Sales profession and professionals in the age of digitization and artificial intelligence technologies: concepts,priorities, and questions

Recognizing the rapid advances in sales digitization and artificial intelligence technologies, we develop concepts, priorities, and questions to help guide future research and practice in the field of personal selling and sales management. Our analysis reveals that the influence of sales digitalization technologies, which include digitization and artificial intelligence, is likely to be more significant and more far reaching than previous sales technologies. To organize our analysis of this influence, we discuss the opportunities and threats that sales digitalization technologies pose for (a) the sales profession in terms of its contribution to creating value for customers, organizations, and society and (b) sales professionals, in terms of both employees in organizations and individuals as self, seeking growth, fulfillment, and status in the functions they serve and roles they live. We summarize our discussion by detailing specific research priorities and questions that warrant further study and development by researchers and practitioners alike.     

Goldman On Knowledge As True Belief

Alvin Goldman contends that, in addition to the familiar sense or use of the term “knowledge” according to which knowledge is at least true justified belief, there is a weaker yet strict sense or use of the term “knowledge” according to which knowledge amounts to nothing more than information-possession or mere true belief. In this paper, I argue that Goldman has failed to show that there is such a weaker sense, and that, even if he had shown this, he has not shown that this putative weaker sense is a strict one by his own criterion for strictness.     

Investigating linear and interactive effects of shared mental models on safety and efficiency in a field setting

Linkages between 2 types of shared mental models (SMMs)--that is, positional-goal interdependencies and cue-strategy associations--and effectiveness in an air traffic control environment were investigated. Two types of SMMs were expected to contribute uniquely, as well as interact, to predict tower safety and efficiency. Using SMM data from 306 air traffic controllers, and corresponding archival efficiency and safety measures for 47 airports, the authors found no significant linear relationships between SMMs and either outcome measure. However, the 2 SMMs interacted with one another to predict both outcomes. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of measuring multiple types of SMMs, the examination of complex relationships, and the importance of indexing decisions.     

Influence of education on the pattern of cognitive deterioration in AD patients: the cognitive reserve hypothesis

The cognitive reserve hypothesis proposes that a high educational level could delay the clinical expression of Alzheimer's disease (AD) although neuropathologic changes develop in the brain. Therefore, some studies have reported that when the clinical signs of the disease emerge, high-educated patients may decline more rapidly than low-educated patients because the neuropathology is more advanced. However, these studies have only investigated the decline of global cognition or an isolated cognitive process. To study the differential deterioration pattern of several cognitive processes according to education, the performance of 20 AD patients with a high educational level and a low educational level were compared with the performance of 20 control subjects on a neuropsychological battery. The results showed that cognitive deterioration of AD patients is different according to education, although the global performance was similar in AD patients. The high-educated patients exhibited greater impairment of abstract thinking whereas the low-educated patients showed greater impairment of memory and attentional function. This confirms that some cognitive processes, such as abstract thinking, decline more rapidly in high-educated patients whereas others seem to evolve more slowly if compared to low-educated patients. In this latter case, high-educated patients may still benefit from cognitive reserve after the diagnosis of the dementia.     

The role of context in remembering familar persons: insights from semantic dementia

Semantic dementia (SD) is a progressive condition characterized by an insidious and gradual breakdown in semantic knowledge. Patients suffering from this condition gradually lose their knowledge of objects and their attributes, concepts, famous persons, and public events. In contrast, these patients maintain a striking preservation of autobiographical memory. The aim of the present study was to examine in a patient suffering from SD the role of context in the ability to recall knowledge of familiar persons. In an experiment, patient J.M. was asked to name and identify familiar persons that appeared on family photographs from recent and remote periods of her life. In the first experimental condition, the pictures represented personally familiar persons present in a specific spatial and temporal context. In a second experimental condition, the pictures showed personally familiar persons who were presented without any specific episodic context. Results indicate that the patient was able to name and identify familiar persons irrespective of the context of presentation (with/without context) and of the time period (recent/remote). No temporal gradient was found using family photographs. Finally, in contrast with familiar persons, J.M. presented a severe anomia for celebrities. Results are discussed in light of recent research in the field.     

