Workplace Friendship in the Electronically Connected Organization

This study examined information communication technologies and workplace friendship dynamics. Employees reported factors that influenced their initiation of friendship with a coworker and reported patterns and perceptions of communication with their workplace friend via different communication methods. Results indicated that personality, shared tasks, and perceived similarity are the most important factors to coworker friendship initiation, and the importance of physical proximity to workplace friendship is diminishing in the electronically connected workplace. Results confirm the primacy of face‐to‐face interaction for workplace friendship initiation and maintenance. E‐mail, phone, and texting were also central to communication among workplace friends. The amount of time spent telecommuting affected workplace friendship initiation and communication. Finally, generational differences were identified with respect to Internet‐based communication methods.     

Spatial compatibility of signal-response position in pointing

Two experiments are reported in which, by means of a pointing task, we studied the stimulus-position effect, i.e. the inverted U-shape form of the reaction-time function in relation to stimulus position in tasks in which stimuli and/or responses are arranged in a horizontal array. The response consisted of aiming the index finger from a central starting point at a target area on a screen. Reaction time was the main dependent variable. The spatial relation between the position of the imperative signal and the position of the response was manipulated by varying the spatial S-R compatibility and physical distance that separated the positions of stimulus and response. The stimulus-position effect was shown to depend on the compatibility of the S-R relation (Exp. 1). In Exp. 2 it was found that the modulation of the stimulus-position effect by spatial compatibility disappeared completely when the distance between the positions of stimulus and response was reduced. None of the experiments revealed that the stimulus position effect depended on signal discriminability, which renders an interpretation of this effect in terms of perceptual processes unlikely. We argue that the attentional model of spatial coding provides the most reasonable explanation of the obtained reaction-time patterns.     

Working Memory in Pediatric Epilepsy: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Neuropsychology Review - Working memory is a multicomponent system that is supported by overlapping specialized networks in the brain. Baddeley’s working memory model includes four...     

Defensive reactions of “wild-type” and “Domesticated” wild rats to approach and contact by a threat stimulus

Selective breeding of wild rats over many generations on the basis of low or high defensive threat and attack to human approach and contact has produced highly polarized “domesticated” and “wild-type” animals. Because the selection procedure selectively involves these two defense patterns, and these clearly differ in the two groups, it is of interest to determine if other, nonselected, defensive behaviors to threat stimuli also change. “Domesticated” and “wild-type” rats of the thirty-fifth generation were run in a fear defense test battery (F/DTB) to systematically evaluate defensive behaviors to a variety of present threat stimuli. “Domesticated” rats showed reduced avoidance and slower flight speed to an approaching experimenter, reduced jump/startle response to handelap and dorsal contact, less vocalization and boxing to vibrissae stimulation or to an anesthetized conspecific, and reduced defensiveness to an attempted pickup by the experimenter. These results indicate that selective bi-directional breeding for defensive threat and attack to human approach and contact produces group differences in a variety of defensive behaviors, and in defensiveness to stimuli other than those on which the selection was based. © 1994 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Regression II. Development through regression

As shown in our previous paper (‘Regression I. Experimental approaches to regression’, JAP, 65, 2, 345-65), the common mechanism of regression can be described as reversible dedifferentiation, which is understood as a relative increase of the proportion of low-differentiated (older) systems in actualized experience. Experimental data show that regression following disease (chronic tension headache) is followed by adaptation and an increase in system differentiation in that experience domain which contains systems responsible for that adaptation. The results of mathematical modelling support the idea that reversible dedifferentiation can be one of the mechanisms for increasing the effectiveness of adaptation through learning. Reversible dedifferentiation, which is phenomenologically described as regression, is a general mechanism for restructuring the organism-environment interactions in situations where behaviours that were effective in the past become ineffective. Reversible dedifferentiation has evolved as a component of adaptation when new behaviours are formed and large-scale modifications in the existing behaviours are required in the face of changes in the external and/or internal environment. Thus, the authors believe that this article provides evidence for Jung’s view that regression is not only a ‘return’ to past forms of thinking, affects and behaviour, but that regressive processes provide a significant impetus for psychological growth and development.     

‘The Russian Silver Age’: invention or intention? Review of Vyacheslav P. Shestakov: Russkii Serebrjanyi vek: zapozdavshii renessans [The Russian Silver Age: The belated Renaissance] St. Petersburg,Aleteia, 2017, 218 pp,ISBN: 978-5-906980-06-9

In his book, Vyacheslav P. Shestakov conducts a theoretical reconstruction of the concept of the ‘Silver Age’ of Russian culture. He highlights three typical features that this phenomenon has in common with the European Renaissance: Hellenism, aestheticism and eroticism. In an effort to disprove Omry Ronen’s claim that the Silver Age was an unsuccessful invention of literary scholars, Shestakov calls the Silver Age “a certain intention, viz. a project of the future.” The monograph includes sections on Russian philosophy, painting and ballet.

     

Turning objects on their heads: the influence of the stored axis on object individuation

We used repetition blindness (RB) as a measure of object recognition and compared the pattern of RB obtained for objects with a well-established upright orientation (mono-oriented objects) and those without a usual upright orientation (polyoriented objects), when the critical objects were either in identical orientations or differed by 30 degrees, 60 degrees, 90 degrees, or 180 degrees. Overall, we found robust RB despite differences in orientation, consistent with the idea that object recognition, as indexed by RB, is largely independent of orientation. However, whereas for polyoriented objects RB was obtained in all orientation conditions, for mono-oriented objects there was no RB between upright and upside-down versions of the stimuli. These findings suggest that the usual orientation of an object-when it exists-is stored in memory and can facilitate orientation processing when the principal axis of a viewed object is aligned with the stored axis orientation. This, in turn, allows for more rapid and successful construction of distinct episodic representations of an object, thus alleviating RB.     

Relationship between language competence and emotional competence in middle childhood

Research on children's emotional competence has received considerable attention in the last decade, including the role of language. Language competence (LC) and emotional competence (EC) comprise multiple components. These components and their specific interrelations have not been studied sufficiently. In our study, we examined relations between multiple components of LC and EC in a sample of 210 school-age children. Five measures represented LC: receptive vocabulary, verbal fluency, literacy, narrative structure, and the narrative use of evaluative devices. Four measures represented EC: expressive emotion vocabulary, declarative emotion knowledge, awareness of mixed emotions, and facial emotion recognition. Results showed strong positive correlations between LC and EC ranging between r = .12 and r = .45. In particular, receptive vocabulary and literacy were closely related to emotion knowledge and awareness of mixed emotions. A confirmatory factor analysis revealed that there is a common general ability factor for LC and EC. We discuss why receptive vocabulary and literacy might be so strongly related to emotion knowledge in school-age children. Our findings have implications for developmental psychologists, educational research, and speech-language pathologists.