Consumers' Affective Response to Delays at Different Phases of a Service Delivery1

A field experiment was conducted in an educational setting to investigate affective reactions occurring at different phases of the delivery of a service. An eight-minute delay caused more negative affective reactions when it occurred either before the service started (preprocess) or after the service had terminated (postprocess) than when it occurred in the middle of the service encounter (in-process). No differences were observed for positive affect. Field theory is proposed as a theoretical framework to account for the results, and practical applications for addressing the social problem of structuring waiting environments are discussed.     

A simple multivariate probabilistic model for preferential and triadic choices

Multidimensional probabilistic models of behavior following similarity and choice judgements have proven to be useful in representing multidimensional percepts in Euclidean and non-Euclidean spaces. With few exceptions, these models are generally computationally intense because they often require numerical work with multiple integrals. This paper focuses attention on a particularly general triad and preferential choice model previously requiring the numerical evaluation of a 2n-fold integral, wheren is the number of elements in the vectors representing the psychological magnitudes. Transforming this model to an indefinite quadratic form leads to a single integral. The significance of this form to multidimensional scaling and computational efficiency is discussed.The authors would like to thank Jean-Claude Falmagne and Norman Johnson for suggestions and advice concerning quadratic forms.     

Gender roles and care giving to the elderly: An empirical study

The purpose of this research was to examine care giving to the elderly from a gender role perspective. Data were collected from a randomized sample of Québec care givers (n=294) who provide various levels of care giving to people with different kinds of impairments. The results indicate that although women provide more care than men, both experience an equivalent burden. Familial obligations (Presence of a Spouse × Presence of Children) affect men and women care givers differently. An intersex generation effect is evident with regard to professional burden: husband care givers report a greater burden than wives, whereas daughters and sons report the same level. The findings suggest that men have more difficulty assuming responsibilities associated with multiple roles, whereas women have adopted new roles in addition to the traditionally ascribed care-giving role.The research reported in this paper is part of a study funded by the Conseil québécois de la recherche sociale, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux. The authors wish to thank Jocelyne Boivin for her helpful work with the documentation and Lottie White for her help with the English version of this paper, as well as the anonymous reviewers of whose judicious comments were greatly appreciated.     

A mathematical theory of learning transformational grammar

How to explain the fact that children learn language is a central problem for both psychology and linguistics. Suppes says that “the linguists' insistence that they will accept nothing less than a complete and detailed account will probably turn out to be the most important conceptual demand on psychology in this century”. This paper speaks to that demand by presenting a complete formal characterization of the learning process and the language environment in which it operates. The assumptions are in general accord with psychological and linguistic principles. It is proved that the system converges; that is, the learning process, acting on the linguistic information it receives, learns the language, according to a formal criterion.     

How do children form impressions of persons? They average

The experiment reported was concerned with impression formation in children. Twelve subjects in each of Grades K, 2, 4, and 6 rated several sets of single trait words and trait pairs. The response scale consisted of a graded series of seven schematic faces which ranged from a deep frown to a happy smile. A basic question was whether children use an orderly integration rule in forming impressions of trait pairs. The answer was clear. At all grade levels a simple averaging model adequately accounted for pair ratings. A second question concerned how children resolve semantic inconsistencies. Responses to two highly inconsistent trait pairs suggested that subjects responded in the same fashion, essentially averaging the two traits in a pair. Overall, the data strongly supported an averaging model, and indicated that impression formation of children is similar to previous results obtained from adults.     

Cortical potentials evoked by confirming and disconfirming feedback following an auditory discrimination

Vertex potentials elicited by visual feedback (signals following an auditory intensity discrimination have been studied with eight Ss. Feedback signals which confirmed the prior sensory decision elicited small P3s, while disconfirming, feedback elicited P3s that were larger. On the average, the latency of P3 was also found to increase with increasing disparity between the judgment and. the feedback information. These effects were part bf an overall dichotomy in waveshape following confirming vs disconforming feedback. These findings are incorporated in a general model of the role of P3 in perceptual decision making.     

An extended class of matched pairs tests based on powers of ranks

A large class of rank tests, which includes the familiar sign test and the Wilcoxon signed-ranks test, is described and discussed. This class of distribution-free tests provides a flexible basis for testing research hypotheses of various forms. Exact small sample and approximate large sample procedures are considered. Applications of these procedures are presented, including simple numerical examples.The authors wish to acknowledge the constructive comments by the reviewers.     

A genetic perspective on stuttering

If one considers stuttering to be one possible outcome of a developmental and learning process, it is possible to conclude, a priori, that both environmental variation and genetic variation are likely to be involved in determining those who ever stutter and those who never stutter. Proof exists of the importance of nongenetic (environmental) variation in the etiology of stuttering; no conclusive proof exists of the involvement of genetic variation. The available evidence on the familial concentration of stuttering is compatible with hypotheses that incorporate a major genetic component. According to these hypotheses, the familiality is due to genetic transmission, and the interaction of genetic predisposition with environmental factors is affected by the individual's sex. No conclusion is yet possible on the specific type of genetic transmission.