Comparing Personality Test Formats and Warnings: Effects on criterion‐related validity and test‐taker reactions

The potential for applicant response distortion on personality measures remains a major concern in high‐stakes testing situations. Many approaches to understanding response distortion are too transparent (e.g., instructed faking studies) – or are too subtle (e.g., correlations with social desirability measures as indices of faking). Recent research reveals more promising approaches in two methods: using forced‐choice (FC) personality test items and warning against faking. The present study examined effects of these two methods on criterion‐related validity and test‐taker reactions. Results supported incremental validity for an FC and Likert‐scale measure in warning and no‐warning conditions, above and beyond cognitive ability. No clear differences emerged between the FC vs Likert measures or warning vs no‐warning conditions in terms of validity. However, some evidence suggested that FC measures and warnings may produce negative test‐taker reactions. We conclude with implications for implementation in selection settings.     

Co-creating change within a child protection system: integrating art therapy with family therapy practice

This paper considers family art therapy intervention using a partnership developed between an art therapist and a family therapist within a child protection system. The aim of this co-working relationship is to bring together skills that can amplify the child's voice within the family, using art as a means of extending the family story. The use of metaphor adds to the repertoire of skills available when working with families, and offers a particular form of communication in which children can more easily engage. By co-working, we also bring together our personal and professional stories, creating multiple ideas and ways of seeing and taking account of differences in the life experiences of individual families.     

Why Did They "Choose" to Stay? Perspectives of Hurricane Katrina Observers and Survivors

ABSTRACT— Models of agency—powerful implicit assumptions about what constitutes normatively "good" action—shaped how observers and survivors made meaning after Hurricane Katrina. In Study 1 , we analyzed how 461 observers perceived survivors who evacuated ( leavers ) or stayed ( stayers ) in New Orleans. Observers described leavers positively (as agentic, independent, and in control) and stayers negatively (as passive and lacking agency). Observers' perceptions reflected the disjoint model of agency, which is prevalent in middle-class White contexts and defines "good" actions as those that emanate from within the individual and proactively influence the environment. In Study 2 , we examined interviews with 79 survivors and found that leavers and stayers relied on divergent models of agency. Leavers emphasized independence, choice, and control, whereas stayers emphasized interdependence, strength, and faith. Although both leavers and stayers exercised agency, observers failed to recognize stayers' agency and derogated them because observers assumed that being independent and in control was the only way to be agentic.     

Children’s multiplicative transformations of discrete and continuous quantities

Recent studies have documented an evolutionarily primitive, early emerging cognitive system for the mental representation of numerical quantity (the analog magnitude system). Studies with nonhuman primates, human infants, and preschoolers have shown this system to support computations of numerical ordering, addition, and subtraction involving whole number concepts prior to arithmetic training. Here we report evidence that this system supports children’s predictions about the outcomes of halving and perhaps also doubling transformations. A total of 138 kindergartners and first graders were asked to reason about the quantity resulting from the doubling or halving of an initial numerosity (of a set of dots) or an initial length (of a bar). Controls for dot size, total dot area, and dot density ensured that children were responding to the number of dots in the arrays. Prior to formal instruction in symbolic multiplication, division, or rational number, halving (and perhaps doubling) computations appear to be deployed over discrete and possibly continuous quantities. The ability to apply simple multiplicative transformations to analog magnitude representations of quantity may form a part of the toolkit that children use to construct later concepts of rational number.     

TESTIMONY,MEMORY AND THE LIMITS OF THE A PRIORI

Philosophical Studies -     

The role of stimulus material in determining release from proactive inhibition

The release from proactive inhibition (PI) paradigm has been widely used as a technique for exploring the encoding dimensions of short-term memory for verbal items. PI release data have been used not only to infer particular memory codes but also to index their relative salience. In the present study, the effects of manipulating the colour (red or black) in which the stimulus material is printed were investigated in two separate experiments. No release effect was obtained in the first, where common two-syllable words were presented. In the second, where consonant trigrams were presented, a large effect was found. Since the same colour feature was manipulated in each experiment, it is argued that this pattern of results has serious implications for the use of PI release data as a technique for mapping the encoding dimensions of short-term memory.     

Knowledge of speaker's voice and release from proactive inhibition

This study examined the effects of monitoring speaker's voice in the Wickens' attribute shift paradigm and, in addition, subsequently measured voice retention in a recognition test. Monitoring voice appeared to enhance the release effect obtained, but neither monitoring nor shift conditions led to superior voice recognition for the final trial. These data are used to support the position that release effects are determined not so much by the registration of the critical attribute as such, but by the extent to which that attribute can be utilized in retrieving the to-be-remembered items.     

Participation in competitive amateur sports as a function of psychological androgyny

Previous research has indicated that women who participate in competitive sports tend to score low on traditional measures of femininity, and such women have been characterized as masculine (Harris, 1975). These studies used the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI; Bem, 1974) to measure the degree of sex-typing in 25 male and 23 female competitors in a national racquetball tournament and 24 male and 27 female competitors in local badminton, squash, and handball tournaments. Results for the first study indicated that a larger percentage of androgynous women as compared to traditionally feminine or masculine women entered the racquetball tournament, whereas the largest percentage of male entrants were in the masculine role category. Results for the second study indicated that among contestants who cited a competitive reason for entering the tournament, a larger percentage of both men and women were sex-typed as androgynous or masculine rather than feminine. These results were subsequently reanalyzed according to an alternate procedure suggested by Bem (1977) in order to compare the behavior of subjects who score high on both masculinity and femininity and those who scored low on both. While the percentages of masculine, feminine, and androgynous subjects were changed by the new categorization procedure, there were no differences found between high—high and low—low scorers. Implications of these results for the traditional characterization of women participants in competitive sports and for the usefulness of the BSRI in predicting nonlaboratory behavior are discussed.Portions of this article are based on an honors thesis submitted by the senior author to the University of Winnipeg. The authors are indebted to Stephen Davis and Wayne Andrew for their comments on the data analysis and their constructive criticisms of an earlier draft of this article.