Speed of emotional information processing and emotional intelligence

The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between the speed of emotional information processing and emotional intelligence (EI). To evaluate individual differences in the speed of emotional information processing, a recognition memory task consisted of two subtests similar in design but differing in the emotionality of the stimuli. The first subtest required judgment about whether an emotional facial expression in the test face was identical to one of the four emotional expressions of the same individual previously presented. The second subtest required deciding whether the test face with a neutral emotional expression was identical to one of the four neutral faces of different individuals previously presented. Mean response latencies were calculated for “Yes” and “No” responses. All latencies were correlated with other measures of processing speed such as discrimination time and time of figure recognition. However, the emotional expression recognition subtest was hypothesized to require the processing of emotional information in addition to that of facial identity. Latencies in this subtest were longer than those in the face recognition subtest. To obtain a measure of the additional processing that was called for by the emotionality of the stimuli, a subtraction method and regression analysis were employed. In both cases, measures calculated for “No” responses were related to ability EI, as assessed via a self‐report questionnaire. According to structural equation modeling, there was a moderately negative association between latent EI and the latency of “No” responses in the subtest with emotional stimuli. These relationships were not observed for “Yes” responses in the same subtest or for responses in the subtest with neutral face stimuli. Although the differences between “Yes” and “No” responses in their associations with EI require further investigation, the results suggest that, in general, individuals with higher EI are also more efficient in the processing of emotional information.     

Thinking Outside the Clocks: The Effect of Layered‐Task Time on the Creative Climate of Meetings

The turbulence of the new economy puts demands on organizations to respond rapidly, flexibly and creatively to changing environments. Meetings are one of the organizational sites in which organizational actors “do” creativity; interaction in groups can be an important site for generating creative ideas and brainstorming. Additionally, Blount (2004) demonstrated the importance of organizational temporalities for group performance. We draw on both of these literatures and examine how temporal structures influence the climate for creativity, or the extent to which creativity is fostered, within groups. Specifically, we develop a hypothesis linking organization‐ and job‐level temporal structures to the extent to which managers structure meetings with a climate supportive of creativity. Our results demonstrate that a nuanced relationship exists between temporal structures and creative climate such that certain temporal structures appear to either enhance or decrease the creative climate of meetings. We end with a discussion of the implications of the findings for management.     

Further analysis of variables that affect self-control with aversive events

The purpose of this study was to examine variables that affect self-control in the context of academic task completion by elementary school children with autism. In the baseline assessment of Study 1, mathematics problem completion was shown to be an aversive event, and sensitivity to task magnitude, task difficulty, and delay to task completion were measured. The effects of manipulating values of those parameters on self-control then were assessed. For all participants, self-control increased as a function of one or more changes in task parameter values. In Study 2, the effects of a commitment response on self-control was assessed. Results indicated that for all participants, levels of self-control were higher when the opportunity to commit to the immediate aversive event was available.     

Distinguishing Source of Autonomy Support in Relation to Workers' Motivation and Self-Efficacy

ABSTRACt

The purpose was to investigate the relationship between autonomy support by managers and co-workers and employees' work motivation and self-efficacy in two studies. In Study 1, a sample of 343 Swedish workers completed surveys, and in Study 2, we followed up with a subsample of 98 workers one year later. As in previous studies, managers' support of autonomy was significantly positively related to workers' outcomes. However, the results of Study 1 also showed that co-worker autonomy support was related to these outcomes over and above the effects of manager support. Study 2 showed that changes in autonomy support from co-workers during one year significantly predicted motivation and self-efficacy one year later, while change in support from managers was unrelated to outcomes later. These findings provide evidence for the importance of both vertical and horizontal sources of support.     

Using individual differences to predict job performance: correcting for direct and indirect restriction of range

The present study investigates the relationship between individual differences, indicated by personality (FFM) and general mental ability (GMA), and job performance applying two different methods of correction for range restriction. The results, derived by analyzing meta-analytic correlations, show that the more accurate method of correcting for indirect range restriction increased the operational validity of individual differences in predicting job performance and that this increase primarily was due to general mental ability being a stronger predictor than any of the personality traits. The estimates for single traits can be applied in practice to maximize prediction of job performance. Further, differences in the relative importance of general mental ability in relation to overall personality assessment methods was substantive and the estimates provided enables practitioners to perform a correct utility analysis of their overall selection procedure.     

