Career adapt-abilities scale — Icelandic form: Psychometric properties and construct validity

This study examined the psychometric characteristics and construct validity of the Icelandic form of the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale (CAAS-Iceland). The CAAS consists of four scales that measure concern, control, curiosity, and confidence as psychosocial resources for managing occupational transitions, developmental tasks, and work traumas. The 24-item measure was translated from English and administered to 1566 Icelandic students aged 14–30. Internal consistency estimates of reliability for the subscale and total scores ranged from .77 to .92. The construct validity of the measure was tested using confirmatory methods. The results indicated that the four-factor hierarchical model of career adaptability shows an acceptable fit in Iceland. The mean scores on the scales are high compared to the other countries, indicating that there may be problems with the translation of the response scale. The results indicate that the CAAS-Icelandic Form is reliable and valid and can be used with minor modifications in career counseling and research in Iceland.     

The language of landmarks: the role of background knowledge in indoor wayfinding

To effectively wayfind through unfamiliar buildings, humans infer their relative position to target locations not only by interpreting geometric layouts, especially length of line of sight, but also by using background knowledge to evaluate landmarks with respect to their probable spatial relation to a target. Questionnaire results revealed that participants have consistent background knowledge about the relative position of target locations. Landmarks were rated significantly differently with respect to their spatial relation to targets. In addition, results from a forced-choice task comparing snapshots of a virtual environment revealed that background knowledge influenced wayfinding decisions. We suggest that landmarks are interpreted semantically with respect to their function and spatial relation to the target location and thereby influence wayfinding decisions. This indicates that background knowledge plays a role in wayfinding.     

Transport and use of common objects: Influence of weight on action planning

Internal knowledge and visual cues about object's weight play an important role in grasping and lifting objects. It has been shown that both visual cues and internal knowledge might influence movement kinematics and force production depending on action goal (use vs. transport). However, there is little evidence about weight's influence on action planning as reflected by initiation time. In the present study we investigated this issue. In Experiment 1, participants had to grasp light and heavy objects (without moving them) to either use or transport them. In Experiment 2 we asked another group of participants to actually use or transport the same objects. We observed that initiation times were faster for heavy objects than for light objects in both the transport and use tasks, but only in Experiment 2. Thus, weight influenced the planning of use and transport actions, only when the end-goal of the action was really achieved. These data are incompatible with the hypothesis that only use actions are supported by stored object's representations. They rather suggest that in some circumstances, depending of the end-goal of the action and the physical constraints the planning of both use and transport actions are based on stored object representation.     

Domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) coordinate their actions in a problem-solving task

Cooperative hunting is a cognitively challenging activity since individuals have to coordinate movements with a partner and at the same time react to the prey. Domestic dogs evolved from wolves, who engage in cooperative hunting regularly, but it is not clear whether dogs have kept their cooperative hunting skills. We presented pairs of dogs with a reward behind a fence with two openings in it. A sliding door operated by the experimenter could block one opening but not both simultaneously. The dogs needed to coordinate their actions, so that each was in front of a different opening, if one of them was to cross through and get food. All 24 dog pairs solved the problem. In study 1, we demonstrated that dogs understood how the apparatus worked. In study 2, we found that, although the performance of the pairs did not depend on the divisibility of the reward, pairs were quicker at coordinating their actions when both anticipated rewards. However, the dogs did not monitor one another, suggesting that their solutions were achieved by each individual attempting to maximize for itself.     

Domestic dogs conceal auditory but not visual information from others

A number of studies have shown that dogs are sensitive to a human’s perspective, but it remains unclear whether they use an egocentric strategy to assess what humans perceive. We investigated whether dogs know what a human can see and hear, even when the dogs themselves are unable to see the human. Dogs faced a task in which forbidden food was placed in a tunnel that they could retrieve by using their paw. Whereas the dogs could not see the experimenter during their food retrieval attempts, the experimenter could potentially see the dog’s paw. In the first experiment, dogs could choose between an opaque and a transparent side of the tunnel, and in the second experiment, they could choose between a silent and a noisy approach to the tunnel. The results showed that dogs preferred a silent approach to forbidden food but they did not hide their approach when they could not see a human present. We conclude that dogs probably rely on what they themselves can perceive when they assess what the human can see and hear.     

Testing QuickEst: No evidence for the Quick-Estimation heuristic

The Quick-Estimation heuristic (QuickEst) was introduced by Hertwig, Hoffrage, and Martignon (1999 Hertwig , R. , Hoffrage , U. , & Martignon , L. (1999) . Quick estimation: Letting the environment do the work . In G. Gigerenzer , P. M. Todd , & the ABC Research Group (Eds.) , Simple heuristics that make us smart (pp. 209 – 234) . New York : Oxford University Press . [Google Scholar]) as a fast and frugal method to generate numerical estimates. The heuristic posits that estimate-relevant knowledge is organised and searched according to ordered reference classes that are based on binary cue values. Two experiments tested two main predictions derived from QuickEst with respect to the memory search and estimation behaviour of human participants. The results provided no evidence that QuickEst is used in numerical estimation processes. As alternative explanation of our findings, we discuss a cyclic sampling mechanism that retrieves information from memory according to their associative strength.     

Deciding with the eye: How the visually manipulated accessibility of information in memory influences decision behavior

Decision situations are typically characterized by uncertainty: Individuals do not know the values of different options on a criterion dimension. For example, consumers do not know which is the healthiest of several products. To make a decision, individuals can use information about cues that are probabilistically related to the criterion dimension, such as sugar content or the concentration of natural vitamins. In two experiments, we investigated how the accessibility of cue information in memory affects which decision strategy individuals rely on. The accessibility of cue information was manipulated by means of a newly developed paradigm, the spatial-memory-cueing paradigm, which is based on a combination of the looking-at-nothing phenomenon and the spatial-cueing paradigm. The results indicated that people use different decision strategies, depending on the validity of easily accessible information. If the easily accessible information is valid, people stop information search and decide according to a simple take-the-best heuristic. If, however, information that comes to mind easily has a low predictive validity, people are more likely to integrate all available cue information in a compensatory manner.     

How to resolve doxastic disagreement

How should an agent revise her epistemic state in the light of doxastic disagreement? The problems associated with answering this question arise under the assumption that an agent’s epistemic state is best represented by her degree of belief function alone. We argue that for modeling cases of doxastic disagreement an agent’s epistemic state is best represented by her confirmation commitments and the evidence available to her. Finally, we argue that given this position it is possible to provide an adequate answer to the question of how to rationally revise one’s epistemic state in the light of disagreement.