Journal of experimental psychology. Applied
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In this introduction to the December 2013 issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, the editor discusses her goals to get the Journal back on track. She gives thanks for the research that continues to advance both science and practice in experimental psychology.
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The biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat (Blascovich, 2008) suggests that individuals who evaluate a performance situation as a challenge will perform better than those who evaluate it as a threat. However, limited research has examined (a) the influence of challenge and threat evaluations on learned motor performance under pressure and (b) the attentional processes by which this effect occurs. In the present study 52 novices performed a motor task (laparoscopic surgery), for which optimal visual attentional control has been established. ⋯ In the Baseline test, evaluating the task as more of a challenge was associated with differential cardiovascular responses. Although there is some support for an attentional explanation of differential performance effects, additional analyses did not reveal mediators of the relationship between challenge/threat evaluations and motor performance. The findings have implications for the training and performance of motor skills in pressurized environments (e.g., surgery, sport, aviation).
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Communicating headings and preview sentences in text and speech.
Two experiments tested the effects of preview sentences and headings on the quality of college students' outlines of informational texts. Experiment 1 found that performance was much better in the preview sentences condition than in a no-signals condition for both printed text and text-to-speech (TTS) audio rendering of the printed text. In contrast, performance in the headings condition was good for the printed text but poor for the auditory presentation because the TTS software failed to communicate nonverbal information carried by the visual headings. ⋯ Using a theoretical framework, "signaling available, relevant, accessible" (SARA) information, to provide an analysis of the information content of headings in the printed text, the manipulation of the headings systematically restored information that was omitted by the TTS application in Experiment 1. The result was that outlining performance improved to levels similar to the visual headings condition of Experiment 1. It is argued that SARA is a useful framework for guiding future development of TTS software for a wide variety of text signaling devices, not just headings.
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Adults ask children questions in a variety of contexts, for example, in the classroom, in the forensic context, or in experimental research. In such situations children will inevitably be asked some questions to which they do not know the answer, because they do not have the required information ("unanswerable" questions). When asked unanswerable questions, it is important that children indicate that they do not have the required information to provide an answer. ⋯ Results showed that preinterview instructions increased the number of younger children's appropriate "don't know" responses to unanswerable questions, without decreasing correct responses to answerable questions. This suggests that demand characteristics affect children's tendency correctly to say "I don't know." The opportunity to provide a narrative account increased children's appropriate "don't know" responses to unanswerable yes/no questions, and increased the number of younger children's correct responses to answerable questions. This suggests that cognitive factors also contribute to children's tendency correctly to say "I don't know." These results have implications for any context where adults need to obtain information from children through questioning, for example, a health practitioner asking about a medical condition, in classroom discourse, in the investigative interview, and in developmental psychology research.
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In the present study, we investigated how two team mental model properties (similarity vs. accuracy) and two forms of monitoring behavior (team vs. systems) interacted to predict team performance in anesthesia. In particular, we were interested in whether the relationship between monitoring behavior and team performance was moderated by team mental model properties. Thirty-one two-person teams consisting of anesthesia resident and anesthesia nurse were videotaped during a simulated anesthesia induction of general anesthesia. ⋯ When investigating the effectiveness of a specific team coordination behavior, team cognition has to be taken into account. This represents a necessary and compelling extension of the popular process-outcome relationship on which previous teamwork research in health care has focused. Moreover, the current study adds further external validity to the concept of team mental models by highlighting its usefulness in health care.