The probabilistic approach to human reasoning

A recent development in the cognitive science of reasoning has been the emergence of a probabilistic approach to the behaviour observed on ostensibly logical tasks. According to this approach the errors and biases documented on these tasks occur because people import their everyday uncertain reasoning strategies into the laboratory. Consequently participants' apparently irrational behaviour is the result of comparing it with an inappropriate logical standard. In this article, we contrast the probabilistic approach with other approaches to explaining rationality, and then show how it has been applied to three main areas of logical reasoning: conditional inference, Wason's selection task and syllogistic reasoning.     

Sales scholarship: honoring the past and defining the future (Key takeaways from the 2018 American Marketing Association Faculty Consortium: New Horizons in Selling and Sales Management)

The American Marketing Association (AMA) Faculty Consortium: New Horizons in Selling and Sales Management (“New Horizons”) emphasized the historical foundation and evolution of the field and fulfilled the event’s traditional role of defining a future research agenda. Selling and sales management has witnessed dramatic changes since the last New Horizons event at Texas Christian University (TCU) in 2013. Going forward, the sales academic community aspires to better understand and explain the impact of changing technologies, machine learning, artificial intelligence, social media, big data, and 24/7 connectivity broadly on selling and sales management. This article provides the key takeaways from New Horizons 2018, briefly highlighting the history of the sales academy and identifying directions for future research that address the technological and other key changes and challenges impacting the field. Dating back to 1984, faculty consortia in selling and sales management have a long tradition of stimulating new insights leading to a cutting-edge research agenda and strong collaboration in executing that research. The New Horizons event in Boston in conjunction with the 2018 AMA Summer Academic Conference continued that tradition.     

Automatic priming for translation- and scale-invariant representations of object shape

A series of visual search experiments explored whether early visual processes are sensitive to the overall shape of objects. Previous work (Wolfe & Bennett, 1997) has suggested that information concerning overall shape is not coded in early vision. However, in Experiment 1, we demonstrate that these previous findings are explicable in terms of non-target heterogeneity rather than an absence of shape information in early vision. In Experiments 2 and 3, we demonstrate that shape similarity, rather than individual contour similarity, can determine search efficiency. In Experiments 4 and 5, we show that manipulating the contrast polarity of contours and defining shape using texture significantly impeded search for an odd-one-out shape. The implications of these results for shape processing in early vision are discussed.     

An extraordinary ordinariness

Counselling psychology in the UK has evolved from the disciplines of psychology, sociology and philosophy, but more slowly than its counterpart in the USA. Counselling psychologists, it is argued, have the skills and training to integrate good practice with rigorous research. Expertise in rigorous research methods, both quantitative and qualitative, and skill in identifying new paradigms, make the interface between practice and research in counselling psychology an especially fruitful area for study.     

The Effect of Organizational Climate on Job Satisfaction,Anxiety, and Propensity to Leave

This study examined the prediction of job-related attitudes from organizational climate dimensions. Ss were 111 supermarket department managers who returned an anonymous questionnaire which tapped perceptions of the organizational environment (i.e., climate) along 11 dimensions and also contained measures of job satisfaction, propensity to leave, and job-related anxiety. Each attitude variable was regressed on the 11 climate dimensions with use of stepwise multiple regression. The dimension of “Organizational clarity” emerged as the most significant predictor for each of the three outcome variables, a finding that is congruent with previous research in the area of role ambiguity. The dimension of “Performance-reward dependence” contributed significantly to the prediction of job satisfaction and propensity to leave, but not to the prediction of job-related anxiety. This is consistent with theories linking dissatisfaction and turnover with unsatisfactory reward systems.     

Education, Schooling, Derrida’s Marx and Democracy: Some Fundamental Questions

Beginning with a reconsideration of what the school is and has been, this paper explores the idea of the school to come. Emphasizing the governmental role of education in modernity, I offer a line of thinking that calls into question the assumption of both the school and education as possible conduits for either democracy or social justice. Drawing on Derrida’s spectral ontology I argue that any automatic correlation of education with democracy is misguided: especially within redemptive discourses that seek to liberate education from its present enclosure. This rereading of the field of education in the light of an account of the fundamental ontology of its key institution problematizes all rhetorics of education as social salvation. Education, it proposes, cannot be conceived as the ideal soul of a corrupted or as yet defective body, the school. Education—having taken on the character of an ontotheological principle—has become a governmental instrument as much as its specific institutions. This ontological condition can be understood within various accounts of the nature of contemporaneity. This paper considers the monstrous proposal that education be abandoned as the grounds for social, ethical and cultural redemption. The good news is that this abandonment opens the possibility for thinking beyond education, a beyond that is also beyond the strictures of instrumental rationality.     

Mentalization-based therapy with maltreated children living in shelters in southern Brazil: A single case study

This study describes the mentalization-based child therapy of a boy who suffered from early abuse and neglect, who was living in a shelter in southern Brazil. This single case study aimed at assessing whether this kind of psychotherapy contributes to reducing depressive symptoms and developing a greater capacity for reflection on the mental states of self and other, as part of developing a more coherent sense of self. Structured assessments were conducted before therapy and after six months of treatment, and the audio-recorded treatment sessions were analyzed using content analysis, in order to identify key themes in the treatment itself. The results suggested a significant improvement in depressive symptoms and some changes in mentalization with the beginnings of a movement toward a more cohesive and integrated self. We argue that mentalization-based child therapy could be a promising therapeutic approach for children who have experienced severe disruptions of emotional bonds, due to the way it focuses on the capacity to regulate affect and develop a more coherent sense of self.     

All Normal Extensions of S5-squared Are Finitely Axiomatizable

We prove that every normal extension of the bi-modal system S5² is finitely axiomatizable and that every proper normal extension has NP-complete satisfiability problem.Presented by Heinrich Wansing     

The neural basis of error detection: conflict monitoring and the error-related negativity

According to a recent theory, anterior cingulate cortex is sensitive to response conflict, the coactivation of mutually incompatible responses. The present research develops this theory to provide a new account of the error-related negativity (ERN), a scalp potential observed following errors. Connectionist simulations of response conflict in an attentional task demonstrated that the ERN--its timing and sensitivity to task parameters--can be explained in terms of the conflict theory. A new experiment confirmed predictions of this theory regarding the ERN and a second scalp potential, the N2, that is proposed to reflect conflict monitoring on correct response trials. Further analysis of the simulation data indicated that errors can be detected reliably on the basis of post-error conflict. It is concluded that the ERN can be explained in terms of response conflict and that monitoring for conflict may provide a simple mechanism for detecting errors.     

Essentialist beliefs about personality and their implications

Two studies examine implicit theories about the nature of personality characteristics, asking whether they are understood as underlying essences. Consistent with the hypothesis, essentialist beliefs about personality formed a coherent and replicable set. Personality characteristics differed systematically in the extent to which they were judged to be discrete, biologically based, immutable, informative, consistent across situations, and deeply inherent within the person. In Study 1, the extent to which characteristics were essentialized was positively associated with their perceived desirability, prevalence, and emotionality. In Study 2, essentialized characteristics were judged to be particularly important for defining people's identity, for forming impressions of people, and for communicating about a third person. The findings indicate that people understand some personality attributes in an essentialist fashion, that these attributes are taken to be valued elements of a shared human nature, and that they are particularly central to social identity and judgment.