THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RECRUITING SOURCE, APPLICANT QUALITY, AND HIRE PERFORMANCE: AN ANALYSIS BY SEX, ETHNICITY, AND AGE

This study investigated both an applicant pool and its resulting class of new hires in an attempt to clarify a number of empirical questions concerning recruiting source effectiveness. A pre-established database of applicants and hires for the job of life insurance agent in a large insurance company was analyzed for recruiting activity. Differences in applicant quality and new hire survival were found in favor of the informal recruiting sources. A second measure of hire success, new business commission credits, failed to show differences across recruiting sources. The informal recruiting sources yielded significantly higher selection ratios than did formal sources for all groups. Examination of recruiting source use showed significant group differences, with females and blacks using the formal recruiting sources more frequently than males, non-minorities, and Hispanics. While the informal recruiting sources yielded higher quality applicants and more successful hires for all groups, this research cautions that the implementation of revised recruiting policies must be carefully monitored for adverse effects on protected groups.     

Hair mineral analysis: biochemical imbalances and violent criminal behavior

Trace mineral analysis of human hair was utilized to determine whether violent and nonviolent criminals could be differentiated on the basis of concentrations of levels of major and trace minerals. 40 violent and 40 nonviolent inmates from a prison population were selected for study. 27 mineral levels were analyzed and a discriminant function analysis correctly classified 86% of the violent and 78% of the nonviolent inmates. The results lent support to the hypothesis that significantly different levels of trace minerals could be found between the two groups.     

Episodic manifestation of hemiparkinson syndrome with severe dementia personality change and precursors of paranoid hallucination symptoms

A case of episodic manifestation of semiparalysis agitans is described, accompanied by severe demential personality change and precursory hallucinatory symptoms, which is made the basis for the discussion of aspects of mental disorders, notably dementia and symptoms resembling schizophrenia, in Parkinsonian patients. By way of allusion to Glass, a diagnosis including a very extensive, complex, symptomatology is made of a Parkinsonian syndrome.     

Blocking Effects in Two-Choice Discrimination Tasks in Rhesus Monkeys Macaca Mulatta

The Psychological Record - The present experiments investigated blocking effects in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) in a discrimination learning paradigm using a single stimulus modality. Two...     

Extraretinal information about eye position during involuntary eye movement: optokinetic afternystagmus

Despite importance for theories of perception, controversy exists as to whether information is available to the perceptual system about involuntary as well as voluntary eye movements. We measured the perceived direction of targets flashed briefly in an otherwise dark field during the primary phase of optokinetic afternystagmus (OKAN), an involuntary eye movement that persists in darkness following optokinetic stimulation. Perceived direction was measured by unseen pointing in one experiment and by pointing made under visual control in a second experiment. Pointing was essentially veridical in both experiments, indicating that accurate extra-retinal information about eye position (presumably, as efference copy) exists for OKAN. Illusory motion of visual targets, which can occur during involuntary oculomotor responses, therefore cannot be attributed to a lack of efference-copy signals for such eye movements.     

Ambiguity and structural information in the perception of reversible figures

The perspective reversals elicited by a set of drawings based on the Mach truncated pyramid are examined. We obtained each pattern of the set from the previous one by adding to it some graphic cues, which were easily integrated into one of the two competing interpretations, thus reducing step by step the ambiguity of the basic pattern. The phenomenological model, proposed to link the mean times of both alternative interpretations with their complexities, is in close agreement with our experimental data. Furthermore, different aspects of such data are well described by the model equations: The measure of the prevalence of the supported interpretation is well correlated with the difference in complexity between the two alternative interpretations; the two different trends of the mean time of the unfavored interpretation, found in the data obtained from different observers as a function of the various patterns of the set, are well fitted by the model without the need for any specific additional hypothesis.     

Effects of preshot routine on free-throw shooting

The effect of prohibiting the use of a preshot routine on free-throw shooting in competitive situations was investigated. 25 male high school basketball players were instructed to attempt 50 free throws alternating in blocks of 10 between the use of their preshot routine and shooting without it. To make the situation competitive, subjects were run in groups of five and their performance was recorded on a large easel placed to the side of the free-throw line. A significantly larger number of baskets were made in the preshot routine condition than without the routine. A competitive situation led to a greater decrement in baskets than had been reported in 1986 by Lobmeyer and Wassermen during noncompetitive free-throw shooting.     

Helping the child with cancer: what school personnel want to know

As more children with cancer survive, the importance of facilitating school reintegration as a part of maximizing the quality of life has become evident. Workshops have been presented to school personnel to acquaint them with the issues facing cancer patients and their families, but there are gaps in our knowledge of what school personnel really need or want to know. In this study, 18 teachers of children with cancer and 15 teachers with no prior contact with students with cancer completed a questionnaire designed to assess needs, beliefs, and priorities with regard to working with cancer patients in the classroom. Significant findings included: (a) a consensus that a certain core of information about medical/psychological issues would be useful, and presentation of such information by psychologists and medical personnel working with such families would be optimal; (b) teachers having cancer patients as students were less likely to see the adaptation of siblings as an important issue; (c) teachers associated working with a student with cancer with less stress and demands on their time than predictable from previous studies; and (d) cancer patients as a whole were rated as having fewer behavioral, emotional, and learning problems than randomly selected students without a major illness, suggesting a "halo effect" or contradiction of some literature. Preliminary findings are detailed and implications are discussed for those attempting to help teachers facilitate students' adjustment to school following diagnosis and treatment of cancer.     

A quasi-nonmetric method for multidimensional scaling VIA an extended euclidean model

An Extended Two-Way Euclidean Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) model which assumes both common and specific dimensions is described and contrasted with the standard (Two-Way) MDS model. In this Extended Two-Way Euclidean model then stimuli (or other objects) are assumed to be characterized by coordinates onR common dimensions. In addition each stimulus is assumed to have a dimension (or dimensions) specific to it alone. The overall distance between objecti and objectj then is defined as the square root of the ordinary squared Euclidean distance plus terms denoting the specificity of each object. The specificity,s _j , can be thought of as the sum of squares of coordinates on those dimensions specific to objecti, all of which have nonzero coordinatesonly for objecti. (In practice, we may think of there being just one such specific dimension for each object, as this situation is mathematically indistinguishable from the case in which there are more than one.)We further assume that _ij =F(d _ij ) +e _ij where _ij is the proximity value (e.g., similarity or dissimilarity) of objectsi andj,d _ij is the extended Euclidean distance defined above, whilee _ij is an error term assumed i.i.d.N(0, ²).F is assumed either a linear function (in the metric case) or a monotone spline of specified form (in the quasi-nonmetric case). A numerical procedure alternating a modified Newton-Raphson algorithm with an algorithm for fitting an optimal monotone spline (or linear function) is used to secure maximum likelihood estimates of the paramstatistics) can be used to test hypotheses about the number of common dimensions, and/or the existence of specific (in addition toR common) dimensions.This approach is illustrated with applications to both artificial data and real data on judged similarity of nations.