Changing Digital Age in the Wake of COVID-19

Virtual teams play a crucial role in today’s knowledge-based organisation for overcoming challenges in our dynamic world, especially in the current situation of the COVID-19 pandemic. Teams play a key role in today’s knowledge-based organization for overcoming challenges in our dynamic world. Drawing on social information processing theory, this study explores the effect of members’ humility and team environment within a leaderless team mainly based on virtual platforms. Their impacts on shared leadership, relationship conflict and team and individual performance were investigated. Surveying 219 students forming 61 virtual leaderless teams, our findings showed that a high level of humility and a positive team environment can help to improve shared leadership within a team, which contributes to team performance. Moreover, both humility and team environment have a negative relationship with relationship conflict, which depressed both team and individual performance. Our analysis also indicated that humility positively interacts with team environment on shared leadership.

Scene Context Impairs Perception of Semantically Congruent Objects

Visual scene context is well-known to facilitate the recognition of scene-congruent objects. Interestingly, however, according to predictive-processing accounts of brain function, scene congruency may lead to reduced (rather than enhanced) processing of congruent objects, compared with incongruent ones, because congruent objects elicit reduced prediction-error responses. We tested this counterintuitive hypothesis in two online behavioral experiments with human participants ( N = 300). We found clear evidence for impaired perception of congruent objects, both in a change-detection task measuring response times and in a bias-free object-discrimination task measuring accuracy. Congruency costs were related to independent subjective congruency ratings. Finally, we show that the reported effects cannot be explained by low-level stimulus confounds, response biases, or top-down strategy. These results provide convincing evidence for perceptual congruency costs during scene viewing, in line with predictive-processing theory.

Role of Peer Coaching in Transmitting the Benefits of Leader Coaching

Drawing on social information processing theory, the present study examines how and when leader coaching can be beneficial for team performance. Based on a sample of 58 teams from a sanitary product company in China, we found that peer coaching served as a mediator linking leader coaching and team performance. Moreover, the team individualistic/collectivism value moderated the first-stage relationship that the relationship between leader coaching and peer coaching was more positive when the team individualism value was low, but not significant when the team individualism value was high; while team task interdependence moderated the second-stage relationship that the relationship between peer coaching and team performance was more positive when the team task interdependence was high, but not significant when it was low. The findings enrich our understandings of the effectiveness of leader coaching behavior by uncovering the theoretical mechanism and boundary conditions. The study also provides important implications for coaching practice in organizations.

Morpheme Ordering Across Languages Reflects Optimization for Processing Efficiency

The ordering of morphemes in a word displays well-documented regularities across languages. Previous work has explained these in terms of notions such as semantic scope, relevance, and productivity. Here, we test a recently formulated processing theory of the ordering of linguistic units, the efficient tradeoff hypothesis (Hahn et al., 2021). The claim of the theory is that morpheme ordering can partly be explained by the optimization of a tradeoff between memory and surprisal. This claim has received initial empirical support from two languages. In this work, we test this idea more extensively using data from four additional agglutinative languages with significant amounts of morphology, and by considering nouns in addition to verbs. We find that the efficient tradeoff hypothesis predicts ordering in most cases with high accuracy, and accounts for cross-linguistic regularities in noun and verb inflection. Our work adds to a growing body of work suggesting that many ordering properties of language arise from a pressure for efficient language processing.

Personalized Product Recommendation and User Satisfaction

A recommendation system is a significant part of artificial intelligence (AI) to help users' access information at any time and from anywhere. Online product recommender systems are widely used to recommend products based on consumers' preferences. The traditional recommendation algorithms of recommendation engines do not meet the needs of users in the AI environment when exposed to large amounts of data resulting in a low recommendation efficiency. To address this, a personalized recommendation system was introduced. These personalized recommendation systems (PRS) are an important component for ecommerce players in the Indian e-commerce aspects. Since personalized recommendations are becoming increasingly popular, this study examines information processing theory with respect to personalized recommendations and their impact on user satisfaction. Further, relationships between the variables were examined by conducting regression analysis and found a positive correlation exists between personalized product recommendation and user satisfaction.

