A method for coping with overall productivity when making between-group category comparisons

A straightforward method for dealing with the effect of response productivity when comparing individual scoring categories between groups was presented along with an example. It was contended that percentage comparisons based on group data can circumvent the reliability problems associated with percentage scores derived from single protocols. Other problems connected with ratio and percentage scores were discussed.     

Value beyond truth-value: a practical response to skepticism

Synthese - I aim to offer a practical response to skepticism. I begin (in section one) by surveying a family of responses to skepticism that I term “dogmatic” and argue that they are...     

Influencing health decision-making: A study of colour and message framing

Objective: Previous research has provided evidence that colour associations and frame can influence behavioural intentions to engage in vaccination behaviours. In this study, the extension of these effects to sunscreen application behaviours was investigated. Additional colours and the manner in which colour primes were employed were also explored.

Design: Two hundred and eighty-six college students were primed with either short wavelength colours (blue/purple) or long wavelength colours (red/orange) as part of goal framed sunscreen information pamphlets.

Main outcome measures: Self-reported behavioural intentions to apply sunscreen, immediate affective reaction to stimuli material, anticipated affect towards sunscreen use, and perceived efficacy of preventing skin cancer were measured.

Results: Individuals with no prior intention to use sunscreen expressed greater behavioural intentions to do so after reading a positively framed sunscreen pamphlet that was designed using short wavelength colours. The negatively framed messages and those presented in long wavelength colours did not enhance persuasion.

Conclusions: In accordance with the Unification Theory of Framing, a match between the representations of the target behaviour, the colour prime, and the frame resulted in the greatest amount of persuasion. Creating communications with representations that match the target behaviour could be a powerful tool to increase compliance.     

Impact of pre-existing levels of hostility and aggression on substance abuse treatment outcome

The impact of the change in level of hostility and aggression on subsequent substance abuse (drug, alcohol, or combined) recovery was investigated. One hundred and thirty-two dually diagnosed veterans completed an inpatient treatment programme at a large DVA Medical Centre. Results showed significant decreases in addiction severity over 3 month and 12 month following-up. At 3 months, pretreatment severity was predictive of drug, alcohol, and drug/alcohol severity whereas change in hostility and aggression scores were not. At 12 months, however, pretreatment severity was predictive only of drug severity whereas change in hostility and aggression were predictive of alcohol and combined drug/alcohol severity. Implications for changes in substance abuse correlates over time are discussed.     

Commonalities and Differences Among Frames: A Unification Model

We provide a review and a theoretically unifying model of framing effects. Beginning with a review of findings that prospect theory, fuzzy‐trace theory, and traditional dual process models do and do not explain, we develop a model of framing based partly on Bless and Schwarz's (2010) inclusion/exclusion model of assimilation and contrast. Our model is the first of its kind to be applied to all three valence framing manipulations and presents common mechanisms explaining findings in the framing literature that were previously difficult to conceptualize within a single theory (e.g., matching effects and cognitive effort). The model also accounts for why all three framing manipulations are influenced by differences between holistic/contextual versus analytic processing as well as the presence, absence, and direction of effects produced by different versions of framing manipulations. It also predicts contrast effects (Implications and Future Directions section) and applies to manipulations involving a frame and judgmental target. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The roles of perceived task interdependence and group members' interdependence in the development of collective efficacy in university student group contexts

Background . Although the relationship between collective efficacy and group performance has been frequently investigated, a few studies have investigated the development of collective efficacy. Aim . This paper proposes some determinants of collective efficacy in small university groups. Group level hypotheses and research questions relating collective efficacy to collective cognition activities, task interdependence, self‐efficacy for group work, and collective orientation were posited. Sample . The sample comprised 145 university students in 40 work‐groups. Method . A two‐phase longitudinal design was employed in the context of university student groups. All groups were required to perform interdependent academic tasks. Aggregated variables were used after testing for within‐group agreement. Results . The results of multiple regression analysis provided some evidence that the more group members perceived themselves to be interdependent in the early stages of group work and assigned their tasks interdependently during group processes, the more likely they were to develop high collective efficacy in the final stages of group work. Collective efficacy was also related to the group average of self‐efficacy for group work especially when task interdependence was perceived to be high. Conclusions . The results suggest that forming groups with capable university students in group work, strengthening university students' perceptions of themselves as interdependent in the early stages of academic group work and assigning interdependent group tasks during group work may contribute to the development of high collective efficacy.     

Stimulus Parameters Underlying Sound-Symbolic Mapping of Auditory Pseudowords to Visual Shapes

Sound symbolism refers to non-arbitrary mappings between the sounds of words and their meanings and is often studied by pairing auditory pseudowords such as “maluma” and “takete” with rounded and pointed visual shapes, respectively. However, it is unclear what auditory properties of pseudowords contribute to their perception as rounded or pointed. Here, we compared perceptual ratings of the roundedness/pointedness of large sets of pseudowords and shapes to their acoustic and visual properties using a novel application of representational similarity analysis (RSA). Representational dissimilarity matrices (RDMs) of the auditory and visual ratings of roundedness/pointedness were significantly correlated crossmodally. The auditory perceptual RDM correlated significantly with RDMs of spectral tilt, the temporal fast Fourier transform (FFT), and the speech envelope. Conventional correlational analyses showed that ratings of pseudowords transitioned from rounded to pointed as vocal roughness (as measured by the harmonics-to-noise ratio, pulse number, fraction of unvoiced frames, mean autocorrelation, shimmer, and jitter) increased. The visual perceptual RDM correlated significantly with RDMs of global indices of visual shape (the simple matching coefficient, image silhouette, image outlines, and Jaccard distance). Crossmodally, the RDMs of the auditory spectral parameters correlated weakly but significantly with those of the global indices of visual shape. Our work establishes the utility of RSA for analysis of large stimulus sets and offers novel insights into the stimulus parameters underlying sound symbolism, showing that sound-to-shape mapping is driven by acoustic properties of pseudowords and suggesting audiovisual cross-modal correspondence as a basis for language users' sensitivity to this type of sound symbolism.     

Team tenure and team performance: A meta-analysis and process model

Team tenure is a key component of models of team effectiveness. However, the nature of the relationship between team tenure and team performance is unclear due to underdeveloped theory on the nature of team tenure, various unintegrated theoretical conceptualizations of team tenure, and mixed empirical findings. Further, there is a lack of theory as to the intervening team processes and emergent states that account for the “black box” of the team tenure–team performance relationship. Accordingly, we conducted meta-analyses of the relationships of team tenure with team processes and performance. Our results, based on 622 effect sizes reported in 169 studies, show that team tenure, conceptualized as additive team tenure, collective team tenure, and team tenure dispersion, is positively related to team performance. Relative weights analysis found additive team tenure to be a relatively more important predictor of team performance than collective team tenure or team tenure dispersion. We found that team cognition, motivational-affective states, and behavioral processes mediate the relationships of additive team tenure, collective team tenure, and team tenure dispersion with team performance, respectively. We discuss the implications of these findings for research and practice.