A Prototype Matching Approach to Understanding the Role of Applicant Gender and Age in the Evaluation of Job Applicants1

This research uses a prototype matching approach to understand how job applicant evaluations are made and the role that applicant gender and age play in these evaluations. It is hypothesized that raters represent information about jobs and jobholders in person-in-job prototypes. Raters evaluate applicants by matching information about applicants to the person-in-job prototype associated with the job for which the applicant is applying. Person-in-job prototypes are comprised of features that are more (i.e., central) or less (i.e., peripheral) strongly associated with the prototype. Three laboratory studies examined several hypotheses derived from a prototype matching approach. Results indicated that applicants who matched on more central features were evaluated more favorably than applicants who matched on fewer central features of person-in-job prototypes. In addition, applicants who matched on age were evaluated more favorably than applicants who did not match on age when age was a central but not a peripheral feature of a person-in-job prototype. However, applicants who matched on gender were not evaluated differently from applicants who did not match on gender when gender was a central or a peripheral feature of a person-in-job prototype. Finally, there was some evidence that raters used applicant gender in a complex manner when evaluating applicants. Implications for theory and research on bias in selection are discussed.     

Content: Covariation,control and contingency

The Representational Theory of the Mind allows for psychological explanations couched in terms of the contents of propositional attitudes. Propositional attitudes themselves are taken to be relations to mental representations. These representations (partially) determine the contents of the attitudes in which they figure. Thus, Representationalism owes an explanation of the contents of mental representations. This essay constitutes an atomistic theory of the content of formally or syntactically simple mental representation, proposing that the content of such a representation is determined by the intersection of the representation's correlational and control properties. The theory is distinguished from standard information-based accounts of mental content in allowing that the relevant correlations be contingent while insisting on an efferent aspect to mental content. The theory on offer allows for a natural explanation of misrepresentation, finds a niche for the notion ofnarrow content, welcomes radical first person fallibility with respect to questions of content, admits of mental ambiguity and recognizes that the future of a psychological agent is a factor in determining the content of the agent's present psychological states.     

Child abuse and neglect reporting laws: Understanding interests,understanding policy

This article focuses on the interests of the persons involved in the child abuse and neglect reporting process—(1) the child, the accused, and the family members of the child and of the accused; (2) physicians, psychologists, therapists, private agency and hospital social workers, educators, and other professionals; (3) law enforcement officers, state social service workers, lawyers, and judges; and (4) legislators. With this focus, the article illuminates the rationales and explicit and implicit policy choices reflected in the legislation's reporting requirements and processes. Such insight is necessary to a critical review of existing legislation and future improvements in the practical operation of reporting law legislation. This article demonstrates that the interaction of these interests is complex and often creates competing concerns and goals. This article concludes that efforts should be made to better harmonize these interests in future legislation.     

Improving the encoding of verbal reports by using MPAS: A computer-aided encoding system

The dramatically increased use of verbal report methodologies in psychological research has created a need for new tools to improve the efficiency and reliability of encoding these data. A computer-aided protocol encoding system called MPAS (Multiple Protocol Analysis System) presents individual protocol segments in a randomised order to one or more coders and then stores computer keyboard-entered codes for later output to an SPSS formatted data file. In the present paper, MPAS is described, and a brief example is provided of how MPAS can be used in a con-trolled laboratory study to rigorously analyze verbal protocol data.     

Occupational stress and burnout amongst staff working with people with an intellectual disability

The Occupational Stress Inventory (Osipow & Spokane, 1987) and the Maslach Burnout Inventory (Maslach, 1982) were used to assess the levels of occupational stress and burnout amongst staff providing services to people with an intellectual disability both in an institutional and community settings. Data were analyzed to determine the effects of direct client contact, staff mental health, and working environment (institution vs. community). While levels of burnout and occupational stress were not high overall, staff working in an institutional setting scores more highly.     

Feature selection and classification: A developmental study

Two hundred and thirteen children between the ages of 4 and 16 sorted 30 complex objects freely into groups. These were either schematic faces, schematic imaginary animals, or histoform patterns and were constructed from 9 independently and continuously varying features, each with 10 levels. The three sets were equivalent in terms of underlying numerical structure. A new method of analysis of the groups formed yielded the following direct measures of subjective organization in the sorting of each child: the number of features used in sorting, the accuracy of sorting, and the number of independent dimensions of classification. Both the material and the analysis of sorting were devised on the assumption that only some of the component features of complex objects are used for classification, while others are ignored. Sorting performance differed markedly both with age and with different types of material. The improvement in sorting ability with age, except for the youngest children, could be attributed to an increase in the number of features used rather than an improvement in the accuracy of use. In contrast, the poor sorting of histoform patterns as opposed to faces and animals was due to a low level of sorting accuracy. The basic results on the development of classification confirmed previous studies, and hence suggest that it is valid to consider feature selection as a basic component of classification.     

Recovery of the US representation over time during extinction

Four experiments used a conditioned suppression procedure in rats to explore changes in the US representation over time during the course of extinction. They employed two previously reported effects: reinstatement of responding to an extinguished CS by separate US presentation, and the erasure of that effect by interposed nonreinforcement of a second excitatory CS. These effects have been interpreted as enhancing and depressing the US representation, respectively. Experiment 1 found the erasing effect to decrease but still to remain substantial after over a 4-day period, suggesting a partial recovery with time of a deliberately depressed US representation. Experiment 2 implicated this change as a contributor to the phenomenon of spontaneous recovery by showing that recovery to be sensitive to erasure effects. Experiments 3 and 4 found evidence for an interaction between the state of the US representation and the amount of associative change which results from nonreinforcement of an excitatory CS. When the US representation was strong, either because of reinstatement or the passage of time, nonreinforcement of a CS was especially effective in producing associative change. When the US representation had been depressed by erasure, those nonreinforcements produced relatively less associative loss. Moreover, these effects upon associations were reasonably stable in the sense that they left asymptotic differences in the strength of associations after extinction. Together with previous findings, these results point to an important role for the US representation in the performance and learning which occurs during extinction.     

The development of a microprocessor-based system on a limited budget

This paper describes the design and implementation of a microprocessor-based front-end processor built to increase the throughput of a NOVA minicomputer used for stimulus preparation tasks. The problems encountered during the various stages of the project are discussed, and the various hardware and software development aids are described. The paper concludes with an assessment of the relative merits of in-house development of microprocessor-based systems and the purchase of ready-made equipment.