Leader values as predictors of employee affect and work passion intentions

The purpose of this study was to examine the empirical connection between employee perceptions of their leaders’ values orientation, employee job-specific affect, and the resultant impact these two constructs have on employee work passion intentions. Seven hundred forty-seven respondent surveys were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) to assess the study’s proposed theoretical model. The latent constructs tested included cognition (i.e., perceptions of interpersonal work experience), affect, and intentions. Perceived leader self-concern showed a significant direct correlation with negative job-specific affect as well as a negative relationship with intent to stay. Leader other-orientation showed sizeable, direct, significant correlations with employee positive job-specific affect and resultant work passion intentions such as intent to endorse, intent to perform, intent to stay, intention to use discretionary effort, and intention to be an organizational citizen.Published versio

The coupling of action and perception in musical meaning formation

The embodied perspective on music cognition has stressed the central role of the body and body move- ments in musical meaning formation processes. In the present study, we investigate by means of a behavioral experiment how free body movements in response to music (i.e., action) can be linked to specific linguistic, metaphorical descriptions people use to describe the expressive qualities they perceive in the music (i.e., per- ception). We introduce a dimensional model based on the Effort/Shape theory of Laban in order to target musical expressivity from an embodied perspective. Also, we investigate whether a coupling between action and perception is dependent on the musical background of the participants (i.e., trained versus untrained). The results show that the physical appearance of the free body movements that participants perform in response to music are reliably linked to the linguistic descriptions of musical expressiveness in terms of the underlying quality. Moreover, this result is found to be independent of the participants’ musical background

Climate change: Time to Do Something Different

Copyright: © 2014 Page and Page. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these termsThere is now very little, if any, doubt that the global climate is changing and that this is in some way related to human behaviour through unsustainable preferences in lifestyle and organisational practices. Despite the near conclusive evidence of the positive relationship between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, a small proportion of people remain unconvinced. More importantly, even among the much larger number of people who accept a link between human behaviour and climate change, many are inactive, or insufficiently active, in attempting to remedy the situation. We suggest this is partly because people are unaware both of how their day-to-day behaviours connect with energy consumption and carbon emissions, and of the behavioural alternatives that are available to them. This, we believe, is a key reason why individual lifestyles and organisational practices continue in an unsustainable way. We also suggest that the psychologists and behavioural researchers who seek to develop a better understanding of people’s relationship with, and reaction to, environmental issues, might also be on track to suffer a similar blindness. They risk becoming fixed on investigating a limited range of established variables, perhaps to the detriment of alternative approaches that are more practically oriented though, so far, less well explored empirically. In this article, we present the FIT framework as an alternative perspective on the variables that might underpin pro-environmental activity and behaviour change. After briefly reviewing the related literature, we outline that framework. Then we present some early empirical data to show its relationship to a range of pro-environmental indices. We follow with a discussion of the framework’s relevance in relation to pro-environmental behaviour change and make proposals for future research.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Media Presence and Inner Presence: The Sense of Presence in Virtual Reality Technologies

Abstract. Presence is widely accepted as the key concept to be considered in any research involving human interaction with Virtual Reality (VR). Since its original description, the concept of presence has developed over the past decade to be considered by many researchers as the essence of any experience in a virtual environment. The VR generating systems comprise two main parts: a technological component and a psychological experience. The different relevance given to them produced two different but coexisting visions of presence: the rationalist and the psychological/ecological points of view. The rationalist point of view considers a VR system as a collection of specific machines with the necessity of the inclusion \ud of the concept of presence. The researchers agreeing with this approach describe the sense of presence as a function of the experience of a given medium (Media Presence). The main result of this approach is the definition of presence as the perceptual illusion of non-mediation produced by means of the disappearance of the medium from the conscious attention of the subject. At the other extreme, there \ud is the psychological or ecological perspective (Inner Presence). Specifically, this perspective considers presence as a neuropsychological phenomenon, evolved from the interplay of our biological and cultural inheritance, whose goal is the control of the human activity. \ud Given its key role and the rate at which new approaches to understanding and examining presence are appearing, this chapter draws together current research on presence to provide an up to date overview of the most widely accepted approaches to its understanding and measurement

Dwelling Quietly in the Rich Club: Brain Network Determinants of Slow Cortical Fluctuations

For more than a century, cerebral cartography has been driven by investigations of structural and morphological properties of the brain across spatial scales and the temporal/functional phenomena that emerge from these underlying features. The next era of brain mapping will be driven by studies that consider both of these components of brain organization simultaneously -- elucidating their interactions and dependencies. Using this guiding principle, we explored the origin of slowly fluctuating patterns of synchronization within the topological core of brain regions known as the rich club, implicated in the regulation of mood and introspection. We find that a constellation of densely interconnected regions that constitute the rich club (including the anterior insula, amygdala, and precuneus) play a central role in promoting a stable, dynamical core of spontaneous activity in the primate cortex. The slow time scales are well matched to the regulation of internal visceral states, corresponding to the somatic correlates of mood and anxiety. In contrast, the topology of the surrounding "feeder" cortical regions show unstable, rapidly fluctuating dynamics likely crucial for fast perceptual processes. We discuss these findings in relation to psychiatric disorders and the future of connectomics.Comment: 35 pages, 6 figure

Developmental divergence: motor trajectories in children with fragile X syndrome with and without co-occurring autism.

