The relative influence of advice from human experts and statistical methods on forecast adjustments

Decision makers and forecasters often receive advice from different sources including human experts and statistical methods. This research examines, in the context of stock price forecasting, how the apparent source of the advice affects the attention that is paid to it when the mode of delivery of the advice is identical for both sources. In Study 1, two groups of participants were given the same advised point and interval forecasts. One group was told that these were the advice of a human expert and the other that they were generated by a statistical forecasting method. The participants were then asked to adjust forecasts they had previously made in light of this advice. While in both cases the advice led to improved point forecast accuracy and better calibration of the prediction intervals, the advice which apparently emanated from a statistical method was discounted much more severely. In Study 2, participants were provided with advice from two sources. When the participants were told that both sources were either human experts or both were statistical methods, the apparent statistical‐based advice had the same influence on the adjusted estimates as the advice that appeared to come from a human expert. However when the apparent sources of advice were different, much greater attention was paid to the advice that apparently came from a human expert. Theories of advice utilization are used to identify why the advice of a human expert is likely to be preferred to advice from a statistical method. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Counting subjects

Kolak’s arguments for the thesis ‘there is only one person’ in fact show that the subject-in-itself is not a countable entity. The paper argues for this assertion by comparing Kolak’s concept of the subject with Kant’s notion of the transcendental unity of apperception (TUAP), which is a formal feature of experience and not countable. It also argues the point by contrasting both the subject and the TUAP with the notion of the individual human being or empirical self, which is the main concern standard theories of personal identity such as those of Williams, Parfit and Nozick. Unlike the empirical self, but rather like Kant’s TUAP, the subject-in-itself cannot be counted because it is not an object or substance, despite Kolak’s thesis that there is only one. The paper also maintains that Kolak’s contention that the subject is an entity hinges on a strong and less plausible interpretation of Kant’s transcendental idealism.     

A Qualitative Approach to Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) Training Development: Identification of Metacognitive Strategies

Although Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) training is common in the sciences, the effectiveness of RCR training is open to question. Three key factors appear to be particularly important in ensuring the effectiveness of ethics education programs: (1) educational efforts should be tied to day-to-day practices in the field, (2) educational efforts should provide strategies for working through the ethical problems people are likely to encounter in day-to-day practice, and (3) educational efforts should be embedded in a broader program of on-going career development efforts. This article discusses a complex qualitative approach to RCR training development, based on a sensemaking model, which strives to address the afore-mentioned training concerns. Ethnographic observations and prior RCR training served the purpose of collecting information specific to a multi-disciplinary and multi-university research center with the goal of identifying metacognitive reasoning strategies that would facilitate ethical decision-making. The extensive qualitative analyses resulted in the identification of nine metacognitive reasoning strategies on which future RCR training will be developed. The implications of the findings for RCR training in the sciences are discussed.     

Third party assisted conception: an African perspective

The central importance of reproduction in all human cultures has given rise to many methods and techniques of assisting reproduction or overcoming infertility. Such methods and techniques have achieved spectacular successes in the Western world, where processes like in vitro fertilization (IVF) constitute a remarkable breakthrough. In this paper, the author attempts to reflect critically on assisted reproduction technologies (ART) from the background and perspective of African culture, a culture within which human reproduction is given the highest priority but which also exhibits a highly ambivalent attitude to modern technology-assisted methods of reproduction. The author considers the ethical crux of reproductive technologies to be linked to the issue of the moral status of the human embryo and argues that a morally significant line of demarcation cannot be drawn between embryos and other categories of humans.     

