Mid-career change in academia: The decision to become an administrator

This study explored the reasons why professors would leave their teaching/ research occupations to begin new careers as administrators. Valence-Instrumentality-Expectancy theory of occupational preference and choice was used as a framework to examine mid-career change among professors and department chairmen at a major university. Data showed that professors' intentions to change careers and become administrators could be explained by the theory. Analyses of job characteristics demonstrated that professors who want a mid-career change are primarily attracted by the power and formal authority vested in the administrative position, while professors who prefer to remain in their career paths do so because of the autonomy it offers.     

Reinforcement and punishment in a closed system

Children chose between toys freely and with various restrictive contingencies. Sometimes play with a preferred toy was contingent on play with a nonpreferred toy. Sometimes play with a nonpreferred toy was contingent on play with a preferred toy. Another toy (free toy) was always available during contingency sessions. Because toy playing occupied the entire session the response system was closed. When one response increased in duration others had to decrease. An analysis of closed-system responding revealed that the restrictions of the closed system together with the restrictions imposed by the contingencies forced subjects to alter the proportion of time devoted to the three responses. A geometrical model representing the closed system and an analytical method based on distance are presented to describe the data.     

Tables of d′ for variable-standard discrimination paradigms

Signal detection theory (SDT) allows a bias-free measure of sensitivity, d′, to be simply estimated from discrimination data when certain conditions are met. The computation is not straightforward, however, in several popular discrimination designs, such as two- and four-interval same-different designs and the ABX design. The present tables, derived from the SDT models of Macmillan, Kaplan, and Creelman (1977), make possible the estimation of d’ from these complex discrimination designs.     

A deglitching circuit for the AA50 D/A converter

Switching transients or “glitches” are frequently encountered in signal processing applications involving digital-to-analog (D/A) conversion. A low-cost “deglitching” circuit is described and implemented for the Digital Equipment Corporation AA50 D/A converter option on the PDP-8/e minicomputer. Switching transients were eliminated using a noninverting, unity-gain sample-and-hold circuit (employing Datei System’s SHM-IC-1). Switching transients were reduced to below-noise levels across a wide range of output levels and sampling rates.     

Auditory streaming and vertical localization: Interdependence of “what” and “where” decisions in audition

When a sequence of two tones is presented over headphones in an ascending or descending order of pitch, it is heard as correspondingly ascending or descending in space. The illusion of spatial change that accompanies pitch change can be induced onto a pair of noise bursts by presenting them in synchrony with the tones. When cues known to produce stream segregation are introduced, the perceived position of the noises is less influenced by the tones. Stream organization is seen to be implicated in the ability to separately localize concurrent sources of sound. This suggests that “what” and “where” decisions are highly interactive and that neurological evidence that suggests separate pathways for these decisions must be interpreted with caution.     

On the nonautomaticity of “automatic” activation: Evidence of selective seeing

Early perceptual selection refers to a sequence of perceptual processing in which attentional selection of stimuli occurs before perceptual processing is complete. By contrast, late perceptual selection refers to a sequence in which all stimuli receive complete perceptual processing before selection takes place. An attempt was made to determine if early selection is possible. Three experiments were conducted in which subjects were presented with arrays containing a variable number of red items and a variable number of black items; all array items were randomly positioned around the circumference of an imaginary circle. The subjects task was to report the number of red items. Response time increased with the number of red items, but was essentially independent of the number of black items. The nature of the red and black items was also varied. When the to-be-attended red items were given “Stroop-like” quality (the symbols that were used were directly inconsistent with the correct response for that trial), mean reaction time was increased compared to a baseline condition; when the to-be-ignored black items were given “Stroop-like” quality, mean reaction time was unaffected. These results imply that the relevant (red) and irrelevant (black) items were processed differentially. We conclude that early selection is possible; late-selection models are not supported.     

Selective attention in the speeded classification and comparison of multidimensional stimuli

Selective attention was studied when subjects were required to make either speeded classifications of single stimuli or comparisons of pairs of multidimensional stimuli. Experiment 1 established that subjects were able to attend selectively to form when the irrelevant dimension of size or shading varied in a speeded-classification (card-sorting) task. Experiment 2 confirmed this finding in a discrete-trials task. However, subjects werenot able to filter out irrelevant dimensional disparity in a comparably designed simultaneous-comparison (i.e., “same”-“different”) task. Mean “same” reaction time increased monotonically with increases in disparity between the two stimuli on the irrelevant dimension. Experiment 3 also revealed a monotonie increase in “same” RT as a function of irrelevant disparity in a successive-comparison task. These results were discussed in terms of a normalization model proposed by Dixon and Just (1978) in which it is assumed that a subject equates the two stimuli on the irrelevant dimension before deciding that they are the same along the relevant dimension. It was concluded that: (1) although subjects can efficiently filter out irrelevant disparity in a speeded-classification task, interference due to irrelevant disparity is obtained in the comparison tasks, (2) a common process such as normalization does not necessarily underlie performance in the speeded-classification and comparison tasks, (3) the ability to attend selectively to a stimulus dimension may be task determined as well as stimulus determined, and (4) contrary to the Dixon and Just proposal, normalization of irrelevant disparity occurs in a comparison task, even when the relevant dimension is represented as a separate encoding feature.     

Contextual effects in vowel perception II: Evidence for two processing mechanisms

Recent experiments have indicated that contrast effects can be obtained with vowels by anchoring a test series with one of the endpoint vowels. These contextual effects cannot be attributed to feature detector fatigue or to the induction of an overt response bias. In the present studies, anchored ABX discrimination functions and signal detection analyses of identification data (before and after anchoring) for an [i]-[I] vowel series were used to demonstrate that [i] and [I] anchoring produce contrast effects by affecting different perceptual mechanisms. The effects of [i] anchoring were to increase within-[i] category sensitivity, while [I] anchoring shifted criterion placements. When vowels were placed in CVC syllables to reduce available auditory memory, there was a significant decrease in the size of the [I]-anchor contrast effects. The magnitude of the [i]-anchor effect was unaffected by the reduction in vowel information available in auditory memory. These results suggest that [i] and [I] anchors affect mechanisms at different levels of processing. The [i] anchoring results may reflect normalization processes in speech perception that operate at an early level of perceptual processing, while the [I] anchoring results represent changes in response criterion mediated by auditory memory for vowel information.     

Robust estimation of ability in the Rasch model

Estimating ability parameters in latent trait models in general, and in the Rasch model in particular is almost always hampered by noise in the data. This noise can be caused by guessing, inattention to easy questions, and other factors which are unrelated to ability. In this study several alternative formulations which attempt to deal with these problems without a reparameterization are tested through a Monte Carlo simulation. It was found that although no one of the tested schemes is uniformly superior to all others, a modified jackknife stood out as the best one in general, it was also super efficient (more efficient than the asymptotically optimal estimator) for tests with forty or fewer items. It is proposed that this sort of jackknifing scheme for estimating ability be considered for practical work.This research was funded through a grant from the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (78-NI-AX-0047) to the Bureau of Social Science Research, Howard Wainer, Principal Investigator. We would like to thank Ronald Mead, Anne Morgan and James Ramsay for kind, generous, and invaluable help at various stages of the project.