性以及规则类型与数目这些因素, 编制8套图形推理测验, 共包含112个与高级瑞文推理类似的项目。采用铆测验等值设计, 在每套测验中嵌入10个高级瑞文推理测验项目为铆题, 通过网络施测于6323名被试。使用BILOG MG估算项目参数, 并使用IRTEQ进行测验等值, 将后七套测验上所有项目的项目参数都转换到第一套测验的单位系统上。以项目难度为因变量, 项目题干特征变量为预测变量进行回归分析, 结果发现这四个因素均对项目难度有显著预测作用。优势分析的结果显示记忆负荷(即规则类型与数目的组合)是项目难度的最重要的预测变量, 其他依次为属性的抽象性、知觉组织的和谐性和构图元素熟悉性。     

MOTIVES STILL DON'T MATTER: REPLY TO PYNES

Abstract This paper continues a dialogue that began with an article by Jeffrey Koperski entitled “Two Bad Ways to Attack Intelligent Design and Two Good Ones,” published in the June 2008 issue of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science. In a response article, Christopher Pynes argues that ad hominem arguments are sometimes legitimate, especially when critiquing Intelligent Design (2012). We show that Pynes's examples only apply to matters of testimony, not the kinds of arguments found in the best defenses of ID.     

La croyance au monde juste comme facteur explicatif de diverses réactions à des injustices professionnelles

The belief in a just world is defined as the tendency to consider that “people get what they deserve and deserve what they get”, i.e. to consider that the world is, globally, a place of justice. Facing an individual unjustly victim of negative events and for whom it seems impossible to restore the justice objectively, we frequently deny the existence of the unjustice, even if we say the responsible of what he gets. But if we can react by adopting “passive” reactions (using the victim’s moral or behavioral responsibility, as in Lerner, or evocating a future favoring the victim,..), we can also adopt “active” strategies which can lead to an objective re-establishment of the justice. In the present study, we examined the influence of the degree of the belief in the just world on the selected strategy facing professional injustices. And effectively, our results indicate a some preferences in the use of such or strategy, preferences accentuated by the gender and the professional statute.     

Effects of irrelevant object structure on early attention deployment

Event-related potential (ERP) studies have suggested that Gestalt principles or grouping factors in a visual scene modulate attention deployment in early visual processing. The present study examined the effects of an extrinsic grouping factor, region commonality, on early ERP spatial attention. Effects of sex were also explored, since the processing of task-irrelvant objects may differ between the sexes. Twenty-four participants were required to discriminate one side of rapidly-presented bilateral letters, and attention effects were indexed by hemispheric lateralization accroding to attended visual fields. In results, an early P1 attention effect (70–110 ms) increased when the letters were surrounded by an object, compared to the control stimulus without a complete object, and this result was more prominent in women than in men. The present study demonstrates that visual object and sex differences play a novel role at very early cortical stages of processing in attention deployment to a task-irrelevant visual structure.     

Visual perception of complex shape-transforming processes

Morphogenesis—or the origin of complex natural form—has long fascinated researchers from practically every branch of science. However, we know practically nothing about how we perceive and understand such processes. Here, we measured how observers visually infer shape-transforming processes. Participants viewed pairs of objects (‘before’ and ‘after’ a transformation) and identified points that corresponded across the transformation. This allowed us to map out in spatial detail how perceived shape and space were affected by the transformations. Participants’ responses were strikingly accurate and mutually consistent for a wide range of non-rigid transformations including complex growth-like processes. A zero-free-parameter model based on matching and interpolating/extrapolating the positions of high-salience contour features predicts the data surprisingly well, suggesting observers infer spatial correspondences relative to key landmarks. Together, our findings reveal the operation of specific perceptual organization processes that make us remarkably adept at identifying correspondences across complex shape-transforming processes by using salient object features. We suggest that these abilities, which allow us to parse and interpret the causally significant features of shapes, are invaluable for many tasks that involve ‘making sense’ of shape.     

Feature integration is not the whole story of the sequence effects of symbolic cueing

ABSTRACT

Sequential modulations in symbolic cueing tasks have been attributed to complete versus partial repetition/alternation of stimulus features between consecutive trials. This feature-integration hypothesis is questioned by recent findings and further investigated in the present study. In the first two experiments, when the cueing axes switched between trials, only complete alternation of cue directions and target locations existed. Nevertheless, significant sequence effects were still found in this condition, which did not support the feature-integration hypothesis. Furthermore, although sequence effects were still significant when stimulus identities were manipulated in Experiment 3, it was abolished when different cue categories (gaze and arrow) were presented as cues in Experiment 4. The findings suggest that the integration of stimulus features is not the only source of the sequential effect and some higher level cognitive mechanisms, possibly as described in the task-file or task organization hypotheses, are involved in the sequential modulations of symbolic cueing.     

Action Research on Meaning-Making at Residents' Meetings for Local Disability Policy1

This is the third in a series on residents' meetings (RMs) for municipal disability policymaking in Japan; members included people with disabilities (PWDs). I focused on members' meaning-making process for three community organizational goals: task, process, and relationship. Action research was employed in all three studies during my participation in RMs, which began in 2002. The present study is a follow-up on the meetings' development and covers 2013 to 2019. Meetings were divided into three phases: (a) use of the annual symposium to inform a broader audience about disability policies; (b) appreciation that PWDs can play active roles as supporters of others, especially other PWDs; and (c) recognition that contradiction and dilemma are present in attempts to provide “universal” social equipment for social minorities. The three goals were interrelated through uncertainty and vagueness of RMs; however, it enabled the members to interpret their multifaceted disability-related experiences. PWDs realized their power to help others and developed disability identities through intensive discussions, while they realized the difficulty of social acceptance of their power and the limited solidarity among PWDs.