A component analysis of behavioral skills training with volunteers teaching motor skills to individuals with developmental disabilities

This study included a component analysis of behavioral skills training (BST) for teaching volunteers how to use this training method to support individuals with developmental disabilities in a physical education program. In an alternating treatment design embedded within a multiple baseline design across five participants, the number of BST steps that volunteers completed correctly while teaching four motor skills was measured. In the initial training phase, each motor skill was taught to volunteers using a specific component of BST (i.e., instructions, modeling, rehearsal, or feedback). In subsequent training phases, BST components were combined to teach the volunteers the motor skills for which they did not reach a predetermined mastery criterion (a score of four correct responses across two consecutive trials). Maintenance was assessed. Results indicated that individual components of BST alone were sufficient for volunteers to meet the mastery criterion; however, the full BST framework was necessary for skill maintenance. Strengths, limitations, and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Cross-modal self-recognition: the role of visual, auditory, and olfactory primes

Three priming experiments were conducted to determine how information about the self from different sensory modalities/cognitive domains affects self-face recognition. Being exposed to your body odor, seeing your name, and hearing your name all facilitated self-face recognition in a reaction time task. No similar cross-modal facilitation was found among stimuli from familiar or novel individuals. The finding of a left-hand advantage for self-face recognition was replicated when no primes were presented. These data, along with other recent results suggest the brain processes/represents information about the self in highly integrated ways.     

Gender, alcohol consumption, and parental monitoring

The authors examined the relationships among gender, alcohol consumption, and parental monitoring, including television monitoring. Student volunteers (N = 150; 90% Caucasian, 79% women) participated by reporting retrospective general parental monitoring, television monitoring, and recent drinking behaviors. On the basis of the retrospective reports by the participants, when they were growing up the men received less overall parental monitoring but not less television monitoring than the women. Women's drinking quantity was correlated with parental monitoring, whereas men's drinking frequency was associated with both parental monitoring and television monitoring. Interestingly, men's binge drinking frequency was correlated with television monitoring but not with overall parental monitoring, whereas women's binge drinking frequency was correlated with overall parental monitoring but not with television monitoring. Implications for preventing alcohol misuse and ideas for future research are discussed.     

Children's, adolescents', and young adults' reward allocations to hypothetical siblings and fairness judgments: effects of actor gender, character type, and allocation pattern

The authors studied the reward allocation patterns, reasoning, and fairness judgments of 112 participants at 4 grade levels: kindergarten, 3rd grade, 9th grade, and college. Three story characters (an oldest, the most productive, and the physically disadvantaged) were depicted as siblings of the same gender, either sisters or brothers, who poured lemonade at a school picnic. Kindergartners' pattern of reward allocations indicated the use of an equality and productivity-based equity rule, whereas most of the older participants integrated considerations of both productivity and physical disadvantage in their allocations. Reasoning data were generally consistent with the allocation patterns. Reward allocations differed significantly by the gender of the characters, and fairness ratings differed significantly by the gender of the characters and the gender of the participant. Conclusions discuss the increasing coordination and consideration of more than one claim to the reward with development.     

Role of adolescent female volleyball players' psychophysiological properties and body build in performance of different elements of the game

Body-build peculiarities (49 body measurements) and psychophysiological properties (21 computerized tests) of 32 adolescent female volleyballers were studied to assess their significance in performance at competitions. Games were recorded by the original computer program Game, and an index of proficiency representative elements of the game was calculated for each player. Regression analysis was applied to predict the best psychophysiological and anthropometric models for serve, reception, block, feint, and attack. Seven tests of psychophysiological indices and 14 anthropometric variables explained 38-98% and 32-83% of skill performance, respectively. Consequently, to improve young volleyball players' performance, everyday coaching should be complemented by detailed assessment of their body build and psychophysiological characteristics.     

Eating disorders: relations with inconsistent discipline,anxiety, and drinking among college women

Since as many as 20% of all college women report symptoms of eating disorders, the present study examined the relationship between self-reported eating disorder symptoms. anxiety, drinking, and retrospective reports of inconsistent parenting during childhood. 101 college women, 85% Euro-Americans of mean age 19 yr., completed an anonymous survey including questions from the Eating Disorder Index-1, the Retrospective Family Unpredictability Scale, the Trait Anxiety Scale, and measures of drinking in the previous month. Eating disorder symptoms correlated with self-reported drinking quantity, anxiety, and retrospective ratings of inconsistent discipline. This appears to be the first time eating disorder symptoms have been associated with inconsistent discipline. Implications for etiology and treatment of eating disorders are discussed.