Calibration of probability assessments by professional blackjack dealers, statistical experts, and lay people

The question addressed in this study is whether experts are better calibrated than lay people. We investigated how well people are calibrated when they assess the probabilities of card combinations in the game of blackjack. Three groups of subjects were used: professional dealers, statistical experts, and control subjects. The results showed that experience and statistical expertise do not make people better calibrated in this task. It is argued that the concept of calibration is not wholly appropriate to describe the obtained deviations from the normatively correct responses. This is illustrated by a discriminant analysis performed on the signed deviation scores, which resulted in an almost perfect separation of the three groups, although they were overlapping with respect to calibration.     

Organizational factors and work involvement

The aim of this paper is to describe a study which investigated the influence of organizational factors on job involvement and specialization involvement. It was hypothesized that rank, self-expression, participation in decision making, and career factors affect job and specialization involvement. The independent variables were chosen by considering an extension of Schein's (1971, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 7, 401–426) “career cone” concept. The hypotheses were tested using a sample of Australian Army officers (N = 384) in a questionnaire survey. The results showed that job involvement is associated primarily with self-expression, although the latter is influenced in turn by participation in decision making, and that specialization involvement is associated with both self-expression and career factors. Rank does not affect either involvement variable. It was concluded that Schein's concept is a useful guide to theory and research on career attitudes. The results support the proposition that job and specialization involvement are distinct constructs. Implications for organizations are discussed.     

The impact of confederate responsivity on social skills assessment

The current investigation examined the degree to which judges' ratings of skill, anxiety, and attractiveness are influenced by the responsivity of the confederate. High-, medium-, and low-skilled subject-pool groupings, as well as self-referred clinical groups, were exposed to either a moderately or a minimally responsive confederate. Results indicated that subjects were rated as more skillful when interacting with a moderately responsive confederate than when interacting with a minimally responsive confederate. Further, there was a groups × condition interaction for anxiety ratings such that both the high- and the medium-skilled groups appeared more anxious under the minimal condition, whereas the low-skilled and self-referred groups did not. Self-referred subjects received significantly lower attractiveness ratings than did the high- or medium-skilled groups. Implications of these results and future directions for research are discussed.This research is based on a M.S. thesis carried out by the first author under direction of the second author.     

Psychoticism and signalled versus unsignalled reaction time

Considering the findings that schizophrenics have been found to show relatively slow reaction times (RTs), and often do not benefit from ordinarily helpful information (e.g. a warning signal), the present study investigated the relationship between these variables and psychoticism (P). One hundred and three male Ss were administered a questionnaire which provides a measure of P. In addition, all Ss were tested on an RT task under unsignalled (i.e. no warning signal) and signalled conditions. The results showed that the expected improvement in reaction speed with a warning signal was of a lesser magnitude for those high on P. Furthermore, the difference was due to the faster RTs for high P scorers in the unsignalled condition. The data suggest that high P scorers are like schizophrenics in that they show less benefit from a warning signal, but are dissimilar in terms of reaction speed in an unsignalled task.     

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.     

Early selective-attention effect on evoked potential reinterpreted

In a dichotic listening situation stimuli were presented one at a time and at random to either ear of the subject at constant inter-stimulus intervals of 800 msec. The subject's task was to detect and count occasional slightly different stimuli in one ear. In Experiment 1, these ‘signal’ stimuli were slightly louder, and in Experiment 2 they had a slightly higher pitch, than the much more frequent, ‘standard’, stimuli. In both experiments signals occured randomly at either ear. Separate evoked potentials from three different locations were recorded for each of the four kinds of stimuli (attended signals, unattended signals, attended standards, unattended standards). Contrary to Hillyard et al. (1973), no early (N₁ component) evoked-potential enhancement was observed to stimuli to the attended ear as compared with those to the unattended ear, but there was a later negative shift superimposed on potentials elicited by the former stimuli. This negative shift was considered identical to the N₁ enhancement of Hillyard and his colleagues which in the present study was forced, by the longer inter-stimulus interval used, to demonstrate temporal dissociation with the N₁ component. The ‘Hillyard effect’ was, consequently, explained as being caused by a superimposition of a CNV kind of negative shift on the evoked potential to the attended stimuli rather than by a growth of the ‘real’ N₁ component of the evoked potential.     

A further footnote to Freud's "fragment of an analysis of a case of hysteria".

While ther is no evidence that Freud ever had in analysis a leading political figure, he did analyze the sister of one, and made her the basis of an important case study. Dora's brother, Otto Bauer, was an influential Marxist theoretician and leader of the Austrian Socialist Party from 1918 to 1934. Freud's Dora case illuminates the psychodynamics of Otto Bauer's life and career, and a re-examination of the case together with recent research also provides us with new information about Freud's analysis of Dora and the milieu in which they both lived.     

Remembering the levels of information in words

The qualitative nature of the incidental memory trace produced by perceptual and conceptual processing within a speeded inference task was examined. Performance on recall and auditory recognition tests replicated the general finding that semantic processing leads to better retention of words than does nonsemantic processing. This pattern of results was reversed on a visual recognition test designed to measure the amount of perceptual information remembered. These data suggest that different types of processing result in different aspects of the stimulus being encoded, with conceptual processing resulting primarily in the encoding of semantic information and perceptual processing resulting primarily in the encoding of physical information. Thus, the effectiveness of a particular kind of processing for good memory performance depends on the kind of information being tested.     

Egocentrism and classroom adjustment

This study examined the relationship between persistent egocentrism and adjustment status in normal school children. Fifty-three fourth-graders (33 males, 20 females) were administered measures of egocentrism and peer sociometric status, and indices of classroom adjustment were obtained from teachers. Degree of egocentrism was shown to correlate with classroom adjustment for both boys and girls and with peer group status for boys. The pattern of correlations suggested that the negative consequences of persistent egocentrism were different for the two sexes, with high egocentrism associated with shy, anxious behavior for girls and acting-out and learning difficulties for boys.The authors wish to thank Michael Chandler for his invaluable assistance. Gratitude is also expressed to Jeffrey Frost, Rana Gordan, Joyce Kramer, Peter Moshbach, Katie Pelz, Robert Rosen, Jane Scheibel, and Harley Sobin for their help in the collection of the data, and to the administration, staff, and pupils of the Paddy Hill Elementary School, Greece, New York.