The science of choosing the right decision threshold in high-stakes diagnostics.

Many diagnostic tasks require that a threshold be set to convert evidence that is a matter of degree into a positive or negative decision. Although techniques of decision analysis used in psychology help one select the particular threshold that is appropriate to a given situation and purpose, just the concept of adjusting the threshold to the situation is not appreciated in many important practical arenas. Testing for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and for dangerous flaws in aircraft structures are used here as illustrations. This article briefly reviews the relevant techniques and develops those two examples with data. It suggests that use of the decision techniques could substantially benefit individuals and society and asks how that use might be facilitated.     

Predictors of verdict and punitive damages in high-stakes civil litigation

This research investigated demographic and attitudinal- psychological predictors of verdict and amount of punitive damages awarded in high-stakes civil litigation. Four hundred and forty-six surrogate jurors, selected to be representative of actual jurors, were exposed to realistic case presentations in insurance, tobacco, and pharmaceutical cases that were about to go to trial. Hierarchical regression revealed that perceptions of the existence of a litigation crisis predicted verdict in the tobacco and pharmaceutical cases after controlling for all other variables. Demographic variables predicted verdict and punitive damage awards only modestly and in different ways in the three cases. Need for cognition, strength of will and rationality, and a perception that there is a litigation crisis predicted the amount of punitive damages awarded in the tobacco case. Litigation crisis also predicted the amount of punitive damages awarded in the pharmaceutical case. Implications for jury selection are discussed.     

Mindfulness,anxiety, and high-stakes mathematics performance in the laboratory and classroom

Mindfulness enhances emotion regulation and cognitive performance. A mindful approach may be especially beneficial in high-stakes academic testing environments, in which anxious thoughts disrupt cognitive control. The current studies examined whether mindfulness improves the emotional response to anxiety-producing testing situations, freeing working memory resources, and improving performance. In Study 1, we examined performance in a high-pressure laboratory setting. Mindfulness indirectly benefited math performance by reducing the experience of state anxiety. This benefit occurred selectively for problems that required greater working memory resources. Study 2 extended these findings to a calculus course taken by undergraduate engineering majors. Mindfulness indirectly benefited students’ performance on high-stakes quizzes and exams by reducing their cognitive test anxiety. Mindfulness did not impact performance on lower-stakes homework assignments. These findings reveal an important mechanism by which mindfulness benefits academic performance, and suggest that mindfulness may help attenuate the negative effects of test anxiety.     

Performance-induced emotions experienced during high-stakes table tennis matches

ObjectivesTo characterize the contents of emotions experienced by elite table tennis players during high-stakes matches and the situational elements that contribute to these experiences.DesignA four-case study.MethodThree top-level table tennis players from the French Men's Table Tennis Team volunteered to participate in the study. Four matches were studied. Procedures involved: (a) videotaping high-stakes table tennis matches, (b) conducting self-confrontation interviews with players after matches, (c) transcribing the players’ actions and self-confrontation data, (d) decomposing their activity into elementary units, and (e) identifying typical contents of emotion and typical emotional situations.ResultsThe contents of players’ emotions varied during matches. The pleasant or unpleasant tone of emotional content was linked to the set result and the interpretations of the unfolding situation. However, other elements of the competitive interaction (score configurations, judgments about the strokes performed) had a strong emotional coloration. Certain similar events (e.g., bad sensations during stroke performance) were frequently coupled with similar emotional content (e.g., displeasure).ConclusionsUntil quite recently, the predominant focus in sport psychology has been on pre-performance emotions, with far less attention paid to the subjective emotional experiences that occur during task execution. This exploratory study provides initial empirical support for the notion of bi-directionality in emotion–performance relationships [Hanin, Y.L. (Ed.). (2000). Emotions in sport. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics; Hanin, Y.L. (2003). Performance related emotional states in sport: A qualitative analysis. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research [On-line Journal], 4(1). Available at: http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-texte/1-03/1-03hanin-e.htm].     

