The effect of expectation on the identification of known and unknown persons

In this experiment we investigated the influence of expectation, exposure time and jacket hood positioning on person identification. Thirty subjects, all employees of the TNO Institute for Perception, participated in the experiment. They were presented with slides showing known and unknown persons who were photographed under bad lighting conditions. Limited viewing conditions considerably deteriorated subjects' performance and under these circumstances all experimental manipulations significantly affected identification accuracy. Contrary to what was expected longer exposure times impaired performance. The results are discussed in light of recent research on face recognition (Bruce and Young, 1986; Read, Vokey, and Hammersley, 1990).     

Value-Focused Thinking versus Alternative-Focused Thinking: Effects on Generation of Objectives

Within the context of decision analysis, the aim of this work is to discover whether the structure of objectives generated with value-focused thinking (VFT) is different from the structure generated with alternative-focused thinking (AFT). In the first of two studies, two different groups of subjects created a structure of objectives for the same decision problem. Fourteen independent assessments were made for each group. After the terms used by the two groups, were standardized, it was found that the group using VFT generated a more extensive and hierarchical structure than the AFT group. With regard to the content of the objectives, it can be stated that the VFT structure covered aspects of the problem not covered by AFT. In the second study, structures representative of the two approaches were judged by a group of decision-makers—actually involved in the problem—with respect to several qualities. It was found that the structure generated by VFT was equal or superior to that generated by AFT in all qualities judged.     

Learning Styles,Gender and Age as Influential Issues amongst Students of Theology

In order to determine whether men and women's learning styles differ, two samples of students undertaking formal theological educational programmes completed a questionnaire focusing on contextualised examples of global and analytic learning styles. This was followed by selective interviews. Whilst no significant correlation was found between learning styles and gender, a significant correlation was unexpectedly found between learning styles and age.     

SCR二项指标作为亲情作用表征函数的实验研究

在一系列真实的“测谎”中嵌插三类含亲属称谓的亲情问题;用皮肤电ＳＣＲ波幅和波长反应两项测量指标检验对应亲情作用的表征价值。研究结果显示：对三类亲情问题情绪反应的各组测量值呈高度显著性差异,且有等级差异：对三类亲情问题情绪反应的测量值存在个体差异,但在“母亲”问题反应强烈;ＳＣＲ波幅反应和波长反应两项指标趋于同步,具有较好的检测敏感性。实验分离出可以印证亲情情绪作用的特异性ＳＣＲ反应。     

Psychological study of a crew in long-term space flight simulation

This research derives from a 60-day isolation study realized for the European Space Agency (ESA) as a simulation of space flights. Three goals were pursued in this study: (a) to study individual and group responses to the stress factors specific to the simulation; (b) to make a critical comparison of a variety of tools and methods used for this purpose; and (c) to express recommendations for future research. Direct methods (questionnaires, tests) and indirect methods (observation) were used in an individual and a whole group assessment. The group did not show important stress manifestations during the isolation period. It maintained its cohesion by opposing the external authority. Some tools were more efficient than others: The qualitative and indirect methods have revealed much more information than the quantitative or direct methods that reinforced one's defense to avoid criticism.     

Explaining the extraversion/positive affect relation: sociability cannot account for extraverts' greater happiness

The association between Extraversion and positive affect is one of the most robust findings in the study of personality and emotion. Temperament models posit that the association is direct; instrumental models posit that the association is mediated by additional processes. Two experience sampling studies were conducted to test instrumental mechanisms that might underlie the effect. According to a mediation model, extraverts' greater social activity can account for their increased positive affect when compared to introverts. According to a person-by-situation interaction model, extraverts react more positively to social situations than do introverts, and this interaction can account for the association. Only weak support for the instrumental models was found; consistent with temperament models, a moderate direct association remained even after controlling for these effects.     

Plagiarism: Words and Ideas

Plagiarism is a crime against academy. It deceives readers, hurts plagiarized authors, and gets the plagiarist undeserved benefits. However, even though these arguments do show that copying other people's intellectual contribution is wrong, they do not apply to the copying of words. Copying a few sentences that contain no original idea (e.g. in the introduction) is of marginal importance compared to stealing the ideas of others. The two must be clearly distinguished, and the 'plagiarism' label should not be used for deeds which are very different in nature and importance.     

On Enrolling More Female Students in Science and Engineering

Many people hold this truth to be self-evident that universities should enroll more female students in science and engineering; the main question then being how. Typical arguments include possible benefits to women, possible benefits to the economy, and the unfairness of the current female under-representation. However, when clearly stated and scrutinized these arguments in fact lead to the conclusion that there should be more women in scientific disciplines in higher education in the sense that we should expect more women (which various kinds of discrimination may prevent), not that we should actively enroll more women. Outreach programs towards high school students may therefore be logically incompatible with the arguments supposed to justify them. They should purport to allow women to graduate in a field congruent with her abilities and desires, rather than try to draw as many of them to scientific disciplines as possible: one cannot try to 'recruit' as many female students as possible while claiming to help them choose more freely.     

Children's understanding of idioms and theory of mind development

The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis according to which theory of mind competence was a prerequisite to ambiguous idioms understanding. We hypothesized that the child needs to understand that the literal interpretation could be a false world representation, a false belief, and that the speaker's intention is to mean something else, to correctly process idiomatic expressions. Two kinds of ambiguous idioms were of interest: decomposable and nondecomposable expressions (Titone & Connine, 1999). An experiment was designed to assess the figurative developmental changes that occur with theory of mind competence. Five-, 6- and 7-year-old children performed five theory of mind tasks (an appearance-reality task, three false-belief tasks and a second-order false-belief task) and listened to decomposable and nondecomposable idiomatic expressions inserted in context, before performing a multiple choice task. Results indicated that only nondecomposable idiomatic expression was predicted from the theory of mind scores, and particularly from the second-order competences. Results are discussed with respect to theory of mind and verbal competences.     

Neurobiological studies of risk assessment: A comparison of expected utility and mean-variance approaches

When modeling valuation under uncertainty, economists generally prefer expected utility because it has an axiomatic foundation, meaning that the resulting choices will satisfy a number of rationality requirements. In expected utility theory, values are computed by multiplying probabilities of each possible state of nature by the payoff in that state and summing the results. The drawback of this approach is that all state probabilities need to be dealt with separately, which becomes extremely cumbersome when it comes to learning. Finance academics and professionals, however, prefer to value risky prospects in terms of a trade-off between expected reward and risk, where the latter is usually measured in terms of reward variance. This mean-variance approach is fast and simple and greatly facilitates learning, but it impedes assigning values to new gambles on the basis of those of known ones. To date, it is unclear whether the human brain computes values in accordance with expected utility theory or with mean-variance analysis. In this article, we discuss the theoretical and empirical arguments that favor one or the other theory. We also propose a new experimental paradigm that could determine whether the human brain follows the expected utility or the mean-variance approach. Behavioral results of implementation of the paradigm are discussed.