The Effect of Daily Fluctuation of Abusive Supervision over Employees Positive and Negative Emotions, and Recovery Experience

Abusive supervision impacts employees' emotions negatively and creates feelings of shame and fear. But it remains unclear how daily employees' positive and negative emotions are affected and if they can recover. Applying the affective event theory and job demands-resources model we hypothesized that daily abusive supervision influences employees' positive and negative emotions fluctuation over the day, recovery after work, and employee emotions the next morning. Two daily surveys were answered by 52 Mexican employees for ten days providing 347 registers in the morning and 255 in the afternoon. Hierarchical linear modeling shows alteration of positive and negative emotions in the afternoon and next day, and a positive effect over recovery in relaxation, mastery and control restoring positive emotions. However, negative emotions cannot be recovered for the following day. Additionally, we found effects of predictive variables, as the days of the week go by, positive emotions in the afternoon and negative emotions in the morning decrease. Gender shows for men a more negative effect on positive emotions in the afternoon, next morning and on mastery-recovery. Marital status revealed effect over married individuals incrementing the four recovery dimensions, increasing positive emotions, and reducing negative emotions in the afternoon and next morning. Tenure has an effect over abusive supervision, the longer employees in the company, more likely they suffer abusive supervision. We show how employees restore positive emotions after daily recovery and that negative emotions cannot be recovered for the following day; revealing how abusive managers cause emotional damage to employees every day.

Temporal changes in semantic and lexical access related to mild cognitive impairment

BACKGROUND

It has been hypothesized that the deterioration in the ability to name famous people in normal aging and cognitive impairment is a continuum in which meaning-based representations and form-based representations are differentially impaired, with early impairments in lexical access but not in semantic access.

AIMS

This hypothesis is tested in a follow-up study comparing the performance of fifty-six participants with amnestic mild cognitive impairment and forty-one control participants were assessed.

METHOD

A lexical task was conducted involving recognition and naming of famous people from photographs. Proportional semantic and phonological access measures were calculated.

RESULTS

Comparisons revealed significant differences between baseline and follow-up, with improvements in semantic access in the control group and decrements in phonological access in the group with amnestic mild cognitive impairment. Phonological access and reaction time measures were significantly and positively correlated, and semantic access and reaction time were significantly and negatively correlated.

CONCLUSIONS

These results add evidence to the hypothesis that the decrease of processing resources is related to the increase of difficulties in lexical access throughout aging. Patterns of change must be replicated over longer periods of time.

Characterizing Magnitude and Selectivity of Attrition in a Study of Mild Cognitive Impairment

OBJECTIVES

Attrition is one of the greatest difficulties in longitudinal studies on cognitive ageing because of the associated risk of underestimating declines. The aims of this paper were to characterize the magnitude and selectivity of attrition in a study of mild cognitive impairment.

DESIGN

Forty two patients with multiple-domain amnestic MCI, 71 with single-domain amnestic MCI, 35 with non-amnestic MCI and 318 healthy controls were recruited from primary care centers and assessed at baseline.

MEASUREMENTS

All participants underwent extensive neuropsychological evaluation, including the Mini-Mental State Examination, the Californian Verbal Learning Test, the CAMCOG-R battery, the Counting Span task and Listening Span task, and the Subjective Memory Complaints Questionnaire.

RESULTS

21.5% of the participants at baseline did not participate in the follow-up assessment. Comparison between respondents and non-returners did not reveal differences in cognitive performance in the MCI group. Data obtained at the initial assessment regarding comorbidity, social activities and attention given to memory training enabled prediction of the status of the participants in the follow-up assessment.

CONCLUSION

Identification of potential non- returners is relevant, especially in MCI studies, in order to develop retention strategies to minimize attrition.

