No Evidence for Shared Representations of Task Sets in Joint Task Switching

Action Contro

No-go trials can modulate switch cost by interfering with effects of task preparation

It has recently been shown that the cost associated with switching tasks is eliminated following ‘no-go’ trials, in which response selection is not completed, suggesting that the switch cost depends on response selection. However, no-go trials may also affect switch costs by interfering with the effects of task preparation that precede response selection. To test this hypothesis we evaluated switch costs following standard go trials with those following two types of non-response trials: no-go trials, for which a stimulus is presented that indicates no response should be made (Experiment 1); and cue-only trials in which no stimulus is presented following the task cue (Experiment 2). We hypothesized that eliminating no-go stimuli would reveal effects of task preparation on the switch cost in cue-only trials. We found no switch cost following no-go trials (Experiment 1), but a reliable switch cost in cue-only trials (i.e., when no-go stimuli were removed; Experiment 2). We conclude that no-go trials can modulate the switch cost, independent of their effect on response selection, by interfering with task preparation, and that the effects of task preparation on switch cost are more directly assessed by cue-only trials

Location, location, location: contextualizing workplace commitment

The purpose of the present commentary is to discuss the nature and correlates of workplace commitment across cultures. We asked six organizational behavior scholars, who are intimately familiar with Brazil, China, Denmark, Germany, or Israel as their country of origin or extended residence, to “contextualize” workplace commitment. They did so by explicating institutional and cultural characteristics of their context on the emergence, meaning, and evolution of commitment by reference to their own research and extant local research. Their responses not only supported the utility of three-component model of commitment but also revealed the differential salience of various commitment constructs (e.g., components and foci of commitment) as well as possible contextual moderators on the development and outcomes of commitment. The commentators also described changes including the growing prevalence of multicultural workforces within national borders and changes in employment relationships and cultural values in their national contexts and considered future research directions in culture and commitment research

Conceptualizing and measuring distance in international business research:Recurring questions and best practice guidelines

Distance is a central concept in international business research, yet there is debate about the construct as well as its operationalization. In this editorial, we address three of the most important recurring questions posed by authors, editors, and reviewers by examining the theory, methods, and data of distance research. We discuss (1) how to theorize on distance, and (2) what method and (3) what data to use when constructing a distance index. We develop practical recommendations grounded in theory, illustrating and supporting them by calculating cross-country distance indices for all available country pairs and two of the most used distance indices: cultural and institutional. We show that, whereas a specific method to calculate distance may matter to some extent, the choice for a specific cultural or institutional framework to measure cultural or institutional distance has a major impact on country-pair distances. Overall, this editorial highlights the importance of matching data and method to the theoretical argument.</p

Folk psychological and neurocognitive ontologies

It is becoming increasingly clear that our folk psychological ontology of the mental is unlikely to map neatly on to the functional organisation of the brain, leading to the development of novel ‘cognitive ontologies’ that aim to better describe this organisation. While the debate over which of these ontologies to adopt is still ongoing, we ought to think carefully about what the consequences for folk psychology might be. One option would be to endorse a new form of eliminative materialism, replacing the old folk psychological ontology with a novel neurocognitive ontology. This approach assumes a literalist attitude towards folk psychology, where the folk psychological and neurocognitive ontologies represent competing and incompatible ways of categorising the mental. According to an alternative approach, folk psychology aims to describe coarse-grained behaviour rather than fine-grained mechanisms, and the two kinds of ontology are better thought of as having different aims and purposes. In this chapter I will argue that the latter (coarse-grained) approach is a better way to make sense of everyday folk psychological practice, and also offers a more constructive way to understand the relationship between folk psychological and neurocognitive ontologies. The folk psychological ontology of the mental might not be appropriate for describing the functional organisation of the brain, but rather than eliminating or revising it, we should instead recognise that it has a very different aim and purpose than neurocognitive ontologies

Societal-level versus individual-level predictions of ethical behavior: a 48-society study of collectivism and individualism

Is the societal-level of analysis sufficient today to understand the values of those in the global workforce? Or are individual-level analyses more appropriate for assessing the influence of values on ethical behaviors across country workforces? Using multi-level analyses for a 48-society sample, we test the utility of both the societal-level and individual-level dimensions of collectivism and individualism values for predicting ethical behaviors of business professionals. Our values-based behavioral analysis indicates that values at the individual-level make a more significant contribution to explaining variance in ethical behaviors than do values at the societal-level. Implicitly, our findings question the soundness of using societal-level values measures. Implications for international business research are discussed

The Neuronal Correlates of Digits Backward Are Revealed by Voxel-Based Morphometry and Resting-State Functional Connectivity Analyses

Digits backward (DB) is a widely used neuropsychological measure that is believed to be a simple and effective index of the capacity of the verbal working memory. However, its neural correlates remain elusive. The aim of this study is to investigate the neural correlates of DB in 299 healthy young adults by combining voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) analyses. The VBM analysis showed positive correlations between the DB scores and the gray matter volumes in the right anterior superior temporal gyrus (STG), the right posterior STG, the left inferior frontal gyrus and the left Rolandic operculum, which are four critical areas in the auditory phonological loop of the verbal working memory. Voxel-based correlation analysis was then performed between the positive rsFCs of these four clusters and the DB scores. We found that the DB scores were positively correlated with the rsFCs within the salience network (SN), that is, between the right anterior STG, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and the right fronto-insular cortex. We also found that the DB scores were negatively correlated with the rsFC within an anti-correlation network of the SN, between the right posterior STG and the left posterior insula. Our findings suggest that DB performance is related to the structural and functional organizations of the brain areas that are involved in the auditory phonological loop and the SN