Responses to patterns of employee absences

Simulated supervisory responses to different patterns of absence were examined in a 2×2×2 factorial experiment. Annual employee absence records were varied in terms of frequency of absence, when in the year absences occurred (timing) and the mean time between absences. The responses of 73 raters to these records were evaluated in terms of perceived intentions of the employee, perceived impact on the company and raters' intentions to act. The results cast doubts on the role of attributions of intentionality as a mediator between absences and supervisory action. A three-way interaction on supervisor action suggests a three stage model in which frequency has the dominant effect, followed by timing and mean time between absences.     

Behavioral methods to reduce shoplifting

Shoplifting is a serious crime affecting most (if not all) retail businesses and responsible for increases in merchandise prices and customer services. Numerous methods exist to reduce shoplifting among consumers. The two most common types of shoplifting treatments either directly treat the shoplifter or attempt to prevent shoplifting through response prevention strategies in the retail environment. A critical review of the most common methods to reduce shoplifting reveal that case study research lacks appropriate experimental control to be convincing; and that the most promising strategies are those methods that attempt to prevent shoplifting in the retail environment. However, the more global response prevention methods could benefit if an account of the total volume of shoppers were controlled for thus providing a ratio of shoppers to opportunities to shoplift.     

Exemplary job analysis systems in selected organizations: A description of process and outcomes

Job analysis is an important aspect of human resource management. This study was conceived to further our understanding of how job analysis may best be used to enhance the variety of human resource management activities that rely on it. Nine geographically dispersed organizations, carefully selected on the basis of their exemplary job analysis functions, were each visited and their job analysis functions studied for a period ranging from one to three days. These organizations represented a wide range of industries. We found that job analysis functions are typically highly centralized and part or all of these functions are often housed in a unit dealing with compensation. The idea of a fully integrated personnel system based on a comprehensive job analysis data base is not quite ready for widespread adoption. However, a multipurpose approach, designed to serve several applications, is feasible to develop. Little progress has been made in estimating the costs of job analysis functions. Rudimentary cost estimates prepared by us on anad hoc basis revealed that the annual costs for job analysis functions ranged from $150,000 to $4,000,000 with a median of$280,000.     

Raster versus calligraphic display devices for assessing visual performance: The influence of stimulus area and uncertainty

Sixty-hertz raster scan monitors provide relatively inexpensive solutions to problems associated with presenting complex visual stimuli. However, they restrict the user to displays in which stimulus characteristics cannot be changed more often than once every 16.67 msec. Calligraphic monitors allow very high frame rates, but not the generation of complex or chromatic images (unless very expensive monitors are purchased). A method is reported for increasing the frame rate of some raster monitors at the expense of the number of lines that are painted. Also, data relating to the influence of such a modification on visual performance is presented.     

Combining the roles of “Priest” and “physician”: A clinical case

In antiquity the healing role was usually performed by one person-a priest-physician. This also applied to hypnotism. As science emerged, eventually the roles of physician and priest were separated and performed by different persons. In the present case the roles of priest and physician were again united, resulting in significant improvement for the patient. Previously the separated roles had been ineffective.Edward M. Scott, Ph.D., a licensed psychologist in private practice, is Professor of Medical Psychology, University of Oregon Health Sciences Center, Portland, and Clinical Manager of the Alcohol Treatment and Training Center, Department of Human Resources, Oregon State Mental Health Division. He is an Associate Editor of theInternational Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, the author of three books, and co-editor (with his wife Kathy) of a fourth book, and the author of 39 published articles.     

A software system for the collection of retrospective protocols prompted by eye fixations

A software system is capable of recording eye position, reducing these data to a sequence of eye fixations, and immediately replaying this fixation sequence superimposed over the original stimulus. The replay can be controlled by the subject to produce various speeds, to pause, or to back up to earlier fixations. The purpose of the replay software is to enable the eye fixations to prompt a retrospective verbal protocol. Such a prompted protocol should reduce the forgetting and fabrication problems that are often associated with retrospective protocols. In a preliminary experimental test, the prompted protocol method yielded longer protocols and contained more words than those generated by either the concurrent or retrospective protocol methods.     

Developmental changes in the internal structure of semantic categories

The present experiment was designed to examine the development of the cognitive representation of semantic categories. Response latencies on a classification task were compared for second, fourth, and sixth graders (8, 10, and 12 years of age, respectively) and college students. On each trial the subjects were presented with two pictures that represented either typical or atypical category exemplars. The two pictures were physically identical, nonidentical pictures from the same category, or pictures from different categories. One half of the trials were primed by presenting a category name in advance of the stimuli. In addition, stimulus degradation was manipulated in order to assess the locus of priming effects. A significant interaction of age × priming × typicality was found for physically identical stimuli. This interaction indicated that the nature of the internal representation of categories changed from the second graders to the adults. It was suggested that the second graders might weigh features inappropriately in generating semantic prototypes. The fact that stimulus degradation and priming did not interact at any age level for any of the match types indicates that priming affected a conceptual encoding stage rather than a perceptual encoding stage.