Cognitive predictors of treatment response to bupropion and cognitive effects of bupropion in patients with major depressive disorder

Cognitive effects of antidepressants and cognitive predictors of antidepressant treatment response are recent focuses of interest in the neuropsychology of depression. We studied the cognitive predictors of treatment response to bupropion and its neuropsychological effects in patients with major depressive disorder. Twenty subjects meeting the DSM-IV criteria for major depressive disorder were assessed with the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale and a neuropsychological battery. Subjects were medicated with 150 mg/day of bupropion sustained release for 8 weeks. At the end of the trial, 12 subjects were classified as responders to treatment and 8 were non-responders. Our findings suggest that low pretreatment measures of visual memory and low levels of mental processing speed are predictive of good response to bupropion. The cognitive effects of bupropion after the treatment showed that patients improved in visual memory measures and in mental processing speed. Our results suggest that cognitive predictors of treatment response to bupropion and cognitive effects of bupropion in patients with major depressive disorder could be closely related. These findings need to be replicated due to the exploratory nature of the present work.

[Constructive praxis to the copy: extended standards of the Barcelona test]

BACKGROUND

Drawings tasks have achieved a very central position in neurology by virtue of their sensitivity to many different kinds of brain lesions. Variables of age and education may significantly affect test performance and therefore should taken into account when developing test norms.

OBJECTIVES

To increase the sample of the original version of the Barcelona test (BT) and analyze the results of the drawing task.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

322 normal subjects (47.1% women and 52.9% males), stratified in 7 groups according to age and education were included in the large sample. Copying subtest of the BT were used. Descriptive statistics and multiple lineal regression were applied to the data.

RESULTS

Due to the relevance of age and education on coping drawing tasks (Kruskal-Wallis: p < 0.001 for age and p < 0.001 for education). Both variables (age and education) were analyzed using multiple lineal regression in order to establish possible effects of age and/or education for each group (F = 18.073; p < 0.001). Subjects aged more than 70 had the best adjust to the regression model (R2 = 0.4245; F = 18.07; p < 0.001; delta R2 = 13.56). Furthermore age has an important role as modulator to the results.

CONCLUSIONS

Age and education influenced copying drawing performance for raw scores as well as when considering timed performance, in a different way for each studied group. While the correlation of education and performance on copy drawing tasks is a direct one, for age this relation is inverse.

[Digit span, automatic speech and orientation: amplified norms of the Barcelona Test]

BACKGROUND

Digit span, automatic speech and orientation are screening tests of interest in neurology due to their high sensitivity in cerebral pathologies and easy applicability. These tasks assess attention, concentration, mental control, orientation and short-term memory.

OBJECTIVES

To analyze the impact of age and education on the results of the following subtest included in the Barcelona Test: digit span, automatic speech and orientation.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

275 normal subjects were evaluated. Mean (SD) age: 52 (17.7), range (18-19). Mean education: 9 (5.5) years, range (0-25). Subjects were stratified into 7 groups by age and education. Nine items of Barcelona Test were used: digits span forward and backward, automatic speech, forward and backward, with and without time, and person, time and place orientation.

RESULTS

Statistical description, parametric and non parametric test. The Kruskal Wallis test was used, showing that aged and education are significant difference in the automatic speech forward or backward, with or without time, while it did not showed a significant difference in the different groups in the orientation tests. Analysis of Variance for group of age and education showed significant differences in the digit span forward and backward (F = 19.92; p < 0.001; F = 18.44, p < 0.001), respectively.

CONCLUSIONS

Both age (inversely) and education (directly) influenced on the scores of the analyzed items, except to person, place and time orientation that are not affected for them.

[Abstract abilities: amplified norms for the Barcelona Test]

INTRODUCTION

By abstract abilities is understood the ability of comprehend relations identifying the essential components and taking out from them a common feature. Its evaluation constitutes a great challenge for neuropsychology. Several studies have showed the influence of age and formal education in the performance of tests assessing these abilities.

AIM

To analyse the WAIS-style abstract abilities included in the abbreviated version of the Barcelona Test determining the influence of and formal education and obtaining more normative data for a Spanish population.

METHOD

A sample of 264 subjects was randomly selected. The subtests of the Barcelona Test were administered in a single session to every subject. We selected the scores obtained in Arithmetic Problems (raw and timed), Similarities, Digit Symbol and Block Design (raw and timed).

RESULTS

The analysis of the variance showed statistically significant results of the selected items according to age and formal education. The formal education, as the lineal regression showed, resulted significant for all the items, being the Arithmetic Problems the only subtests not influenced significantly by the formal education.

CONCLUSION

The results obtained in this study are in general concordant to the ones of the reviewed bibliography.