Application of Information Processing Theory in Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition

Vocabulary acquisition is an intricate process, which has a close relationship with memory. In cognitive psychology, a large number of studies on memory system have been conducted based on the information processing theory, placing great value on second language learners’ cognitive process. This study intends to probe into second language vocabulary acquisition from the perspective of information processing theory in hope to help learners acquire vocabulary more scientifically and efficiently.

EXPRESS: Using Relative-Speed-of-Processing to Explain the Shielding Function of Task Rules

In choice reaction tests, applying task rules instead of responding associatively can help participants shield against interference from distractors. However, the mechanism of such shielding functions remains unclear. Through four experiments, we show how the shielding function can be explained by the Relative-Speed-of-Processing theory. Experiment 1A demonstrated that applying task rules can reduce the relative processing advantage of the distractor by facilitating the target processing speed, thereby eliminating the interference effect. In Experiments 1B, and 1C, we manipulated the relative processing advantage between targets and distractors by adjusting the temporal sequence of the presence of the targets and distractors: stimuli appearing first would gain more relative processing advantage. The results showed that when the relative processing advantage of a distractor was large enough, applying task rules cannot help participants shield against the interference. Contrarily, when the relative processing advantage of the distractor was small, even without applying task rules, participants did not experience the interference. In Experiment 2, we directly manipulated the processing speed of the targets and the distractor, so that participants who responded associatively would facilitate target processing speed, but participants who applied task rules would not. Contrary to previous studies but in line with our prediction, in Experiment 2, only participants who applied task rules had interference effects. Our results suggested that applying the task rule might not help us shield against the interference directly. Instead, applying task rules improves target-processing speed, which in turn reduces the relative processing advantage of the distractor and eliminates the interference.

How and when does leader narcissism hinder team radical creativity? The role of team information elaboration and inter-team competition

Purpose Drawing on social information processing theory and trait activation theory, this study aims to examine the mediating effect of leader narcissism on team radical creativity via team information elaboration and explores the moderating role of inter-team competition. Design/methodology/approach Time-lagged and multisource survey data were collected from 86 team leaders and 409 employees in a Chinese company. Path analysis was used to test the hypotheses. Findings The results indicated that leader narcissism could impede team radical creativity via team information elaboration. Moreover, the negative indirect effects of leader narcissism on team radical creativity were more pronounced when the inter-team competition was low. Originality/value This study makes contributions to the literature on leader narcissism and team radical creativity by examining the detrimental indirect effects of leader narcissism on team radical creativity via team information. Furthermore, it broadens current literature by investigating the potential positive intervention of inter-team competition on the negative aspects of leader narcissism.

Consumer processing of interactive online advertisements

<p>The internet is a computer mediated environment that facilitates the interaction between firms and consumers. This inherent interactivity gives marketers the opportunity to provide consumers with more engaging advertisements. Instead of a largely passive audience characteristic of broadcast and print media, advertising on the internet involves interaction between marketer and consumer, resulting in a consumer that is more active in the communication and persuasion process. In an interactive medium, the consumer can also interact with marketing messages in real time. This was not possible with print and broadcast advertising, therefore, understanding how this interaction influences advertising persuasiveness is important. The key research question for this study is what effect does interactivity within an online advertisement have on consumers’ attention to, processing of and attitude towards the ad? This research applies established information processing theory in an online context to develop a conceptual model of the effects of interactivity on consumer processing of advertisements. Using an online experiment to collect data this study manipulates interactivity within an online banner advertisement and tests the conceptual model using structural equation modelling. The results indicate that consumers pay more attention to online advertisements that are interactive and that the increased attention leads to an increase in processing of the advertisement and a more favourable attitude towards the ad. In addition those who interacted with the advertisement had more favourable thoughts about the advertisement. Previous effects of interactivity on processing and attitude towards the advertisements were not observed. A possible explanation is the assumption of attention to the advertisement made in previous studies. Instead this study suggests that interactivity cannot influence consumer processing of advertisements without the consumer first paying attention to the advertisement. The findings of this study contribute to the domains of interactivity and information processing theory through clarifying questions about the ability of interactive advertising to engage consumers and demonstrating the effectiveness of information processing theory to explain how consumers process interactive messages. Future research directions are outlined that include investigating what interactive features in advertisements are most engaging for consumers and combining self-report measures with more objective methods to provide a more comprehensive understanding of how consumers process interactive messages.</p>