MULTIPLE FRACTURES IN TIME: REFLECTIONS ON A CAR CRASH

This essay offers a story of a traumatic event experienced by the author on September 6, 1999. Presented here in autoethnographic and multivoiced form, the author narrates a fraction of time in her life that has left her forever changed: a near-death car crash. She uses literary mode in the crash story and recollected dialogue in the rescue story. In the effort to engage readers into the particulars of such a horrific experience, she seeks to connect with trauma survivors and perhaps offer illumination for those who (for their own reasons) seek further understanding in what will, hopefully for them, never be a first-order experience.     

Impression Management Use in Resumes and Cover Letters

Purpose

This study contributes to the ecological validity of resume research by systematically examining the impression management (IM) content of actual resumes and cover letters and empirically testing the effect on applicant evaluation.

Design/methodology/approach

A content analysis of the frequency and intensity of IM tactic use in 60 resumes and cover letters was completed (Study 1). Next, an experiment was conducted in which IM tactic use was manipulated and the effect on applicant evaluation examined, using a sample of MTurk workers as evaluators (Study 2).

Findings

In Study 1, four self-promotion categories, three ingratiation categories, and one hybrid category were delineated. In Study 2, ingratiation and lower intensity self-promotion were found to increase perceptions of job and organization fit.

Implications

Employers should be aware that resumes and cover letters contain IM tactics that may influence applicant evaluation. In addition, employment training programs might communicate the benefits of using ingratiation and lower intensity self-promotion, while emphasizing the importance of accurately conveying one’s qualifications. Furthermore, the present taxonomy of IM resume content might be applied to resume database search engines to identify and index IM tactic use.

Originality/value

This research is the first to develop a taxonomy of IM tactics based on actual resumes and cover letters and may facilitate more comprehensive manipulations of IM tactic use and better integration of IM research across the selection process.

     

Reconciling symbolic and dynamic aspects of language: Toward a dynamic psycholinguistics

The present paper examines natural language as a dynamical system. The oft-expressed view of language as “a static system of symbols” is here seen as an element of a larger system that embraces the mutuality of symbols and dynamics. Following along the lines of the theoretical biologist H.H. Pattee, the relation between symbolic and dynamic aspects of language is expressed within a more general framework that deals with the role of information in biological systems. In this framework, symbols are seen as information-bearing entities that emerge under pressures of communicative needs and that serve as concrete constraints on development and communication. In an attempt to identify relevant dynamic aspects of such a system, one has to take into account events that happen on different time scales: evolutionary language change (i.e., a diachronic aspect), processes of communication (language use) and language acquisition. Acknowledging the role of dynamic processes in shaping and sustaining the structures of natural language calls for a change in methodology. In particular, a purely synchronic analysis of a system of symbols as “meaning-containing entities” is not sufficient to obtain answers to certain recurring problems in linguistics and the philosophy of language. A more encompassing research framework may be the one designed specifically for studying informationally based coupled dynamical systems (coordination dynamics) in which processes of self-organization take place over different time scales.     

Statistical analysis of timing errors.

Human rhythmic activities are variable. Cycle-to-cycle fluctuations form the behavioral observable. Traditional analysis focuses on statistical measures such as mean and variance. In this article we show that, by treating the fluctuations as a time series, one can apply techniques such as power spectra and rescaled range analysis to gain insight into the mechanisms underlying the remarkable abilities of humans to perform a variety of rhythmic movements, from maintaining memorized temporal patterns to anticipating and timing their movements to predictable sensory stimuli.     

Converging evidence for the role of relative timing in speech

In an earlier article (Tuller, Kelso, & Harris, 1982a) we suggested that the timing of consonant-related muscle activity was constrained relative to the period between onsets of muscle activity for successive vowels. Here, we reexamine those data based on reservations posed by Barry (1983). Next, we present a kinematic study of articulation that extends and strongly supports our original observations. Finally, we very briefly survey some converging lines of evidence for a functionally significant vowel-to-vowel period in speech and how this may relate to the role of temporal invariance in motor skills in general.     

A microcomputer-based cardiotachometer with video display

A KIM-1 single board microcomputer implementation of a cardiotachometer that provides a low-cost versatile heart-rate data acquisition system is described. Unique features include telemetry, a composite video output signal of a video frame displaying elapsed time and heart-rate, and a TV camera signal of the behavior. Data is videotape- and/or audiotape-recorded for further analysis with a larger computer.     

Categorization of Ambiguous Sentences as a Function of a Changing Prosodic Parameter: A Dynamical Approach

The present study investigates the dynamics of changes in interpretation of ambiguous sentences. The sentences used had alternative interpretations with different surface structures (bracketing). Continua were created by systematic manipulation of prosodic cues (relative foot duration), resulting in stimulus sentences that spanned the range between the two interpretations. Continua were presented to subjects who were requested to indicate as quickly as possible which meaning they perceived. The pattern of responses and response times revealed the presence of hysteresis. That is, when the values of prosodic parameters are congruent with both interpretations, the individual's recent history decides which meaning will be perceived. Thus, we can treat this categorization process as a transition from an initially stable meaning that loses stability with variations in prosody (our control parameter). The same underlying dynamics have been observed in studies of perception of syllables and aspects of visual perception. Apart from demonstrating the same characteristics of pattern formation at various levels of cognition, the study points to the usefulness of the dynamical approach in the investigation of language understanding.     

The influences of stage of leaving school on vocational maturity and realism of vocational choice

Cross-sectional data were provided by 1484 male high school pupils drawn from grades seven to twelve. All subjects completed either the Otis Intermediate Test or the Otis Higher Test, Crites' Vocational Development Inventory (VDI), and the author's Student Survey. Major findings were that: (1) subjects' anticipated stage of leaving school was significantly related to realism of vocational choice-those boys who expected to leave school prior to grade twelve showed higher levels of realism than those going on, in spite of the fact that they tended to be lower in both maturity of vocational choice attitudes (VCA) and intelligence; (2) IQ exercised a complicated mediatory effect on both VCA and realism; and (3) in general, both VCA and realism were linearly related to grade. Taken together, these findings indicated the need to distinguish carefully between VCA and realism as aspects of vocational development. Implications for further research in vocational development are discussed.     

Preselection in short-term motor memory.

Recent studies by Jones (1974) have posited that accurate movements in short-term motor memory (STMM) are mediated by the subject's ability to preset effector mechanisms and monitor their efferent output. Three experiments were conducted to examine this hypothesis. Experiment 1 involved comparisons between the reproduction of the end-location and the reproduction of the distance of a preselected movement. The results revealed that preselected location was superior to preselected distance, indicating that the efference attached to movement extent was not primary. Experiment 2 examined whether location cues were primarily encoded independent of the movement presentation mode. The subjects recalled target locations under preselected, constrained, and passive movement conditions. Recall in the preselected condition was superior to that in the constrained and passive conditions, which showed no difference, suggesting that afferent location information per se was not totally responsible for recall accuracy. Experiment 3 examined the processing requirements of preselected, constrained, and passive location information by filling the retention interval with interpolated processing activity. While preselected location was clearly superior, the three conditions were not differentially affected by processing activity. These overall findings were interpreted as contrary to Jones (1974) and pointed to the importance of preselection in short-term motor memory.