Testing antecedents to sales performance in postapartheid era: a field study

The predictors of objectively measured sales performance were assessed with 245 sales representatives from a large South African life insurance company. Sales representatives completed measures of their locus of control, entrepreneurial attitudes, biographical history, and performance was assessed from company records of sales, net commissions earned, and lapse ratios. The nature of employment contract, job status, and race explained significant differences in performance outcomes. The predictive nature of locus of control and entrepreneurial attitudes for performance outcomes was tested using structural equation modeling procedures, with limited validity. The implications for research and practice are also discussed.     

Automaticity: a theoretical and conceptual analysis

Several theoretical views of automaticity are discussed. Most of these suggest that automaticity should be diagnosed by looking at the presence of features such as unintentional, uncontrolled/uncontrollable, goal independent, autonomous, purely stimulus driven, unconscious, efficient, and fast. Contemporary views further suggest that these features should be investigated separately. The authors examine whether features of automaticity can be disentangled on a conceptual level, because only then is the separate investigation of them worth the effort. They conclude that the conceptual analysis of features is to a large extent feasible. Not all researchers agree with this position, however. The authors show that assumptions of overlap among features are determined by the other researchers' views of automaticity and by the models they endorse for information processing in general.     

Reasoning rats: forward blocking in Pavlovian animal conditioning is sensitive to constraints of causal inference

Forward blocking is one of the best-documented phenomena in Pavlovian animal conditioning. According to contemporary associative learning theories, forward blocking arises directly from the hardwired basic learning rules that govern the acquisition or expression of associations. Contrary to this view, here the authors demonstrate that blocking in rats is flexible and sensitive to constraints of causal inference, such as violation of additivity and ceiling considerations. This suggests that complex cognitive processes akin to causal inferential reasoning are involved in a well-established Pavlovian animal conditioning phenomenon commonly attributed to the operation of basic associative processes.     

When are neighbours hostile? Inhibitory neighbour effects in visual word recognition

Using masked priming, Segui and Grainger (1990) reported inhibitory effects of higher frequency neighbours on lower frequency targets (e.g., avec - AVEU), but not of lower frequency neighbours on higher frequency targets (e.g., aveu - AVEC). Conversely, with unmasked (conscious) priming, they observed inhibition for word pairs of the type "aveu - AVEC", but not for word pairs of the type "avec - AVEU". Both inhibitory effects were explained in terms of the frequency difference between the prime and the target. We argue that the observed inhibitory effects may emerge from the absolute frequency of the prime or the target, rather than their relative frequency. To test this, we investigated inhibitory effects between neighbour words of the same frequency under both masked and unmasked priming conditions. The results showed inhibition for same-frequency neighbours in case the prime and the target were high-frequency words, but not in case the prime and the target were low-frequency words. The theoretical implications of the findings are discussed within the context of interactive activation based models (e.g., Grainger & Jacobs, 1996; McClelland & Rumelhart, 1981).     

ELSI priorities for brain imaging

As one of the most compelling technologies for imaging the brain, functional MRI (fMRI) produces measurements and persuasive pictures of research subjects making cognitive judgments and even reasoning through difficult moral decisions. Even after centuries of studying the link between brain and behavior, this capability presents a number of novel significant questions. For example, what are the implications of biologizing human experience? How might neuroimaging disrupt the mysteries of human nature, spirituality, and personal identity? Rather than waiting for an ethical agenda to emerge from some unpredictable combination of the concerns of ethicists and researchers, the attention of journalists, or after controversy is sparked by research that cannot be retracted, we queried key figures in bioethics and the humanities, neuroscience, media, industry, and patient advocacy in focus groups and interviews. We identified specific ethical, legal and social issues (ELSI) that highlight researcher obligations and the nonclinical impact of the technology at this new frontier.     

Further evidence that the SNARC effect is processed along a dual-route architecture: Evidence from the lateralized readiness potential

In a binary response setting, it has been frequently observed that small numbers are reacted to faster with the left hand and large numbers with the right hand (i. e., the SNARC-effect) which reflects the spatial left-right orientation of the mental number line (Dehaene, Bossini, & Giraux, 1993). In line with the work of Keus and Schwarz (in press), we investigated the locus of the conflict in the SNARC effect in a parity judgment task with the Arabic numerals 1, 2, 8, or 9. Differences between compatible (left-hand response to 1 or 2 and right-hand response to 8 and 9) and incompatible SNARC conditions (left-hand response to 8 or 9 and right-hand response to 1 or 2) were observed in the lateralized readiness potential (LRP) but not in the peak latency of the P300. In accordance with Keus and colleagues (Keus, Jenks, & Schwarz, 2005), we argue that the locus of the conflict is situated at intermediate response-related stages. However, instead of adopting a single-route processing architecture, a dual route account is proposed as the underlying processing architecture explaining the SNARC effect.     

Segmentation of object outlines into parts: a large-scale integrative study

In this study, a large number of observers (N=201) were asked to segment a collection of outlines derived from line drawings of everyday objects (N=88). This data set was then used as a benchmark to evaluate current models of object segmentation. All of the previously proposed rules of segmentation were found supported in our results. For example, minima of curvature (i.e. locations along the contour where negative curvature takes an extreme value) were often used as segmentation points. The second point of a pair connected by a segmentation line often depended on more global shape characteristics such as proximity, collinearity, symmetry, and elongation. Based on these results, a framework is presented in which all of the previously proposed (and now empirically validated) segmentation rules or rules for part formation are integrated.     

A comparison of cue competition in a simple and a complex design

Recent evidence suggests that controlled reasoning processes play an important role in cue competition in human causal learning (see De Houwer, J., Beckers, T., & Vandorpe, S. (2005). Evidence for the role of higher-order reasoning processes in cue competition and other learning phenomena. Learning &Behavior, 33(2), 239-249, for a review). Until now, this evidence comes almost exclusively from studies with simple designs that involved only a limited number of cues. Little is known about the role of controlled reasoning processes when the design is more complex. It is important to examine this issue because the complexity of the design could determine the resources that are available for reasoning and thus the role that reasoning plays in cue competition. We directly compared cue competition in a simple and a complex design. The results showed that complexity of the design affected retrospective cue competition but not forward cue competition. More fine grained analyses with respect to retrospective cue competition showed that unovershadowing but not backward blocking differed significantly between complexity conditions.     

The representation of multiplication facts: developmental changes in the problem size, five, and tie effects

In this study, we investigated the development of basic effects that have been found in single-digit multiplication arithmetic: the problem size, five, and tie effects. Participants (9-, 10-, and 11-year-olds and adults) performed a production task on simple multiplication. The procedure replicated study [Canadian Journal of Psychology, Vol. 39, pp. 338-366], but the results show that the gradual decrease of the problem size effect ends in sixth grade. We report analyses on raw latencies and state trace analyses that take into account reaction time scaling as a function of age. The results show that 11-year-olds do not differ significantly from adults on any of the three effects. Before 11 years of age, interesting developmental changes occur.