Investigating the influence of organizational role on perceptions of risk in deep coal mines

The authors replicated O. Ostberg's (1980) study of forestry workers using a range of personnel groups in coal mines. Findings demonstrate a high level of consensus between a range of personnel groups for a set of pictorially depicted behavioral risks, at the level of rank order, but significant differences in terms of relative magnitudes. Magnitudes of perceived risk were found to be greater for those closest to the point of hazard than for members of more geographically and experientially distal groups. Findings are interpreted with reference to experiential influences associated with organizational role. Revealed differences between personnel groups are explained in terms of cognitive availability, specifically effects associated with habituation and familiarity with risk, these sources of perceptual bias appearing to interact with organizational role.     

Comparisons of three different investigative interview techniques with young children

After viewing a film of a mother hitting her son, a film not seen by the college student interviewers, children were misinformed about a detail (via exposure to a misleading question) as well as explicitly coached to disclose 3 false details. The children were then interviewed by interviewers who had previously learned 1 of 3 different interviewing procedures: the Yuille Step-Wise Interview developed by J. C. Yuille, R. Hunter, R. Joffe, & J. Zapamiuk (1993); a doll play interview developed by Action for Child Protection Inc. (1994); or the Modified Structured Interview developed for this study. The Modified Structured Interview yielded more "where" information and was better at detecting if coaching had occurred. However, the interviewers were not very good at discriminating suggested versus coached versus correct witnessed information. The authors found that the deeper one digs for memories, the more one uncovers incorrect versus correct items. They concluded that although the Modified Structured Interview was superior to the techniques currently in use, cautions are necessary.     

Maternal correlates of toddler insecure and dependent behavior

The present study was designed to examine the relationship between characteristics of mothers and their toddler's insecure and dependent behavior. The authors studied 254 2-year-old toddlers and their mothers via a structured questionnaire administered to the mothers in their homes. The extent to which insecure and dependent behavior is related to the domains of maternal child rearing, maternal personality traits, parental marital relations, and maternal drug use was assessed. Using Pearson correlations and hierarchical multiple regression analyses, the authors found that the maternal child-rearing and maternal personality domains have a direct effect on the toddlers' insecure and dependent behavior. The maternal child-rearing domain also served as a mediator for the domains of the maternal personality attributes, parents' marital relations, and maternal drug use. There also was evidence suggesting an indirect effect of maternal personality attributes on the toddlers' insecure and dependent behavior, which is mediated by the domain of maternal child-rearing practices. Implications for the prevention of insecure and dependent behavior in toddlers are discussed.     

Event-related potential and behavioral measures of attention in 5-, 7-, and 9-year-olds

In 2 experiments, the development of auditory selective attention in children was assessed. The participants, aged 5, 7, and 9 years, responded to target stimuli in the left ear for 1 series (ignoring the standard stimuli) and in the right ear for the other series. In Experiment 1, event-related potentials (ERPs) evoked by the auditory stimuli were recorded from frontal, central, and parietal sites. The 9-year-olds showed a greater processing negativity (Nd) to the attended channel compared with the 5-year-olds. Both 7- and 9-year-olds showed significantly larger amplitudes for the P3 component of ERPs in the attended vs. ignored condition. Behaviorally, the 5-year-olds made fewer hits and more false alarms than did older children, and the 9-year-olds made significantly more false alarms than did the 7-year-olds. The results of Experiment 2 showed that the detriment in the performance of the 9-year-olds was a result of task parameters. The inability of 5-year-olds to attend selectively appears to involve problems with the inhibition of the processing of irrelevant information and with selection of the correct response.     

Rigidity in children's drawings and its relation with representational change

Four studies tested the application of to the drawing domain. In particular, we tested her claim that young children are inhibited in their attempts at changing their graphic representations (representational change) due to being constrained by the order in which the elements of the representation are drawn (procedural rigidity). The first study required 60 children (4- to 6-year-olds and an older comparison group of 8-year-olds) to make three drawings of a familiar and novel topic. From these drawings each child was measured for procedural rigidity. In a further drawing the child was asked to modify their usual representation of each topic. Regression analyses revealed procedural rigidity levels were not predictive of manipulation performance. A second study, testing 75 4- to 6-year-olds and a third study, testing 30 3- to 4-year-olds, revealed that when young children were specifically asked to manipulate rigid sub-procedures on a familiar topic they were indeed able to do so. Finally, a fourth study (testing 40 5-year-olds and 40 8-year-olds) removed the notational trace in drawing (a possible aid for procedural interruption) but this still produced no evidence of a relation between procedural rigidity and representational change. We suggest how the concept of procedural rigidity might be re-interpreted for the drawing domain so that the RR model can remain as a domain-general theory of cognitive development. We also suggest the development of information processing may be crucial for flexibility in drawing.     