A model for predicting the choice of conflict management strategies by subordinates in high-stakes conflicts

This paper represents an attempt to understand superior/subordinate conflict from the subordinate's perspective. A decisional model is presented to reflect the subordinate's choice process in selecting a conflict management strategy in high-stakes conflict. The three primary variables posited by the model to determine the subodinate's strategic choice are the subordinate's desire to remain in the organization, the subordinate's perceived congruence between the superior's and his or her own attitudes and beliefs, and the subordinate's perceived protection from arbitrary action. Depending on the subordinate's response to each of the variables, one of five conflict management strategies is selected. These strategies include problem solving, bargaining, appeasing, competing, and withdrawing. It is hoped that such a model will permit the manager to predict the subordinate's conflict behavior and hence aid in conflict management.     

Japanese children's trait and state worry and emotionality in a high-stakes testing environment

Our previous research using both Japanese Children's Trait and State Worry and Emotionality Scales indicated that there were several issues that needed resolution in a high-stakes testing environment. High-stakes testing environments are those in which there are serious consequences to the individual of how well he or she scores on a particular test. In this study, the high-stakes environment was characterized by higher state worry and emotionality but not higher trait worry and emotionality scores than in the previous study. A clear two-factor solution was found for the state measures but not for the trait measures. Males performed better on the achievement tests than females. The relationship of state anxiety to performance was non-linear. State worry was more highly predictive of poor performance than state emotionality.     

Successive relearning improves performance on a high-stakes exam in a difficult biopsychology course

Successive relearning combines two effective learning techniques (retrieval practice and spaced practice) and involves practicing retrieval until some level of mastery has been reached (i.e., at least one correct retrieval attempt) in each of multiple sessions. Several laboratory studies have demonstrated the promise of successive relearning for enhancing student learning, but attempts to evaluate its effectiveness in authentic educational contexts are limited. In the current research, we implemented successive relearning in a difficult biopsychology course to examine its effectiveness at enhancing student learning on a high-stakes exam. Students successively relearned some course content via a virtual flashcard program, whereas other course content was learned with business-as-usual activities. In two experiments, successive relearning boosted students' learning of course content by at least 10% (with ds ranging from 0.54 to 1.10). These findings suggest that implementing successive relearning in courses can be an effective method of promoting student achievement.     

Under pressure: the interaction between high-stakes contexts and individual differences in decision-making in humans and non-human species

Animal Cognition - Observed behavior can be the result of complex cognitive processes that are influenced by environmental factors, physiological process, and situational features. Pressure, a...     

Situational judgment tests in high-stakes settings: issues and strategies with generating alternate forms

This study used principles underlying item generation theory to posit competing perspectives about which features of situational judgment tests might enhance or impede consistent measurement across repeat test administrations. This led to 3 alternate-form development approaches (random assignment, incident isomorphism, and item isomorphism). The effects of these approaches on alternate-form consistency, mean score changes, and criterion-related validity were examined in a high-stakes context (N = 3,361). Generally, results revealed that even small changes in the context of the situations presented resulted in significantly lower alternate-form consistency. Conversely, placing more constraints on the alternate-form development process proved beneficial. The contributions, implications, and limitations of these results for the development of situational judgment tests and high-stakes testing are discussed.     

Examining the item response process to personality measures in high-stakes situations: Issues of measurement validity and predictive validity

We conducted two experimental studies with between-subjects and within-subjects designs to investigate the item response process for personality measures administered in high- versus low-stakes situations. Apart from assessing measurement validity of the item response process, we examined predictive validity; that is, whether or not different response models entail differential selection outcomes. We found that ideal point response models fit slightly better than dominance response models across high- versus low-stakes situations in both studies. Additionally, fitting ideal point models to the data led to fewer items displaying differential item functioning compared to fitting dominance models. We also identified several items that functioned as intermediate items in both the faking and honest conditions when ideal point models were fitted, suggesting that ideal point model is “theoretically” more suitable across these contexts for personality inventories. However, the use of different response models (dominance vs. ideal point) did not have any substantial impact on the validity of personality measures in high-stakes situations, or the effectiveness of selection decisions such as mean performance or percent of fakers selected. These findings are significant in that although prior research supports the importance and use of ideal point models for measuring personality, we find that in the case of personality faking, though ideal point models seem to have slightly better measurement validity, the use of dominance models may be adequate with no loss to predictive validity.     

