The coordination of shoulder girdle muscles during repetitive arm movements at either slow or fast pace among women with or without neck-shoulder pain

Purpose: The aim of this study was to evaluate the coordination of the shoulder girdle muscles among subjects with or without neck-shoulder pain performing repetitive arm movement at either a slow or fast pace. Methods: Thirty female adults were allocated to one of two groups—healthy controls or cases with neck-shoulder pain. Surface electromyography (sEMG) signals from the clavicular, acromial, middle and lower trapezius portions and the serratus anterior muscles were recorded during a task performed for 20 min at a slow pace and 20 min at a fast pace. The root mean square (RMS), relative rest time (RRT) and normalised mutual information (NMI, an index of functional connectivity between two muscles in a pair) were computed. Results: No significant differences on RMS, RRT and NMI were found between groups. For both groups, the fast movement pace resulted in increased levels of RMS, lower degrees of RRT and higher NMI compared to the slow pace. No interaction between group and movement pace was found. Conclusions: This study highlights the change in sEMG activity of muscles to meet the demands of performing a task at fast movement pace. The fast pace imposed a higher muscle demand evidenced by increased sEMG amplitude, low degree of muscle rest and increased functional connectivity for subjects in both the case and control groups. No indication of impaired sEMG activity was found in individuals with neck-shoulder pain.     

员工非伦理行为如何招致同事攻击:道义公正视角

通过整合理性判断与道义公正模型,聚焦非伦理行为实施者被同事攻击的现象,提出员工的非伦理行为导致同事道义不公正,进而引发同事的攻击行为。并且,这个过程分别受到伦理领导的正向影响和任务互依性的负向影响。通过分析265组来自浙江省一家大型制造企业一线员工的双点数据,结果表明同事道义不公正在员工非伦理行为与其被同事攻击之间起到了中介作用;伦理领导正向调节了非伦理行为对同事道义不公正的影响,即伦理领导增强了员工非伦理行为对同事道义不公正的正向作用,从而导致同事攻击行为的产生;任务互依性负向调节了同事道义不公正与攻击行为之间的正向关系,并且减弱了同事道义不公正在员工非伦理行为与攻击行为之间的中介作用。研究结果为控制和预防职场非伦理行为提供了理论依据和实践启示。     

拖延行为的干预:计划行为理论和实施意向的影响

本研究以计划行为理论为理论框架,通过实验操纵实施意向,采用日记法进行为期5天的纵向追踪,考察计划行为理论的4个核心变量和实施意向如何影响拖延行为的程度及其动态过程。134名大学生在前一周末共列举了接下来5个工作日内拟完成的668项学习相关任务,随后每天报告当天的任务完成情况。多层线性模型分析结果表明:(1)行为意向中介态度和行为控制感对拖延程度的影响,主观规范影响拖延程度的直接效应显著,但经由行为意向的间接效应不显著;(2)形成实施意向能显著降低拖延程度;(3)行为控制感和实施意向加速任务完成进程,行为控制感越强,或形成实施意向,均显著加快任务完成速度。研究结果对于如何进行拖延行为的干预有一定启示和借鉴。     

仁慈领导与员工创新行为:内部人身份感知的中介作用和领导-部属交换关系差异化的调节作用

探究仁慈领导与员工创新行为的关系,以及在该关系中内部人身份感知的中介作用和领导-部属交换关系差异化的调节作用。以68名主管和215名员工为对象,通过对两阶段主管-员工配对调查所获取的数据进行分析,结果表明:(1)仁慈领导可以借助内部人身份感知的中介作用,对员工创新行为产生积极的影响;(2)领导-部属交换关系差异化能调节仁慈领导和内部人身份感知的关系,即当关系差异化水平越高,仁慈领导与内部人身份感知之间的正向关系越强;(3)领导-部属交换关系差异化能调节内部人身份感知在仁慈领导与员工创新行为关系间的中介作用,表现为被调节的中介作用模式,即领导-部属交换关系差异化水平越高,仁慈领导与员工创新行为之间通过内部人身份感知的间接关系越强。     

Open-Trial Pilot of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy for Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

In this pilot study, the effectiveness and feasibility of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) for decreasing disruptive behavior was evaluated in 17 young children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). PCIT is a behaviorally based play therapy which targets the parent-child relationship through live coaching of play interactions and the implementation of consistent discipline techniques. Following an average of 19 sessions, disruptive behavior as measured by multiple indices significantly decreased. Congruently, parents increased positive parental following skills and decreased negative parental leading skills across the course of treatment. In addition, parents reported increased levels of child functional communication and prosocial behavior. High levels of parent acceptability of the intervention were also noted. Effect sizes were medium to large across measured dependent variables, including parent report and behavioral observations. Implications for the clinical use of PCIT within an ASD population and future research with controlled outcome studies are discussed.     

Mothers’ Attributions About Child Misbehavior: Can Situational Suggestions Change General Perceptions?

