The lateral prefrontal cortex is critical for the control and organization of information in working memory. In certain situations, effective reorganization can attenuate task difficulty, suggesting a dissociation between lateral prefrontal activity and basic memory demand. In a verbal working memory task, we investigated the enhancement of performance that occurs when incoming information can be reorganized into higher-level groups or chunks. In the fMRI scanner, volunteers heard and repeated a sequence of digits. Mathematically structured sequences, encouraging 'chunking', were compared with unstructured, random sequences. Though structured sequences were easier to remember, fMRI showed increased lateral prefrontal activation for these sequences. Specifically, both the dorsolateral and ventrolateral prefrontal cortices were activated preferentially for the structured sequences during encoding. When visual stimuli that can be chunked using spatial structure are used, similar results are observed. These results demonstrate that cognitively less demanding tasks may elicit greater lateral prefrontal recruitment. Thus, the lateral prefrontal cortex appears to play a general role in strategically recoding information from memory, in order to optimize performance.

Physiological changes in humans due to underwater environments have been well studied, but much less is known about the psychological effects of diving. The possible psychological effects include social, emotional, and cognitive alterations. This paper will focus on cognitive changes, especially changes in perception and memory, and will review studies of the effects of the underwater environment that have emerged over the past twenty-five years. The impact of the underwater environment on sensory memory, working memory and long-term memory will be described as well as the significance of contextdependent memory for diving. The varying effects of diving are important to understand because insights from the underwater environment can guide forays into other hostile environments, for example, space, interplanetary travel, and extremes of temperature and atmospheric conditions. This review serves as an important reminder of past research that is still very relevant. The cognitive changes discussed here affect a whole host of functions that are crucially related to adapting successfully to the challenges of the global environment.

Management researchers have recently shifted their focus to examine the effects of psychological diversity climate (PDC). Whereas the majority of this research has focused on front-line employees, we shift our attention to personnel in leadership positions to extend this literature. On the basis that PDC encourages the demonstration of fairness and discourages the demonstration of mistreatment, we rely on social information processing theory to explain why supervisor perceptions of PDC impact supervisory leadership style. Across three studies (one experiment and two multi-source field studies), we find that supervisor perceptions of PDC are positively related to employees’ evaluations of ethical leadership and negatively related to employees’ evaluations of abusive supervision. We also find that the impact of supervisor perceptions of PDC on ethical leadership and abusive supervisor is accentuated when supervisor negative affectivity is relatively high compared to relatively low. However, the impact of supervisor perceptions of PDC on ethical leadership and abusive supervision is attenuated when supervisor conscientiousness is relatively high compared to relatively low. In summary, our studies clarify why and when supervisor perceptions of PDC interact with supervisor characteristics to impact supervisory leadership style. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.