Perfectionism: The good,the bad,and the creative

The influence of adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism on creativity was examined. Initially, six measures of creativity were administered, including creative self-perceptions, behavior, and performance measures. Adaptive perfectionism was weakly positively related to creativity, whereas maladaptive perfectionism was unrelated to creativity across five of the six measures. A follow-up study assessed whether initial findings could be generalized to an everyday problem-solving task. Results indicated that adaptive perfectionism was related to higher quality but not originality of solutions. Further, a curvilinear relationship in the shape of an inverted “U” occurred between adaptive perfectionism and four of eight creativity measures. Overall, adaptive perfectionism was consistently, albeit weakly, related to creativity across various types of measures, whereas maladaptive perfectionism was not related to creativity.     

Right-hemispheric cortical contributions to language ability in healthy adults

In this study we investigated the correlation between individual linguistic ability based on performance levels and their engagement of typical and atypical language areas in the brain. Eighteen healthy subjects between 21 and 64 years participated in language ability tests, and subsequent functional MRI scans measuring brain activity in response to a sentence completion and a word fluency task. Performance in both reading and high-level language tests correlated positively with increased right-hemispheric activation in the inferior frontal gyrus (specifically Brodmann area 47), the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), and the medial temporal gyrus (Brodmann area 21). In contrast, we found a negative correlation between performance and left-hemispheric DLPFC activation.Our findings indicate that the right lateral frontal and right temporal regions positively modulate aspects of language ability.     

Stopping speech suppresses the task-irrelevant hand

Some situations require one to quickly stop an initiated response. Recent evidence suggests that rapid stopping engages a mechanism that has diffuse effects on the motor system. For example, stopping the hand dampens the excitability of the task-irrelevant leg. However, it is unclear whether this ‘global suppression’ could apply across wider motor modalities. Here we tested whether stopping speech leads to suppression of the task-irrelevant hand. We used Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation over the primary motor cortex with concurrent electromyography from the hand. We found that when speech was successfully stopped the motor evoked potential from the task-irrelevant hand was significantly reduced compared to when the participant failed to stop speaking, or responded on non stop signal trials, or compared to baseline. This shows that when speech is quickly stopped, there is a broad suppression across the motor system. This has implications for the neural basis of speech control and stuttering.     

Dissociable stages of problem solving (II): first evidence for process-contingent temporal order of activation in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

In a companion study, eye-movement analyses in the Tower of London task (TOL) revealed independent indicators of functionally separable cognitive processes during problem solving, with processes of building up an internal representation of the problem preceding actual planning processes. These results imply that processes of internalization and planning should also be distinguishable in time and space with respect to concomitant brain activation patterns. To investigate this possibility, here we conducted analyses of fMRI data for left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) during problem solving in the TOL task by accounting for the trial-by-trial variability of onsets and durations of the different cognitive processing stages. Comparisons between stimulus-locked and response-locked modeling approaches affirmed that activation in left dlPFC was elicited particularly during early processes of internalization, comprising the extraction of goal information and the generation of an internal problem representation, whereas activation in right dlPFC was predominantly attributable to later processes of mental transformations on this representation, that is planning proper. Thus, present data corroborate the proposal that often observed bilateral dlPFC activation patterns during complex cognitive tasks such as problem solving may reflect functionally and, to some extent, even temporally separable processes with opposing lateralizations.     

Dissociable stages of problem solving (I): temporal characteristics revealed by eye-movement analyses

Understanding the functional neuroanatomy of planning and problem solving may substantially benefit from better insight into the chronology of the cognitive processes involved. Based on the assumption that regularities in cognitive processing are reflected in overtly observable eye-movement patterns, here we recorded eye movements while participants worked on Tower of London (TOL) problems that comprised an experimental manipulation of different task demands. Single-trial saccade-locked analyses revealed that higher demands on forming an internal problem representation were associated with an increased number of gaze alternations between start state and goal state, but did not show any effect on the durations of these inspections of the states. In contrast, higher demands on actual planning in terms of mental manipulations of working memory contents coincided with a prolonged duration of the very last inspection of the start state (i.e., immediately preceding movement execution) but did not show any effect on the number of gaze alterations. Differential task demands on internalization and planning processes during problem solving hence selectively affect different eye-movement parameters. Moreover, these findings complement previous neuroimaging data on dissociable contributions of left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in problem solving with novel evidence for a corresponding dissociation in the eye-movement patterns reflecting the associated cognitive processes.