Suchergebnisse

This article presents an empirical test of McGrath's group task circumplex, which has been used as a theoretical basis for numerous empirical and conceptual articles. Data from Straus and McGrath (1994) were used to test the hypothesis that the degree to which tasks pose requirements for member interdependence will be positively associated with the amount of communication that reflects consensus building and coordination processes in groups. Seventy-two, 3-person groups completed three tasks with increasing levels of member interdependence as prescribed by the vertical dimension of the task circumplex: an idea generation task, an intellective task, and a judgment task. Groups communicated either in computer conferences or face-to-face discussions. Patterns of group communication show support for the vertical dimension of the task circumplex. In addition, results suggest that some aspects of group process serve different purposes as a function of communication medium.

Each of five subjects performed a total of 25 cranking and walking tasks, 16 of which contained serial variation. The purpose was to test whether the caloric cost of a series of dynamic tasks performed sequentially could be predicted by summing the caloric cost of the individual tasks performed separately. The results indicate that, if work and recovery caloric values as measured by the integral method are considered for both sequential and separate tasks, such prediction is possible. However, when just the working caloric values as measured by the steady-state method are compared, such an equality cannot be assumed.

Cardiovascular disease is the commonest chronic illness in both developed and developing countries, causing the most deaths and the greatest impact on morbidity. The superiority of disease prevention over treatment was appreciated at least 5,000 years ago in China. The link between the existence of disease in society and the political and social circumstances of a country was emphasised by Virchow in the nineteenth century. The scientific basis and methods for prevention of cardiovascular disease are known. What are lacking are the will and the means to implement change. The well-intentioned often have a dominant sense of entitlement in the pursuit of the common goal of disease prevention. There is a failure of many organisations to acknowledge the importance of other groups within society in achieving the common goal. Doctors, particularly cardiovascular physicians and cardiologists, must play a much greater role in linking with the public, other health workers, epidemiologists, media, industry, academia and politicians. Too many vested interests obstruct progress in the prevention of cardiovascular disease.

Philosophers of religion are often caught up with the epistemic justification of their religious beliefs, rather than the qualities of the religious life that make it valuable. Mark Bernier argues that hope is one of the most important of such qualities, and is an essential thread that connects despair, faith, and the self. 'The task of hope in Kierkegaard' reconstructs Kierkegaard's theory of hope, which involves the distinction between mundane and authentic hope, and makes three principal claims. Firstly, while despair involves the absence of hope, a rejection of oneself, and a turn away from one's relation to God, despair is fundamentally an unwillingness to hope. This unwillingness is directed toward authentic hope, conceived of by Kierkegaard as an expectation for the possibility of the good. Secondly, hope is not simply an ancillary activity of the self; rather, the task of becoming a self is essentially constituted by hope. Thus, when in despair one is unwilling to hope, one is in fact rejecting one's task of becoming a self. Thirdly, faith stands in opposition to despair precisely because it is a willingness to hope.0An essential role of faith is to secure the ground for hope, and in this way faith secures the ground for the self. In short, authentic hope (what Kierkegaard calls spiritual hope) is not merely a fringe element, but is essential to Kierkegaard's project of the self

The study was designed to examine the effects of extra task stimulation and extra rest on performance and fatigue of haul truck drivers engaged in a simulated driving task. Sixty male subjects, randomly selected from the population of truck drivers in a large mining company, operated a driving simulator for a period of 7 h. A 2 x 3 experimental design was employed including two levels of rest conditions and three levels of secondary-task manipulations. The results show that performance and perceived fatigue were significantly higher when a secondary task involving voice communication was added to the basic driving task, but an added vigilance task had less effect. An extra 30-minute rest period in the middle of the experimental session significantly alleviated the reported experience of fatigue but did not affect performance. The results are discussed in terms of their relevance to actual industrial driving tasks.

Two hundred and four Ss practiced the components of a complex multidimensional compensatory pursuit task, singly and in combination. These components involved discrete display-control relationships. The total task, which was practiced last, requires an integration of these components; that is, the S must operate the multiple controls in order to minimize error indications on all displays simultaneously. The problems investigated were (a) the extent to which performance on task components, individually practiced, is predictive of subsequent total task performance; (b) the extent to which practice on combinations of components is predictive of total task performance; (c) the interrelationships among component performances; and (d) the relative contribution of various component performances to total and subtask performances. The resulting correlational and multiple correlational analyses provide some tentative principles of part-whole task relationships relevant to the understanding of skilled performance.

The paper considers the history and current state of the process of digitization of analog documents in the Russian Federation. A comparative analysis of the current issues of digitization of analog documents in foreign countries and in Russia is carried out. The basis for the research is composed by the articles of Russian and foreign experts, which highlight the experience of archives in digitizing analog documents. The author comes to the conclusion that it is necessary to conduct a largescale discussion by the archivists of federal state archives and the archives of the subjects of the Russian Federation of the current issues connected with the process of digitization of analog documents. The accumulated experience of digitizing analog documents in Russia shows that the most important issues for activating the process of high-quality digitization of analog documents, directly related to the possibility of their subsequent use, are the issues related to the creation of a unified state digitization program, among the tasks of which there can be: the need to summarize the work done in that direction in the regions; the identification of the "pain points" (in particular, the need to create a unified regulatory and methodological framework); the consideration of financing issues that will allow the archives to be provided with qualified IT specialists and the necessary equipment; the possibility of concluding contracts with the third-party organizations that might be responsible for the digitization entrusted to them; etc. Archives for the most part have not yet faced the issues of accepting initially digital documents for state storage. It is necessary to use the existing situation to resolve the accumulated difficulties with digitization that require the discussion at the all-Russia level. After all, until now, an average of about 5% of documents in need of digitization have only been digitized in the archives. Thus, if one proceeds from the number of digitized analog documents indicated by the regional archives, the challenges of digitization have not lost their relevance

In two experiments we examined the effects of single- and dual-task training on the acquisition and transfer of dual-task skill. Subjects performed two consistently mapped (CM) visual search tasks (word-category search and spatial-pattern search). Experiment 1 demonstrated benefits in both reaction time and accuracy for dual-task practice over comparable single-task practice when the two search tasks were combined. Experiment 2 examined the effects of task timing under single-task, synchronous dual-task, and asynchronous dual-task conditions. Benefits similar to those found in the first experiment were obtained. These results suggest that dual-task training can be more effective than single-task training when two dissimilar CM search tasks need to be performed together.

The author examines concepts, views, goals and ways of interpreting the law, and gives the definition and implementation of the rules of interpretation regulations. Provides that the interpretation of the law refers to activities aimed at establishing their content, to the disclosure of the will ruling social forces expressed in them. Special attention is given to the judicial interpretation and its role in ensuring the consistency of enforcement, as well as the problem of interaction of legislation and judicial practice.