Power in stereotypically masculine domains: a Social Influence Strategy X Stereotype Match model

This work examines the hypothesis that stereotypes of groups to which low-power people belong should influence the perceptions and behavior of powerful people only when those stereotypes are both contextually relevant (e.g., women in masculine domains) and provide information of relevance given powerful people's beliefs about the relation between subordinates and goal attainment. Findings across two studies supported predictions. In a masculine domain, when high-power men were attentive to subordinate weaknesses that may produce thwarts to goal attainment, stereotypes of women defined the contextually relevant shortcomings of women, and stereotype-consistent high-power behaviors ensued. In contrast, when powerful men were attentive to subordinate strengths that may enhance goal strivings, stereotypes of women were uninformative (i.e., did not contain information about relevant strengths); female and male employees were responded to and, in turn, performed and reacted similarly. The implications of these findings for theorizing on the relation between power and stereotyping are discussed.     

Starting at the beginning: an introduction to coefficient alpha and internal consistency

Cronbach's a is the most widely used index of the reliability of a scale. However, its use and interpretation can be subject to a number of errors. This article discusses the historical development of a from other indexes of internal consistency (split-half reliability and Kuder-Richardson 20) and discusses four myths associated with a: (a) that it is a fixed property of the scale, (b) that it measures only the internal consistency of the scale, (c) that higher values are always preferred over lower ones, and (d) that it is restricted to the range of 0 to 1. It provides some recommendations for acceptable values of a in different situations.     

Multisensory temporal order judgments: when two locations are better than one

In Experiment 1, participants were presented with pairs of stimuli (one visual and the other tactile) from the left and/or right of fixation at varying stimulus onset asynchronies and were required to make unspeeded temporal order judgments (TOJs) regarding which modality was presented first. When the participants adopted an uncrossed-hands posture, just noticeable differences (JNDs) were lower (i.e., multisensory TOJs were more precise) when stimuli were presented from different positions, rather than from the same position. This spatial redundancy benefit was reduced when the participants adopted a crossed-hands posture, suggesting a failure to remap visuotactile space appropriately. In Experiment 2, JNDs were also lower when pairs of auditory and visual stimuli were presented from different positions, rather than from the same position. Taken together, these results demonstrate that people can use redundant spatial cues to facilitate their performance on multisensory TOJ tasks and suggest that previous studies may have systematically overestimated the precision with which people can make such judgments. These results highlight the intimate link between spatial and temporal factors in determining our perception of the multimodal objects and events in the world around us.     

Is there a “strength effect” in automatic semantic priming?

According to spreading activation models of automatic priming, highly related associates should yield stronger priming effects than weakly related associates. The strength of relations is usually based on word association norms. However, this strength effect has been found in some studies but not in others. The present study suggests that one factor that might be responsible for this inconsistency is whether the weak associate is the primary or nonprimary response in the word association norms This possibility was explored by comparing priming effects of weak nonprimary and primary associates with those of strong primary associates. Comparable priming effects were found for the strong and weak primary associates whereas the weak nonprimary associates did not yield any priming effects. These results were obtained both in paired (Experiment 1) and single (Experiment 2) presentation priming procedures. Thus, the rank of the associate is an important factor in predicting the magnitude of the priming effect.     

Belief and recollection of autobiographical memories

In three experiments, undergraduates rated autobiographical memories on scales derived from existing theories of memory. In multiple regression analyses, ratings of the degree to which subjects recollected (i.e., relived) their memories were predicted by visual imagery, auditory imagery, and emotions, whereas ratings of belief in the accuracy of their memories were predicted by knowledge of the setting. Recollection was predicted equally well in between- and within-subjects analyses, but belief consistently had smaller correlations and multiple regression predictions between subjects; individual differences in the cognitive scales that we measured could not account well for individual differences in belief. In contrast, measures of mood (Beck Depression Index) and dissociation (Dissociative Experience Scale) added predictive value for belief, but not for recollection. We also found that highly relived memories almost always had strong visual images and that remember/know judgments made on autobiographical memories were more closely related to belief than to recollection.