Participant recruitment methods and statistical reasoning performance

Optimal Bayesian reasoning performance has reportedly been elusive, and a variety of explanations have been suggested for this situation. In a series of experiments, it is demonstrated that these difficulties with replication can be accounted for by differences in participant-sampling methodologies. Specifically, the best performances are obtained with students from top-tier, national universities who were paid for their participation. Performance drops significantly as these conditions are altered regarding inducements (e.g., using unpaid participants) or participant source (e.g., using participants from a second-tier, regional university). Honours-programme undergraduates do better than regular undergraduates within the same university, paid participation creates superior performance, and top-tier university students do better than students from lower ranked universities. Pictorial representations (supplementing problem text) usually have a slight facilitative effect across these participant manipulations. These results indicate that studies should take account of these methodological details and focus more on relative levels of performance rather than absolute performance.     

Lewis' Strawman

In a survey of his views in the philosophy of mind, David Lewis criticizes much recent work in the field by attacking an imaginary opponent, 'Strawman'. His case against Strawman focuses on four central theses which Lewis takes to be widely accepted among contemporary philosophers of mind. The theses concern (1) the language of thought hypothesis and its relation to folk-psychology, (2) narrow content, (3) de se content, and (4) rationality. We respond to Lewis, arguing (amongst other things) that he underestimates Strawman's theoretical resources in a variety of important ways.     

The role of nonlinguistic stimuli and semantic relations in children's acquisition of grammatical utterances

Eighteen children, randomly assigned to one of six conditions, were trained in the use of two-word subject-verb (e.g. “mommy go”) utterances. The groups differed in (1) the number of different semantic relations theoretically underlying the subject-verb utterances on which the children were trained, and (2) the extent to which these semantic relations were associated with nonlinguistic events. The results indicated that the children acquired the subject-verb utterance forms more readily when they were also exposed to the events to which the utterances actually referred. Provided that the subject-verb utterances were related to ongoing events, the number of relations “underlying” these utterances did not appear critical. These results suggest that the child's acquisition of novel and grammatical utterances describing nonlinguistic stimuli highly similar to those in his natural environment are amenable to experimental control.     

The relation between size and apparent heaviness

Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics - A formula for the size-weight illusion was derived from the Stevens and Rubin (1970) finding that heaviness functions form a family of power functions...     

Outplacement Adequacy and Benefits: The Mediating Role of Overall Justice

Despite a rapid growth and an ongoing need for outplacement services, little is known about the perceived adequacy and benefits of these services for the redundant employees using them. The authors surveyed 360 Belgian redundant employees (i.e., clients) who were using outplacement services provided by a public employment agency. Results indicated that an outplacement experience that is perceived as adequate by clients fosters their overall impressions of justice toward the dismissing organization. Perceived outplacement adequacy, in turn, led to benefits for the redundant employees—namely, a reduction of negative emotions and an enhancement of their perceived well‐being, future perspectives, and job‐seeking activities—thus confirming the mediating role of overall justice.