Effects of Performance Context on Processing Speed and Performance Ratings

The present study demonstrated that the presence of evaluatively polarized context performances not only produces contrast and halo effects on judgments of a target performance, but also causes judgments to be made much faster. Processing speed and positive halo were highly correlated, supporting the notion that halo in performance ratings results from raters' recall and use of a single, general impression. Furthermore, regression analyses demonstrated that processing speed mediates the relationship between context and halo. The relationship between these findings, halo, processing speed, and general impressions, as well as implications for performance appraisals, are discussed.     

Perceptual Grouping: It's Later Than You Think

Recent research on perceptual grouping is described with particular emphasis on the level at which grouping factors operate. Contrary to the standard view of grouping as an early, two-dimensional, image-based process, experimental results show that it is strongly influenced by binocular depth perception, lightness constancy, amodal completion, and illusory figures. Such findings imply that at least some grouping processes operate at the level of conscious perception rather than the retinal image. Whether classical grouping processes also operate at an early, preconstancy level is an important, but currently unanswered question.     

Affective guidance of intelligent agents: How emotion controls cognition

How do emotions and moods color cognition? In this article, we examine how such reactions influence both judgments and cognitive performance. We argue that many affective influences are due, not to affective reactions themselves, but to the information they carry about value. The specific kind of influence that occurs depends on the focus of the agent at the time. When making evaluative judgments, for example, an agent’s positive affect may emerge as a positive attitude toward a person or object. But when an agent focuses on a cognitive task, positive affect may act like feedback about the value of one’s approach. As a result, positive affect tends to promote cognitive, relational processes, whereas negative affect tends to inhibit relational processing, resulting in more perceptual, stimulus-specific processing. As a consequence, many textbook phenomena from cognitive psychology occur readily in happy moods, but are inhibited or even absent in sad moods (149).     

a test of holland's theory of vocational personalities and work environments

This study investigated the validity of J. L. Holland's (1997) theory of vocational personalities and work environments. The sample consisted of 241 randomly selected members of the National Association of School Psychologists, each of whom completed a demographic data form, the Self‐Directed Search‐Revised (SDS‐R; J. L. Holland, 1994) and a modified short form of the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (D. J. Weiss, R. V. Dawis, G. W. England, & L. H. Lofquist, 1967). Only limited support was found for major constructs associated with Holland's theory, although the study found several significant relationships between 3‐letter SDS‐R codes and desired role function as would be predicted by Holland's theory.     

Stress management: Approaches and interventions

The different approaches, possible interventions and subsequent evaluation problems related to stress management and counselling are discussed in relation to the other symposium papers.     

Measuring the effect of multiple eye fixations on memory for visual attributes

Because of limited peripheral vision, many visual tasks depend on multiple eye fixations. Good performance in such tasks demonstrates that some memory must survive from one fixation to the next. One factor that must influence performance is the degree to which multiple eye fixations interfere with the critical memories. In the present study, the amount of interference was measured by comparing visual discriminations based on multiple fixations to visual discriminations based on a single fixation. The procedure resembled partial report, but used a discrimination measure. In the prototype study, two lines were presented, followed by a single line and a cue. The cue pointed toward one of the positions of the first two lines. Observers were required to judge if the single line in the second display was longer or shorter than the cued line of the first display. These judgments were used to estimate a length threshold. The critical manipulation was to instruct observers either to maintain fixation between the lines of the first display or to fixate each line in sequence. The results showed an advantage for multiple fixations despite the intervening eye movements. In fact, thresholds for the multiple-fixation condition were nearly as good as those in a control condition where the lines were foveally viewed without eye movements. Thus, eye movements had little or no interfering effect in this task. Additional studies generalized the procedure and the stimuli. In conclusion, information about a variety of size and shape attributes was remembered with essentially no interference across eye fixations.     

Common region: a new principle of perceptual grouping.

A new principle of grouping is proposed that is based on elements being located within a common region of space. Demonstrations analogous to Wertheimer's original displays show that this factor strongly influences perceived grouping and is capable of overcoming the effects of other powerful grouping factors such as proximity and similarity. Grouping by common region is further shown to depend on perceived depth relations, indicating that it is influenced by processes that occur after at least some depth perception has been achieved. Further demonstrations suggest that it is dominated by the smallest background area and that it can follow a hierarchical embedding scheme. It is argued that common region cannot be reduced to the effects of proximity, closure, or any other previously known factor and therefore constitutes a genuinely new principle of grouping.     

Color, consciousness, and the isomorphism constraint

The relations among consciousness, brain behavior, and scientific explanation are explored in the domain of color perception. Current scientific knowledge about color similarity, color composition, dimensional structure, unique colors, and color categories is used to assess Locke's "inverted spectrum argument" about the undetectability of color transformations. A symmetry analysis of color space shows that the literal interpretation of this argument--reversing the experience of a rainbow--would not work. Three other color to color transformations might work, however, depending on the relevance of certain color categories. The approach is then generalized to examine behavioral detection of arbitrary differences in color experiences, leading to the formulation of a principled distinction, called the "isomorphism constraint," between what can and cannot be determined about the nature of color experience by objective behavioral means. Finally, the prospects for achieving a biologically based explanation of color experience below the level of isomorphism are considered in light of the limitations of behavioral methods. Within-subject designs using biological interventions hold the greatest promise for scientific progress on consciousness, but objective knowledge of another person's experience appears impossible. The implications of these arguments for functionalism are discussed.     

Truth, Sense and Reference

Books reviewed in this essay:
Wolfgang Carl, Frege's Theory of Sense and Reference: Its Scope and its Origins
William P. Alston, A Realist Conception of Truth