Rethinking professional ethics in the cost-sharing era

Changes in healthcare financing increasingly rely upon patient cost-sharing to control escalating healthcare expenditures. These changes raise new challenges for physicians that are different from those that arose either under managed care or traditional indemnity insurance. Historically, there have been two distinct bases for arguing that physicians should not consider costs in their clinical decisions--an "aspirational ethic" that exhorts physicians to treat all patients the same regardless of their ability to pay, and an "agency ethic" that calls on physicians to be trustworthy advisors to their patients. In the setting of greater patient cost-sharing, physicians' aspiration and agency roles increasingly conflict. Satisfactorily navigating the new terrain of consumer-driven healthcare requires physicians to consider these two roles and how they can best be reconciled so as to maximize quality of care while respecting the heterogeneity of patients' financial resources and willingness to pay.     

Giving and receiving autonomy support in a high-stakes sport context: A field-based experiment during the 2012 London Paralympic Games

ObjectiveRecognizing that high-stakes competitions tend to pressure coaches toward a maladaptive controlling motivating style, we sought to evaluate the capacity of an intervention to help coaches adopt a more autonomy-supportive style as they and their athletes prepared for the 2012 London Paralympic Games.DesignWe adopted a coach-focused experimental research design that longitudinally assessed coaches' and athletes' self-report, rater-scored, and objective dependent measures.MethodWe randomly assigned 33 coaches and their 64 athletes from 10 sports into either an experimental or control group and assessed their motivation and functioning longitudinally.ResultsIn the control group, athletes and coaches both showed a significant longitudinal deterioration in all measures of motivation, engagement, and functioning. In the experimental group, none of the measures of motivation, engagement, and functioning deteriorated but, instead, were generally maintained. In terms of performance, athletes of coaches in the experimental group won significantly more Olympic medals than did athletes in the control group.ConclusionEnacting an autonomy-supportive coaching style within the context of a high-stakes sports competition functioned as an antidote to coaches' otherwise situationally-induced controlling style.     

Beyond the exclusively propositional era

Contemporary epistemology has assumed that knowledge is represented in sentences or propositions. However, a variety of extensions and alternatives to this view have been proposed in other areas of investigation. We review some of these proposals, focusing on (1) Ryle's notion of knowing how and Hanson's and Kuhn's accounts of theory-laden perception in science; (2) extensions of simple propositional representations in cognitive models and artificial intelligence; (3) the debate concerning imagistic versus propositional representations in cognitive psychology; (4) recent treatments of concepts and categorization which reject the notion of necessary and sufficient conditions; and (5) parallel distributed processing (connectionist) models of cognition. This last development is especially promising in providing a flexible, powerful means of representing information nonpropositionally, and carrying out at least simple forms of inference without rules. Central to several of the proposals is the notion that much of human cognition might consist in pattern recognition rather than manipulation of rules and propositions.The preparation of this article was supported in part by National Institutes of Health Grants No. NICHD-19265 and NICHD-06016. We would like to thank Rita Anderson, David Blumenfeld, Robert McCauley, and Patricia Siple for helpful discussions on points in this paper.     

The doctor-patient relationship in the post-managed care era

The growth of managed care was accompanied by concern about the impact that changes in health care organization would have on the doctor-patient relationship (DPR). We now are in a "post-managed care era," where some of these changes in health care delivery have come to pass while others have not. A re-examination of the DPR in this setting suggests some surprising results. Rather than posing a new and unprecedented threat, managed care was simply the most recent of numerous strains on the DPR that have occurred throughout the century. These strains are a constant, inevitable consequence of the varying needs and concerns of patient and physicians as they seek to balance their desires for a certain type of DPR with their simultaneous desire for other aspects of care such as lower costs, greater technological sophistication, and improved outcomes.     

智能时代的工程心理学

智能技术为智能时代的工程心理学研究和应用提供了新的机遇。为此, 系统提出了智能时代工程心理学的工作框架。该工作框架包括工程心理学研究和应用的对象、核心问题空间、学科理念、研究重点、应用范围、方法等。智能时代的人机关系呈现出一种新的形式: 人机组队式的人机合作关系。“以人为中心的人工智能”应该是智能时代工程心理学的学科理念。针对智能技术, 近期工程心理学研究者开始开展围绕新型人机关系的理论框架和基本问题、人机组队中的心理结构和决策控制、人机交互等方面的研究工作。为有效支持智能系统的研发, 概括总结了一些工程心理学新方法和提升的方法。最后, 针对当前工程心理学所面对的一些挑战提出了具体的建议。