Correcting for indirect range restriction in meta-analysis: testing a new meta-analytic procedure

Using computer simulation, the authors assessed the accuracy of J. E. Hunter, F. L. Schmidt, and H. Le's (2006) procedure for correcting for indirect range restriction, the most common type of range restriction, in comparison with the conventional practice of applying the Thorndike Case II correction for direct range restriction. Hunter et al.'s procedure produced more accurate estimates of both the mean and standard deviation in meta-analysis than the conventional procedure. Even when its key assumption that the effect of selection on a 3rd variable is fully mediated by the independent variable was violated, Hunter et al.'s procedure was still relatively more accurate than the conventional procedure. When applied to data from a previously published meta-analysis, the new procedure yielded results that led to different substantive conclusions.     

Pocket-sized psychology studies: Exploring daily diary software for Palm Pilots

Daily dairies, also known as experience sampling methods (ESM) or everyday experience methods, are a common methodology utilized to provide insight into momentary psychological processes. Traditionally, such studies often have utilized paper-and-pencil surveys administered several times each day over a span of several days or weeks. However, advances in technology now allow these studies to be conducted using palmtop computers (i.e., personal digital assistants; PDAs). Three software packages for running these studies on the Palm operating system were explored and compared on a number of features. Specifically, ESP (Experience Sampling Program, by Feldman Barrett & Barrett, 2001), iESP Version 3.2 (Intel Experience Sampling Program, by Intel Research Seattle & the University of Washington Computer Science and Engineering Department), and PMAT Version 2.0 (Purdue Momentary Assessment Tool, by the Military Family Research Institute at Purdue University) were examined, with their key features compared. These advances in software for running diary studies include a number of features that provide researchers with methods and information previously unavailable in diary studies and may expand the range of possibilities in diary study designs.     

What aspects of face processing are impaired in developmental prosopagnosia?

Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is a severe impairment in identifying faces that is present from early in life and that occurs despite no apparent brain damage and intact visual and intellectual function. Here, we investigated what aspects of face processing are impaired/spared in developmental prosopagnosia by examining a relatively large group of individuals with DP (n = 8) using an extensive battery of well-established tasks. The tasks included measures of sensitivity to global motion and to global form, detection that a stimulus is a face, determination of its sex, holistic face processing, processing of face identity based on features, contour, and the spacing of features, and judgments of attractiveness. The DP cases showed normal sensitivity to global motion and global form and performed normally on our tests of face detection and holistic processing. On the other tasks, many DP cases were impaired but there was no systematic pattern. At least half showed deficits in processing of facial identity based on either the outer contour or spacing of the internal features, and/or on judgments of attractiveness. Three of the eight were impaired in processing facial identify based on the shape of internal features. The results show that DP is a heterogeneous condition and that impairment in recognizing faces cannot be predicted by poor performance on any one measure of face processing.     

Opposed left and right brain hemisphere contributions to sexual drive: a multiple lesion case analysis

Brain topographical studies of normal men have have shown that sexual excitation is asymmetric in the brain hemispheres. Group studies of patients with unilateral epileptic foci and other studies of patients with unilateral brain lesions have come to the same conclusion. The present study reviewed previously published single case reports of patients with frank hypo or hypersexuality subsequent to a unilateral brain lesion. Hyposexual patients tended to have left hemisphere lesions (primarily of the temporal lobe), and hypersexual patients tended to have right hemisphere lesions (primarily of the temporal lobe) (p < 0.05). We interpret this double dissociation as part of a more general phenomenon of psychic tone similarly dissociated with regard to hemispheric control, including mood, psychomotor baseline, speech rate, and even immunity. The behavioral significance of this psychic tone is to modulate approach versus avoidance behavior.