Behavioral Sciences

Drawing on social comparison and attribution theories, this study examines how employees’ attitudinal dissimilarity within work groups shapes their willingness to speak up or remain silent. We conceptualize dissimilarity in psychological ownership and job stress as individual-level differences that trigger internal attributions, leading employees to direct attention inward and reduce their likelihood of speaking up. In contrast, dissimilarity in perceived status conflict, an individual-level perception of a structural feature of the group, induces external attributions toward the social system, motivating employees to express voice aimed at preserving or challenging the status quo. Using multi-source data from 202 employees nested in 39 work groups in South Korea, hierarchical regression analyses support all proposed hypotheses: individual-level dissimilarities are negatively related and structural-level dissimilarity is positively related to voice. These findings reveal that the behavioral consequences of difference depend on where attribution is directed—toward the self or the system. The study contributes to the voice literature by integrating attributional reasoning into social comparison processes and by identifying two forms of attitudinal minorities: invisible minorities who remain silent, and boisterous minorities who speak up for change.

Spatial cognition refers to how people transform physical spatial information into mental representations and manipulate it to perform further spatial computation and reasoning. Previous research has demonstrated that the frame of reference (FOR) in physical space could distort spatial representations to influence the memory of spatial relations. However, it remains unclear whether FORs could also influence attentional allocation among the spatial representations. To address this issue, we examined the attentional shifting within or between different spatial regions, which were affected by the same versus different FORs. In Experiment 1, a modified double-rectangle cuing paradigm was adopted. Two human figures in complementary colors were presented to establish two object-centered spatial FORs, which divided the external space around the objects into a central region (influenced by two FORs) and two outer-side regions (primarily influenced by a single FOR). Cues and targets were presented in the same region or different regions. Results showed faster attentional shifting within the same region than between different regions. In Experiment 2, one human figure was replaced as a cross, and the within-region advantage was replicated. Overall, these findings suggest that object-centered FORs could be employed to collectively organize space and guide attentional allocation in the external space surrounding objects.

Executive function is crucial for the physical and mental health as well as social adaptation of preschool children, and cognitively engaging physical activity may serve as an effective intervention. This study employed a pre-post experimental design with a repeated measures ANOVA to examine the intervention effects and underlying mechanisms of a 20 min cognitively engaging physical activity on preschool children’s executive function. A total of 56 preschool children were recruited and randomly assigned to either the cognitively engaging physical activity group or the conventional physical activity group. Executive function was assessed before and after the intervention using Go/No-Go, 1-back, and dimension-changing card classification tasks. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy was employed to monitor changes in oxygenated hemoglobin concentration in the prefrontal cortex during cognitive tasks. Results indicate that acute cognitively engaging physical activity effectively modulates oxygenated hemoglobin concentration in specific regions of the prefrontal cortex in preschool children, leading to an immediate enhancement in working memory capacity. This approach demonstrates potential advantages in inhibitory control, while no significant differences were observed in cognitive flexibility. Furthermore, post-intervention changes in inhibitory control and working memory showed significant positive correlations with changes in prefrontal oxygenated hemoglobin concentration. These findings provide scientific evidence for applying cognitive engagement elements in cognitive development and theoretical support for designing targeted physical activity interventions.