BackgroundAutism spectrum disorder (ASD) is highly prevalent in fragile X syndrome (FXS), affecting 50-70% of males. Motor impairments are a shared feature across autism and FXS that may help to better characterize autism in FXS. As motor skills provide a critical foundation for various language, cognitive, and social outcomes, they may serve an important mechanistic role for autism in FXS. As such, this study aimed to identify differences in motor trajectories across direct assessment and parent-report measures of fine and gross motor development between FXS with and without autism, and typical development, while controlling for cognitive functioning.MethodsThis prospective longitudinal study included 42 children with FXS, 24 of whom also had ASD (FXS + ASD), as well as 40 typically developing children. The Mullen Scales of Early Learning provided a direct measure of fine and gross motor skills, and the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales provided a measure of parent-reported fine and gross motor skills. Random slopes and random intercepts multilevel models were tested to determine divergence in developmental motor trajectories between groups when controlling for cognitive level.ResultsModel results indicated the children with FXS + ASD diverged from TD children by 9-months on all measures of gross and fine motor skills, even when controlling for cognitive level. Results also indicated an early divergence in motor trajectories of fine and gross motor skills between the FXS + ASD and FXS groups when controlling for cognitive level. This divergence was statistically significant by 18 months, with the FXS + ASD showing decelerated growth in motor skills across direct observation and parent-report measures.ConclusionsThis study is the first to examine longitudinal trends in motor development in children with FXS with and without comorbid ASD using both direct assessment and parent-report measures of fine and gross motor. Furthermore, it is among the first to account for nonverbal cognitive delays, a step towards elucidating the isolated role of motor impairments in FXS with and without ASD. Findings underscore the role of motor impairments as a possible signal representing greater underlying genetic liability, or as a potential catalyst or consequence, of co-occurring autism in FXS

Framing student engagement in higher education

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Studies in Higher Education on 2011, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03075079.2011.598505Publishe

What is Strategic Competence and Does it Matter? Exposition of the Concept and a Research Agenda

Drawing on a range of theoretical and empirical insights from strategic management and the cognitive and organizational sciences, we argue that strategic competence constitutes the ability of organizations and the individuals who operate within them to work within their cognitive limitations in such a way that they are able to maintain an appropriate level of responsiveness to the contingencies confronting them. Using the language of the resource based view of the firm, we argue that this meta-level competence represents a confluence of individual and organizational characteristics, suitably configured to enable the detection of those weak signals indicative of the need for change and to act accordingly, thereby minimising the dangers of cognitive bias and cognitive inertia. In an era of unprecedented informational burdens and instability, we argue that this competence is central to the longer-term survival and well being of the organization. We conclude with a consideration of the major scientific challenges that lie ahead, if the ideas contained within this paper are to be validated

Acute and Chronic Effects of Green Oat (Avena sativa) Extract on Cognitive Function and Mood during a Laboratory Stressor in Healthy Adults: A Randomised, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Study in Healthy Humans

Green oat (Avena sativa) extracts contain several groups of potentially psychoactive phytochemicals. Previous research has demonstrated improvements in cognitive function following a single dose of these extracts, but not following chronic supplementation. Additionally, whilst green oat extracts contain phytochemicals that may improve mood or protect against stress, for instance species-specific triterpene saponins, to date this possibility has not been examined. The current study investigated the effects of a single dose and four weeks of administration of a novel, Avena sativa herbal extract (cognitaven®) on cognitive function and mood, and changes in psychological state during a laboratory stressor. The study adopted a dose-ranging, double-blind, randomised, parallel groups design in which 132 healthy males and females (35 to 65 years) received either 430 mg, 860 mg, 1290 mg green oat extract or placebo for 29 days. Assessments of cognitive function, mood and changes in psychological state during a laboratory stressor (Observed Multitasking Stressor) were undertaken pre-dose and at 2 h and 4 h post-dose on the first (Day 1) and last days (Day 29) of supplementation. The results showed that both a single dose of 1290 mg and, to a greater extent, supplementation for four weeks with both 430 mg and 1290 mg green oat extract resulted in significantly improved performance on a computerised version of the Corsi Blocks working memory task and a multitasking task (verbal serial subtractions and computerised tracking) in comparison to placebo. After four weeks, the highest dose also decreased the physiological response to the stressor in terms of electrodermal activity. There were no treatment-related effects on mood. These results confirm the acute cognitive effects of Avena sativa extracts and are the first to demonstrate that chronic supplementation can benefit cognitive function and modulate the physiological response to a stressor