Mothers’ attributions about children’s misbehavior were experimentally manipulated to examine causal relationships among attributions, mood, and behavior and assess whether suggestion can change mothers’ general perceptions. Forty mothers of children aged 33 to 71 months were primed with dysfunctional child-referent (child responsible) or environment-referent (situation caused) attributions before a parent-child interaction. Mothers in the dysfunctional child-referent condition placed greater responsibility on children, reported less positive mood and endorsed more overly reactive discipline, and their children displayed more negative mood and misbehavior. The experimental manipulation also affected mothers’ general child attributions. Understanding how attributions form and change has implications for parenting interventions.     

Does Parent-Child Interaction Therapy Reduce Maternal Stress,Anxiety, and Depression Among Mothers of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder?

Maternal stress, anxiety, and depression are associated with ineffective parenting strategies for families of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). We present the use of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) with three mother-child dyads to reduce maternal stress, anxiety, and depression and child disruptive behavior in children with ASD. Results included increases in positive parenting skills, and decreases in maternal anxiety, depression, and stress, as well as child behavior problems. PCIT is a promising alternative to more intensive and costly interventions, both at reducing disruptive behaviors and improving maternal health. Implications of PCIT for dyads affected by ASD are discussed.     

Giving,Fast and Slow: Reflection Increases Costly (but Not Uncostly) Charitable Giving

Are people intuitively generous or stingy? Does reflection make people more willing to give generous amounts to charity? Findings across the literature are mixed, with many studies finding no clear relationship between reflection and charitable giving (e.g., Hauge, Brekke, Johansson, Johansson‐Stenman, & Svedsäter, 2016 ; Tinghög et al., 2016 ), while others find that reflection negatively affects giving (e.g., Small, Loewenstein, & Slovic, 2007 ), and still others find that reflection is positively associated with giving (e.g., Lohse, Goeschl, & Diederich, 2014 ). I demonstrate that reflection consistently increases costly giving to charity. In Study 1, people were initially reluctant to give costly amounts of money to charity, but those who reflected about the decision were more willing to give. In Studies 2–3, I isolated the role of costly stakes by randomly assigning people to either an uncostly donation (Are people intuitively generous or stingy? Does reflection make people more willing to give generous amounts to charity? Findings across the literature are mixed, with many studies finding no clear relationship between reflection and charitable giving (e.g., Hauge, Brekke, Johansson, Johansson‐Stenman, & Svedsäter, 2016 ; Tinghög et al., 2016 ), while others find that reflection negatively affects giving (e.g., Small, Loewenstein, & Slovic, 2007 ), and still others find that reflection is positively associated with giving (e.g., Lohse, Goeschl, & Diederich, 2014 ). I demonstrate that reflection consistently increases costly giving to charity. In Study 1, people were initially reluctant to give costly amounts of money to charity, but those who reflected about the decision were more willing to give. In Studies 2–3, I isolated the role of costly stakes by randomly assigning people to either an uncostly donation ($0.40) or costly donation condition (e.g., $100), and randomly assigning them to decide under time pressure or after reflecting. Reflection increased their willingness to give costly amounts, but did not influence their willingness to give uncostly amounts. Similarly, the relationship between decision time and giving was positive when the stakes were costly but was relatively flat when the stakes were uncostly (Study 4). Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Autistic Heterogeneity: Linking Uncertainties and Indeterminacies

Autism is a highly uncertain entity and little is said about it with any degree of certainty. Scientists must, and do, work through these uncertainties in the course of their work. Scientists explain uncertainty in autism research through discussion of epistemological uncertainties which suggest that diverse methods and techniques make results hard to reconcile, ontological uncertainties which suggest doubt over taxonomic coherence, but also through reference to autism’s indeterminacy which suggests that the condition is inherently heterogeneous. Indeed, indeterminacy takes two forms—an inter-personal form which suggests that there are fundamental differences between individuals with autism and an intra-personal form which suggests that no one factor is able to explain all features of autism within a given individual. What is apparent in the case of autism is that scientists put uncertainty and indeterminacy into discussion with one another and, rather than a well-policed epistemic-ontic boundary, there is a movement between, and an entwinement of, the two. Understanding scientists’ dialogue concerning uncertainty and indeterminacy is of importance for understanding autism and autistic heterogeneity but also for understanding uncertainty and ‘uncertainty work’ within science more generally.     

Do we reflect while performing skillful actions? Automaticity,control, and the perils of distraction

From our everyday commuting to the gold medalist’s world-class performance, skillful actions are characterized by fine-grained, online agentive control. What is the proper explanation of such control? There are two traditional candidates: intellectualism explains skillful agentive control by reference to the agent’s propositional mental states; anti-intellectualism holds that propositional mental states or reflective processes are unnecessary since skillful action is fully accounted for by automatic coping processes. I examine the evidence for three psychological phenomena recently held to support anti-intellectualism (choking under pressure, expertise-induced amnesia, and expert confabulation) and argue that it supports neither traditional candidate, but an intermediate attention-control account, according to which the top-down, intention-directed control of attention is a necessary component of skillful action. Only this account recognizes both the role of automatic control in skilled action and the need for higher-order cognition to thread automatic processes together into a unified, skillful performance. This applies to bodily skillful action in general, from the world-class performance of experts to mundane, habitual action. The attention-control account stresses that, for intentions to play their role as top-down modulators of attention, agents must sustain the intention’s activation; hence, the need for reflecting throughout performance.