Misinformation and unexpected change: Testing the development of epistemic-state attribution

Summary Children's ability to infer a person's ignorance and false belief was tested in two stories which differed as to the relative ease for making these inferences. In the Unexpected Change story ignorance could be directly inferred from the emphasized fact that the target character had not witnessed the change, while false belief required the additional inference that the character would assume that things would stay as they had been initially. In the Misinformation Story false belief was made directly accessible by the content of a false message, while ignorance was not directly indicated by absence of information. It needed to be inferred from the fact that the available information was misleading. Results from 3- and 4-year-old Austrian and English children showed that manipulation of inferential difficulty did not affect their ability to make epistemic state attribution. In both stories children found it easier to attribute ignorance than false belief. To integrate this finding in the larger developmental context we suggest that children younger than 4 years find it difficult to distinguish between knowledge and ignorance because they do not understand the role of informational access in the formation of knowledge and they fail in false-belief attribution because they do not understand that incompatible truth values can be assigned to propositions.     

The Moderating Effect of Raters’ Opportunities to Observe Ratees' Job Performance on the Validity of an Assessment Centre

Previous research has suggested that the quality of judgmental validation criteria may improve depending on the increase of opportunity for the rater to observe ratees’ job performances. This study investigated whether the validity of an assessment centre increases with opportunity to observe. Subjects were engineers and applied scientists from the Research and Development (R&D) units of seven German high-technology companies. A total of 6 personality scales, 10 cognitive ability tests and 9 work samples was administered to 155 subjects. Performance appraisals were collected from their supervisors. Assessors were trained organizational psychologists who were not members of the participating organizations. A total score (‘assessment centre score’) was computed by averaging the 25 predictors after standardization of each predictor. The (uncorrected) validity of this assessment centre was r = 0.37. In addition, opportunity to observe (i.e. amount of time the performance rater was the ratee’s supervisor) emerged as a moderator: for example validities were r = 0.09 (opportunity to observe ≤ 2 years) and r = 0.50 (opportunity to observe> 2 years).     

Achievement motivation and its constructs: A cognitive model

The first section of this paper introduces a set of constructs, develops a cognitive model of motivation, and derives specific propositions for the case of achievement motivation. The model describes functional relationships among expectancies, instrumentalities, incentive values, and valences, each of which is calculated separately for situations, actions, and outcomes. Each valence is calculated with reference to an outcome's anticipated consequences, both immediate and delayed. The model draws on, but reworks and extends, Expectancy × Value Theory, Bolles' Psychological Syllogism, Instrumentality Theory, Achievement Motivation Theory, and Causal Attribution Theory. The second section examines the model's fit to the body of data that bears on a central area of research in achievement motivation, namely task preferences. The last section scrutinizes the motive construct as a summary concept and divides it into six parameter sets which represent sources of individual differences.I wish to thank Eric Klinger for a judicious translation of the paper into English which has considerably improved the original; Herbert Götzl, Uwe Kleinbeck, and Julius Kuhl for helpful comments; and Rosemarie Tweer for assistance in reanalyzing 31 studies on task preference.     

Statements

The churches today are called to confess anew their faith, and to repent for the times when Christians have remained silent in the face of injustice or threats to peace. The biblical vision of peace with justice for all, of wholeness, of unity for all God's people is not one of several options for the followers of Christ. It is an imperative in our time. (Peace and Justice Statement, WCC Sixth Assembly, Vancouver 1983)     

Metamemory,distinctiveness, and event-related potentials in recognition memory for faces

A neglected topic in metamemory research is the ability of subjects to predict their own recognition performance for faces. We investigated whether subjects can make such judgments of learning (JOL) for unfamiliar faces and whether JOLs relate to facial distinctiveness, a powerful determinant of face recognition. One group of subjects made JOLs, and a second group rated the same faces for distinctiveness; subsequently, both groups tried to recognize these faces among new faces. There was significant prospective metamemory for faces that appeared to be based on facial distinctiveness. Both prospective metamemory and distinctiveness ratings related to long-lasting effects in event-related brain potentials (ERPs), closely resembling an ERP component that predicted face recognition. Therefore, the brain processes underlying JOLs, distinctiveness, and recognition memory for faces appear to be intimately related.     

Predictors of life satisfaction in a large representative sample from Italy

Current Psychology - Life Satisfaction is a key indicator of subjective well-being and represents its cognitive component, measuring individuals’ judgment of their own lives. The aim of this...     

Rapid cerebral hemodynamic modulation during set shifting: Evidence of time-locked associations with cognitive control in females

Set shifting provokes specific alterations of cerebral hemodynamics in basal cerebral arteries. However, no gender differences have been reported. In the following functional transcranial Doppler study, we introduced cerebral hemodynamic modulation to the aspects of set shifting during Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). Twenty-one subjects underwent the WCST during insonation of the middle cerebral arteries. We examined gender effects on task performance and cerebral hemodynamic modulation. Further, we investigated the linkage between performance and cerebral hemodynamic modulation. In females, maximum positive modulation was restricted to the behaviorally relevant time point of set shifting, and there were time-locked associations between mental slowing during set shifting and rapid cerebral hemodynamic modulation exclusively in females. This study provides evidence of gender-related cerebral hemodynamic modulation during set shifting, and we detected time-locked brain–behavior relationship during cognitive control in females.     

Are Speedy Brains Needed when Divergent Thinking is Speeded—or Unspeeded?

In this study, we focus on mental speed and divergent thinking, examining their relationship and the influence of task speededness. Participants (N = 109) completed a set of processing speed tasks and a test battery measuring divergent thinking. We used two speeded divergent-thinking tasks of 2 minutes and two unspeeded tasks of 8 minutes to test the influence of task speededness on creative quality and their relation to mental speed. Before each task, participants were instructed to be creative in order to optimally measure creative quality. We found a large main effect of task speededness: less creative ideas were generated when tasks were speeded as compared to unspeeded (Cohen's d = −1.64). We could also replicate a positive relationship of mental speed with speeded divergent thinking (r = .21) and mental speed with unspeeded divergent thinking (r = .25). Our hypothesis that the relation is higher for the speeded divergent-thinking tasks was not confirmed. Importantly, variation in creative quality scores under speeded conditions was not explained by mental speed beyond the predictive power of unspeeded creative quality. The latter finding implies that measurement of creative quality under speeded conditions is not confounded by mental speed.     

D-optimal design for the Rasch counts model with multiple binary predictors

In this paper we derive optimal designs for the Rasch Poisson counts model and its extended version of the (generalized) negative binomial counts model incorporating several binary predictors for the difficulty parameter. To efficiently estimate the regression coefficients of the predictors, locally D-optimal designs are developed. After an introduction to the Rasch Poisson counts model and its extension, we will specify these models as particular generalized linear models. Based on this embedding, optimal designs for both models including several binary explanatory variables will be presented. Therefore, we will derive conditions on the effect sizes for certain designs to be locally D-optimal. Finally, it is pointed out that the results derived for the Rasch Poisson models can be applied for more general Poisson regression models which should receive more attention in future psychological research.