Self-Regulation of Slippery Deadlines: The Role of Procrastination in Work Performance

We investigated the causes and impact of procrastination on “slippery deadlines,” where the due date is ill-defined and can be autonomously extended, using the unique applied setting of grievance arbitration across two studies. In Study One, using 3 years of observed performance data derived from Canadian arbitration cases and a survey of leading arbitrators, we examined the effect of individual differences, self-regulatory skills, workloads and task characteristics on time delay. Observed delay here is a critical criterion, where justice is emphasized to be swift and sure. Multilevel Modeling established trait procrastination as a substantive predictor of observed delay, equivalent to the environmental contributors of expediting the arbitration procedure or grievance complexity. Also, despite substantive negative consequence of delay for both arbitrators and their clients, arbitrators who scored one standard deviation above the mean in procrastination took approximately 83 days to write their decisions compared to the 26 days for arbitrators one standard deviation below the mean. In Study Two, we conducted a replication and extension survey with a much larger group of American arbitrators. Consistent with Temporal Motivation Theory (TMT), trait procrastination was largely explained by expectancy, value, and sensitivity to time related traits and skills, which together accounted for majority of the variance in trait procrastination, leaving little left for other explanations. For example, perfectionism connection to procrastination appears to be distal, being largely mediated by each of TMT’s core variables. Finally, procrastination was largely synonymous with a deadline pacing style, indicating that observed delay can be used as a proxy for procrastination as long as little or no prior work was done (e.g., a u-shaped pacing style is not synonymous). In all, our results indicate that procrastination is rampant in the workplace and has seriously detrimental effects.

Media Richness, Knowledge Sharing, and Computer Programming by Virtual Software Teams

Software programming is a task with high analyzability. However, knowledge sharing is an intricate part of the software programming process. Today, new media platforms have been adopted to enable knowledge sharing between virtual teams. Taking into consideration the high task analyzability and the task characteristics involved in software development, the question is if the media richness of the current media platform is effective in enabling knowledge sharing among these virtual teams? An exploratory research was conducted on a software company in Denmark. The data was gathered was analyzed qualitatively using narrative analysis. This paper concludes, based on the case being investigated, that rich media does not fit the task characteristics of a software programmer. It further concludes that Media richness does affect knowledge sharing in these virtual teams. This is because the current lean media actually enables knowledge sharing as it fits the core characteristics of the software programming process.

Effects of Collaborative Digital Gameplay on Students’ Three Dimensions of Engagement in Mathematics

This study attempts to provide an in-depth understanding of the influence of collaborative digital gameplay on students’ behavioural, emotional and cognitive engagement in mathematics. This mixed-method study used pre- (N = 45) and post-test (N = 43) engagement surveys and photo-elicitation interviews (N = 6) to investigate how a six-day experiment involving collaborative digital gameplay on Wuzzit Trouble affects students’ engagement in mathematics. The quantitative results showed collaborative digital gameplay did not elicit a significant increase in students’ engagement in mathematics from pre-test to post-test. Moreover, the qualitative results of analyzing the measurement of three-dimensional engagement showed four factors – learning achievement, teacher support, peer collaboration and task characteristics – were associated with students’ engagement in a collaborative digital gameplay classroom. The findings suggest the classroom context plays an important role in three-dimensional engagement, which efficiently improve students’ conceptual understanding and arithmetic skills.

Doubts About the Role of Rehearsal in the Irrelevant Sound Effect

The irrelevant sound effect (ISE) describes the disruption of processes involved in maintaining information in working memory (WM) when irrelevant noise is present in the environment. While some posit that the ISE arises due to split obligation of attention to the irrelevant sound and the to-be-remembered information, others have argued that background noise corrupts the order of information within WM. Support for the latter position comes from research showing that the ISE appears to be most robust in tasks that emphasize ordered maintenance by a serial rehearsal strategy, and diminished when rehearsal is discouraged or precluded by task characteristics. This prior work confounds the demand for seriation with rehearsal. Thus, the present study aims to disentangle ordered maintenance from a rehearsal strategy by using a running memory span task that requires ordered output but obviates the utility of rehearsal. Across four experiments, we find a significant ISE that persists under conditions that should discourage the use of rehearsal and among individuals who self-report use of alternative strategies. These findings indicate that rehearsal is not necessary to produce an ISE in a serial recall task and thus fail to corroborate accounts of the ISE that emphasize the involvement of rehearsal.

Empirical Evidence for the Functionality Hypothesis in Motor Learning: The Effect of an Attentional Focus Is Task Dependent

A large body of research suggests that during learning motor skills, focusing on environmental effects of the movement (external focus) generally leads to better performance than focusing on one’s own body (internal focus). The functionality hypothesis states, in contrast, that the superiority of any attentional focus is task dependent. The present study aimed to test the predictions of the latter and searched for underlying mechanisms and task characteristics for one or the other focus being more functional. In Experiment 1, we examined whether the internal focus is superior in a difficult body-oriented balance task. In Experiment 2, we added visual feedback and investigated whether this would enhance the functionality of the external focus. In both experiments, the participants stood one-legged on a balance board and had to shift their centre of pressure (COP) to predefined target points. Per instruction, they were asked to interpret their attentional focus on the COP as either internal (the sole of the foot) or external (the platform). In Experiment 1, the external focus was induced through a mental image. The internal focus group performed significantly better, thereby supporting the functionality hypothesis. In Experiment 2, the COP was dynamically visualized on a screen. The internal focus superiority vanished. We suggest that the internal focus is more functional in motor-learning situations that provide more effect information through body-internal senses than through body-external senses. In these cases, the external focus hampers learning because it is associated with additional cognitive load.

A multi-robot allocation model for multi-object based on Global Optimal Evaluation of Revenue

The problem of global optimal evaluation for multi-robot allocation has gained attention constantly, especially in a multi-objective environment, but most algorithms based on swarm intelligence are difficult to give a convergent result. For solving the problem, we established a Global Optimal Evaluation of Revenue method of multi-robot for multi-tasks based on the real textile combing production workshop, consumption, and different task characteristics of mobile robots. The Global Optimal Evaluation of Revenue method could traversal calculates the profit of each robot corresponding to different tasks with global traversal over a finite set, then an optimization result can be converged to the global optimal value avoiding the problem that individual optimization easy to fall into local optimal results. In the numerical simulation, for fixed set of multi-object and multi-task, we used different numbers of robots allocation operation. We then compared with other methods: Hungarian, the auction method, and the method based on game theory. The results showed that Global Optimal Evaluation of Revenue reduced the number of robots used by at least 17%, and the delay time could be reduced by at least 16.23%.