Méthode d’évaluation des risques psychosociaux auprès de travailleurs déficients intellectuels

While current regulation imposes to take into account psychosocial risks, their evaluation among workers with intellectual disabilities is still lacking. In order to develop an adapted tool, a language skills test was combined with the perception of work situations. Then, an ergonomic analysis was used to confirm the answers to the questionnaire. In a second phase of the study, the questionnaire was tested among a sample of 85 workers with intellectual disabilities. Data collected attested the relevance of this tool by accurately revealing workers’ feelings about their working environment. This study constitutes a first step in the psychosocial risk assessment process for workers with intellectual disabilities.     

The relation between low self-esteem and depressive mood in a non-clinical sample: The role of gender and negative life events

The suggestion that self-esteem is both a protective and a risk factor for depression is well documented. However, this association is not consistently observed by empirical research. The current study investigated the main and interactive effects of low self-esteem and stressful life events on depressive mood in a sample of university students (N = 862; female = 72%; black = 67%; mean age = 21.70, SD = 13.51). The students completed the Hopkins Symptom Checklist, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, and the Perceived Stress Scale. Data were analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM); with stressful life events scores as a mediator, and gender as a moderator, of the relation between low self-esteem and depression. Results indicate that low self-esteem significantly predicted depression, and that stressful life events partially mediated that relationship. Support emerged for the vulnerability effects of low self-esteem on depression and they held across gender groups. Low self-esteem may be a significant indicator of individuals who are at risk for developing depressive mood.     

The “Barn Door” Argument,The Precautionary Principle,and METI as “Prayer”—an Appraisal of the Top Three Rationalizations for “Active SETI”

Proponents of Active SETI, or METI, defend their messaging-to-aliens agenda with fallacious arguments like the Barn Door Excuse, that technologically advanced extraterrestrials must have already listened to our radio leakage, (e.g. “I Love Lucy”), hence more direct beaming will not betray Earth’s location. Further, sending pinpointed, collimated messages will only lead to positive outcomes. In fact, laser-like “messages” are far more powerful at great distances than old-time television, and those concerns about potential downsides should be appraised by scientific risk-assessment. It is argued that METI is psychologically driven as a version of the ancient human practice of prayer.     

SDDRS: Stacked Discriminative Denoising Auto-Encoder based Recommender System

Recommender systems are widely used in our life for automatically recommending items relevant to our preference. Collaborative Filtering (CF) is one of the most successful methods in recommendation field. Matrix Factorization (MF) based recommender system is designed according to the basic strategy of the CF algorithm, which is widely adopted recently. However, the rating matrix utilized by these models is usually sparse, so it is of vital significance to integrate the side information to provide relatively effective knowledge for modeling the user or item features. The key problem is to extract effective features from the noisy side information. However, the side information contains a lot of noise except rating knowledge, which makes it a challenging issue for extracting effective features. In this paper, we propose Stacked Discriminative Denoising Auto-Encoder based Recommender System (SDDRS) by integrating deep learning model with MF based recommender system to effectively incorporate side information with rating information. Extensive top-N recommendation experiments conducted on three real-world datasets empirically demonstrate that SDDRS outperforms several state-of-the-art methods.     

农耕-游牧文化下风险偏好的差异：证据与分析框架

个体风险偏好是决策心理学的主要关注点之一, 其差异受个体因素及文化的影响。已有研究主要围绕集体主义-个体主义的文化分类研究个体风险偏好差异, 忽略了物质文化的影响。生态决策及社会生态研究者认为, 生态环境通过塑造物质文化(例如生存策略)影响个体经济偏好。基于对以往文献的分析发现, 不同生存策略主导的两大文化(农耕和游牧)对个体的风险偏好有不同影响, 属于农耕文化的个体更厌恶风险, 而属于游牧文化的个体具有更高的风险偏好。由于现有研究的局限和不足, 该推论值得进一步的因果研究证实。     

社会性信息对Flanker效应的影响

研究显示,面孔Flanker任务中,经典Flanker效应会消失,但其机制还不明确。本文在ANT-I范式的基础上,除常规的箭头Flanker,增加面孔Flanker、两侧为箭头中间为面孔和两侧为面孔中间为箭头的混合Flanker,探究造成该现象的可能原因。结果发现,当Flanker任务中的干扰刺激为箭头时,Flanker效应存在;而干扰刺激为面孔时,Flanker效应则消失了。提示,Flanker任务中干扰刺激的社会性可能是造成Flanker效应消失的原因。这为冲突信息加工中社会性与非社会性信息的控制机制提供了新的视角。     

Risk Preference Theory and Gender Differences in Religiousness: A Replication and Extension

Almost 25 years ago, Miller and Hoffmann developed a theory of risk preferences as a way to account for gender differences in religiousness. Although several subsequent studies have purportedly examined the theory, there has been no genuine replication of their empirical analysis. This study provides a replication and extension using three nationally representative samples of adolescents in the United States: the 2015 Monitoring the Future (n = 2,292) study, the 2010 National Survey of Drug Use and Health (n = 18,394), and the 2005 National Survey of Youth and Religion (n = 2,059). The results provide modest support for risk preference theory: the introduction of risk preferences diminishes the female‐male difference in religiousness among youth in all three data sets. However, there is also evidence that risk behaviors and religious affiliation may be more important than risk preferences in accounting for gender differences in religiousness.     

Teaching mands for information using speech generating devices: A replication and extension

Approximately 30% of individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) fail to develop vocal communication and, therefore, use some form of augmentative or alternative communication system. The current study replicates and extends previous research on teaching “Who?” and “Which?” mands for information to 3 young children diagnosed with ASD using a speech generating device. Procedures were evaluated using a multiple baseline across participants design. All participants learned to mand for information and, subsequently, used the information to access preferred items.     

Finding Cybernetics

At mid-career as a tenured professor of modern literature, I finally found cybernetics. It was a slow-rolling revelation, a protracted unraveling, for it took me quite a while to unwrap cybernetics’ conceptual core from out of the layers of adjacent or covering discourses that had obscured or forgotten their own origins in the fecundity of cybernetic ideas. Heinz von Foerster’s relation to the Whole Earth Catalog and the systems counterculture around CoEvolution Quarterly were instrumental for my subsequent cybernetic development toward the work of Maturana, Varela, and Luhmann on the one hand, and Lovelock and Margulis on the other.     

未雨绸缪：变革前非正式信息对员工变革抵制意愿的影响

组织变革前总会有小道消息等非正式信息传播, 这些信息是员工提前了解变革的重要来源。研究探索变革前非正式信息对员工变革前抵制意愿的影响, 以及员工变革抵制意愿随时间推移的变化。基于255位样本数据的结构方程模型及多层次线性增长模型分析表明：(1)变革前非正式信息的消极性及不完整性, 显著负向影响员工变革认知, 进而使员工变革抵制意愿上升; (2)随着时间推移, 员工变革抵制意愿显著衰减, 即从变革前到变革发生时抵制意愿显著降低。研究揭示了变革前非正式信息对员工有“热身准备”的作用, 能够帮助员工提前适应, 从而更好地应对变革。研究结果有助于变革的顺利实施。