Construct-oriented Biodata: Capturing Change-related and Contextually Relevant Future Performance

This study highlights an approach to the development of performance and predictor constructs that has the potential to permit context and culture relevant selection. Task, contextual and adaptive measures of performance were used as criterion data in a selection study involving 325 staff in the hotel industry. Construct-oriented biodata were developed to predict adaptive and contextual performance and the validities were contrasted with measures of cognitive ability and personality. The results provided construct support for the separation of adaptive performance from task and contextual performance and for the predictive validity of change-related biodata after controlling for cognitive ability. The pattern of correlations among the personality measures, biodata scales and cognitive tests supported the construct validity of the biodata scales. Results are discussed in relation to the context in which the data were collected, and the general relevance of the procedure across countries or cultures.     

Perception and understanding of effects of gravity and inertia on object motion

Experiments using a preferential looking method, a perceptual judgment method, and a predictive judgment method investigated the development, from 7 months to 6 years of age, of sensitivity to the effects of gravity and inertia on inanimate object motion. The experiments focused on a situation in which a ball rolled off a flat surface and either continued in linear motion (contrary to gravity), turned abruptly and moved downward (contrary to inertia), or underwent natural, parabolic motion. When children viewed the three fully visible motions, both the preferential looking method and the perceptual judgment method provided evidence that sensitivity to inertia developed between 7 months and 2 years, and that sensitivity to gravity began to develop after 3 years. When children predicted the future location of the object without viewing the motions, the predictive judgment method provided evidence that sensitivity to gravity had developed by 2 years, whereas sensitivity to inertia began to develop only at 5–6 years. These findings suggest that knowledge of object motion develops slowly over childhood, in a piecemeal fashion. Moreover, the same system of knowledge appears to be tapped both in preferential looking tasks and in judgment tasks when children view fully visible events, but a different system may underlie children’s inferences about unseen object motions.     

Anger-Related Traits and Response to Interpersonal Conflict Among New York City Traffic Agents1

This study evaluates the psychosocial correlates of anger-related traits. Participants include New York City traffic enforcement agents (TEAs), who issue summonses for vehicular and parking violations and are frequently confronted by angry motorists. This sample of TEAs is 53% African American and 57% female. Participants completed surveys at 2 points, 4 months apart, which measured attitudinal, affective, and expressive components of hostility and anger, as well as dimensions of workplace psychosocial response. Results indicate that trait anger-in was positively associated with frequency of conflict, anger intensity, and burnout in cross-sectional analyses; and positively associated with frequency of conflict in prospective analyses. Trait anger was positively associated with an increase in burnout over a 4-month period. These findings provide support for the transactional model of hostility and health and have implications for worksite interventions promoting cardiovascular health.     

Initial knowledge: six suggestions

Although debates continue, studies of cognition in infancy suggest that knowledge begins to emerge early in life and constitutes part of humans' innate endowment. Early-developing knowledge appears to be both domain-specific and task-specific, it appears to capture fundamental constraints on ecologically important classes of entities in the child's environment, and it appears to remain central to the commonsense knowledge systems of adults.     

Family-expressed emotion,childhood-onset depression,and childhood-onset schizophrenia spectrum disorders: Is expressed emotion a nonspecific correlate of child psychopathology or a specific risk factor for depression?

Expressed emotion (EE) was examined, using the brief Five Minute Speech Sample measure, in families of (1) children with depressive disorders, (2) children with schizophrenia spectrum disorders, and (3) normal controls screened for the absence of psychiatric disorder. Consistent with the hypothesis of some specificity in the association between EE and the form of child disorder, rates of EE were significantly higher among families of depressed children compared to families of normal controls and families of children with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Within the depressed group, the presence of a comorbid disruptive behavior disorder was associated with high levels of critical EE, underscoring the need to attend to comorbid patterns and subtypes of EE in future research.This research was supported by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation as part of their Network on Risk and Protective Factors in the Major Mental Disorders. The authors wish to express their appreciation to Sybil Zaden and Ana Magana-Amato for their assistance coding the FMSS-EE data, to Gwen Gordon for her assistance with data analysis, and to the families participating in the project.     

Overseeing the Overseer: Contextualizing Training in Supervision

In responding to the Ellis and Douce article (this issue), the author of this article attempts to explain how the trainer of a consultative group in supervision might distinguish among the three relational contexts to assist the supervisor in understanding the source of supervisory dilemmas and in turn devise strategies that might be directed to the appropriate context. Furthermore, she presents a larger context for discussing the elements of supervision and their interrelationship. The map is a heuristic tool for developing a common language for understanding and analyzing the supervisory situation.     

Subjective familiarity of English word/name homophones

The subjective familiarity of 40 homophone pairs was examined. The homophones consisted of monosyllabic English words (on one reading) and male first names (on the other)—for example,art andArt. Subjects heard these homophones embedded in two kinds of lists, one with 40 unambiguous words and one with 40 unambiguous names. Ratings were made for familiarity as words and as names. These correlated significantly with the log of printed frequency (.63 for words, .53 for names). In a final task, just the homophones were presented, and the subjects were asked for a comparative rating of whether the word usage or the name usage was more familiar. This direct comparison correlated well (.91) with the difference between the ratings for the name and word familiarities, but less well (.55) with the differences between the printed frequencies of the word and name meanings. This indicates either consistent biases in the judgments or true differences between printed frequencies and subjective familiarity.     

The impact of career exploration and interview readiness on interview performance and outcomes

In a longitudinal study of 78 graduate business students, three aspects of career exploration—environment exploration, self-exploration, and the amount of information acquired—were examined as predictors of interview performance (interview rating and self-rating) and outcomes (call-back interviews and job offers). Environment exploration and the amount of information acquired related significantly with the recruiter's rating of interview performance and interview outcomes; self-exploration correlated with the recruiter's rating of interview performance. Interview readiness variables (perceived past performance, verbal persuasion, and feelings of self-efficacy) correlated modestly with career exploration variables, interview performance ratings, and interview outcomes.