BOOKS Reviews

William James and the Reinstatement of the Vague. By William Joseph Gavin.
Anti-foundationalism Old and New. Edited by Tom Rockmore and Beth Singer.     

Gender,role conflict,and the development of relativistic and dialectical thinking

Females have been found to experience greater role conflict. The present study explored whether this conflict fosters earlier social cognitive development. A battery of questionnaires, including a vocabulary test, a role conflict questionnaire, a role articulation questionnaire, and a questionnaire of social cognitive (i.e., absolute, relativistic, and dialectical) paradigm beliefs, was administered to a sample of 121 high-school freshmen, college freshmen, and college seniors. As predicted, females reported more role conflict, showed greater role articulation, and exhibited more advanced (i.e., relativistic and/or dialectical) social cognitive development. The role conflict questionnaire did not correlate with social cognition or mediate its relationship to gender, but future role articulation of family roles and the synthesis of family and work roles did. However, the causal relations were not unidirectional, and alternative hypotheses are discussed.     

Effects of stress on recall

Subjects in experimental conditions were exposed to a traumatic autopsy colour slide (labelled either as of New York Police Department (NYPD) or MGM studio origin) embedded in a neutral series of travel scenes, while control subjects saw a neutral target. Subjects in the high-stress condition showed a significant decrease in memory for neutral slides which followed the NYPD-labelled traumatic stimulus (p < 0.001). Results support evidence in the eyewitness memory field which indicate reduced recall under elevated levels of stress.     

Perceptual organization and focused attention: The role of objects and proximity in visual processing

The influence of the Gestalt grouping principles of similarity, closure, and proximity on the size of the response-compatibility effect was examined in a focused attention task. In three studies, subjects responded to a centrally located target and attempted to ignore adjacent distractors. The distractors, which served as targets on other trials, could be compatible, incompatible, or neutral with respect to the response of the target. In addition, the distractors and the target could be embedded in the same object, presented in the same color, presented on different objects, or presented in different colors. The typical response-compatibility effect (B. A. Eriksen & C. W. Eriksen, 1974) was found when the target and distractors were embedded in the same object or presented in the same color. Performance was poorer when the target was surrounded by response-incompatible distractors than when it was surrounded by response-compatible distractors. However, the response-compatibility effect was eliminated-w-hen. the target and distractors were embedded in different objects, even when the distance between the items was less than.25° of visual angle. Furthermore, the response-compatibility effect was of intermediate size when the distractors were not grouped strongly with the target or with neutral flankers. The results are discussed in terms of space- and object-based models of visual attention.     

Does Acquisitive Self‐Presentation in Personality Self‐Ratings Enhance Validity? Evidence from two experimental field studies

The aim of the present research was to demonstrate that acquisitive self‐presentation in personality scales is not a barrier to their criterion‐related validities in human resource contexts, but rather a means to improve them. A pilot study (Study 1) with 96 job incumbents provided preliminary positive evidence. In Study 2, in the experimental group (n=99), the instructions asked job incumbents to work on a Big‐Five personality inventory (BFI‐K) as if they took part in a personnel selection procedure for a personally very attractive position. In the control group (n=93) of Study 2, job incumbents were asked to answer the inventory items honestly. As expected, the correlation between the self‐ratings of the motive to get along (i.e., which comprises emotional stability, conscientiousness, and agreeableness) and contextual performance assessments was significantly higher in the experimental group than in the control group in Study 2. Additionally, the correlation between the self‐ratings of the motive to get ahead (i.e., which comprises extraversion and openness to experience) and task performance and leadership assessments was significantly higher in the experimental group than in the control group in Study 2. It is proposed that responding to a personality inventory in a human resource decision situation should be conceptualized as a workplace simulation.     

Age-related differences in the involvement of the prefrontal cortex in attentional control

We investigated the relative involvement of cortical regions supporting attentional control in older and younger adults during performance on a modified version of the Stroop task. Participants were exposed to two different types of incongruent trials. One of these, an incongruent-ineligible condition, produces conflict at the non-response level, while the second, an incongruent-eligible condition, produces conflict at both non-response and response levels of information processing. Greater attentional control is needed to perform the incongruent-eligible condition compared to other conditions. We examined the cortical recruitment associated with this task in an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm in 25 older and 25 younger adults. Our results indicated that while younger adults demonstrated an increase in the activation of cortical regions responsible for maintaining attentional control in response to increased levels of conflict, such sensitivity and flexibility of the cortical regions to increased attentional control demands was absent in older adults. These results suggest a limitation in older adults’ capabilities for flexibly recruiting the attentional network in response to increasing attentional demands.     

Modeling certainty equivalents for imprecise gambles

We present results from two experiments on the relative importance of, and subjects' differential sensitivity to, vagueness on both probabilities and outcomes. Subjects in these studies made certainty equivalent (CE) judgments for precise and vague gambles. In the first study subjects responded to gain gambles only; in the second they judged both gain and loss gambles. Model-free analyses of the results indicate (a) a higher concern for the precision of the outcomes than that of the probabilities, (b) vagueness seeking for positive outcomes and (c) vagueness avoidance for negative outcomes and (d) no strong modal attitude toward vagueness on the probability dimension. The greater salience of the outcomes can be explained by the nature of the response mode (CEs). The reflection of attitudes towards outcome vagueness in the two domains can be explained by the distinct goals of the DMs in the two cases, which cause them to focus on the highest (most desirable) possible gain or the largest (most dreaded) conceivable loss. We propose and fit a new model of decision making with vaguely specified attributes that generalize the Prospect Theory model for the precise case. The new generalized model combines the two submodels (preference among precise lotteries and effects of vagueness) and allows estimation of the vagueness parameters. These estimated parameters are consistent with, and confirm, the patterns uncovered by the qualitative analysis.