The Changing Context of Assessment and its Implications

Increased competition and the globalization of business have resulted in fundamental changes in the structure of organizations. These in turn have altered the nature of the employment relationship and reduced the extent of internal labour markets. The implications for traditional models of assessment are profound. Job analysis, the management of careers, homogeneity of the workforce, and the ownership of assessment data are all problematic. New tools are not adequate to address these issues. Rather, the profession of work and organizational psychology needs to change the assumptions and values of its culture as well as its artefacts. The major block to such change is the selection of those problems which are defined by the academic establishment rather than those faced by the client.     

The effects of room management and small-group procedures on the behavior of older adults who have Alzheimer's disease

The effects of room management and small groups procedures on the behavior of five older adults with Alzheimer's Disease was experimentally evaluated by a multielement design with replications across five subjects. Engagement during both room management and small groups was higher than during no treatment baselines. The effects on affective and maladaptive behaviors were of small magnitude. Evidence of individual differences was found both with respect to absolute proportions of time spent in various behaviors and with respect to interactions between individual differences and experimental conditions.     

Differences in occupational stress in three European countries

In this study, the reliabilities of the Dutch translation of the Occupational Stress Inventory, which is based on the theory of Cooper (Cooper & Marshall, 1976), was investigated. The sample comprised 436 nurses. A comparison is made of the individual and job satisfaction stress levels of Dutch and British nurses (N = 546), and of British managers (N =123) and German managers (N =133). The differences in the reliabilities of the Dutch version, compared to the British and German, are small. The differences between the stress and satisfaction scores are found to be greater between occupational groups than between nations.     

Auditory Priming for Nonverbal Information: Implicit and Explicit Memory for Environmental Sounds

Three experiments examined repetition priming for meaningful environmental sounds (e.g., clock ticking, tooth brushing, toilet flushing, etc.) in a sound stem identification paradigm using brief sound cues. Prior encoding of target sounds together with their associated names facilitated subsequent identification of sound stems relative to nonstudied controls. In contrast, prior exposure to names alone in the absence of the environmental sounds did not prime subsequent sound stem identification performance at all (Experiments 1 and 3). Explicit and implicit memory were dissociated such that sound stem cued recall was higher following semantic than nonsemantic encoding, whereas sound priming was insensitive to manipulations of depth encoding (Experiments 2 and 3). These results extend the findings of long-term repetition priming into the auditory nonverbal domain and suggest that priming for environmental sounds is mediated primarily by perceptual processes.     

Reply to William R. Ferrell’s paper “A model for realism of confidence judgments: Implications for underconfidence in sensory discrimination”

Ferrell’s decision-variable partition model and our subjective distance model belong to the same family of Thurstonial models. The subjective distance model is limited to sensory discrimination with the method of constant stimuli and rooted in such notions as discriminal dispersion and sense distance. Ferrell’s model is intended to be wider in scope and to apply to both cognitive and sensory tasks. Both models need supplementary assumptions to predict calibration phenomena. The point of departure for us is the fact that the model predicts under-confidence under “guessing” and the empirical finding that people are about 100% correct when they report “absolutely certain.” Ferrell makes assumptions about cutoffs on the decision variable. The respondent is assumed to adjust or not adjust cutoffs according to “cues to difficulty.” We disagree with Ferrell’s claim that the hard-easy effect is explained by the respondent’s failure to adjust cutoffs sufficiently when there is a change in level of difficulty, and argue that this amounts to little more than a translation of the hard-easy effect into the lingua of Ferrell’s decision-variable partition model. Our argument is that the hard-easy effect is a consequence of the post hoc division of items according to solution probability. In addition, error variance may contribute to regression effects that enlarge the hard-easy effect. Finally, in contrast to Ferrell’s position, we regard inference (cognitive uncertainty) and discrimination (sensory uncertainty) as different psychological processes. An understanding of calibration in these two areas requires separate models.     

Extraction of relief from visual motion

We quantified the ability of human subjects to discriminate the relative distance of two points from a slanted plane when viewing the projected velocities of this scene (orthographic projection). The relative distance from a plane (called relief) is a 3-D property that is invariant under linear (affine) transformations. As such, relief canin principle be extracted from the instantaneous projected velocity field; a metric representation, which requires the extraction of visual acceleration, is not required. The stimulus consisted of a slanted planeP (specified by three points) and two pointsQ ₁ andQ ₂ that are non-coplanar withP. This configuration of points oscillated rigidly around the vertical axis. We have measured thesystematic error andaccuracy with which human subjects estimate the relative distance of pointsQ ₁ andQ ₂ from planeP as a function of the slant of_P. The systematic error varies with slant: it is low for small slant values, reaches a maximum for medium slant values, and drops again for high slant values. The accuracy covaries with the systematic error and is thus high for small and large slant values and low for medium slant values. These results are successfully modeled by a simple relief-from-motion computation based on local estimates of projected velocities. The data are well predicted by assuming (1) a measurement error in velocity estimation that varies proportionally to velocity (Weber’s law) and (2) an eccentricity-dependent underestimation of velocity.     

Classical harmony: Rules of inference and the meaning of the logical constants

The thesis that, in a system of natural deduction, the meaning of a logical constant is given by some or all of its introduction and elimination rules has been developed recently in the work of Dummett, Prawitz, Tennant, and others, by the addition of harmony constraints. Introduction and elimination rules for a logical constant must be in harmony. By deploying harmony constraints, these authors have arrived at logics no stronger than intuitionist propositional logic. Classical logic, they maintain, cannot be justified from this proof-theoretic perspective. This paper argues that, while classical logic can be formulated so as to satisfy a number of harmony constraints, the meanings of the standard logical constants cannot all be given by their introduction and/or elimination rules; negation, in particular, comes under close scrutiny.     

The dynamics of Prägnanz

Summary There is quite wide-spread agreement about the relevance of pattern Pragnanz (Koffka, 1935) with respect to the human interpretation of visual patterns. There is less agreement about whether pattern Pragnanz is based solely on pattern information (static) or also on the history of the perceiver (dynamic). In Van Leeuwen and Van den Hof (1991), experimental data concerning serial patterns are presented within the framework of the dynamic-network approach initiated by Buffart (1986, 1987). These experimental data are claimed to give evidence against the static-coding approach initiated by Leeuwenberg (1969, 1971). In the present paper, however, I show first that Buffart's theoretical basis is incorrect, and that in fact Leeuwenberg's static-coding approach is the basis for the dynamic-network approach. Second, I show that those experimental data rather give evidence in favor of the static-coding approach, by using those same data for a test of the most recent static-coding model (Van der Helm & Leeuwenberg, 1991; Van der Helm, Van Lier, & Leeuwenberg, 1992). Finally, I propose a reconciliation between the two approaches, in the sense that the dynamic-network model could be shaped in such a way that it yields a simulation, and maybe even an enrichment, of the static-coding model.     

Taking an individualized approach to the assessment of self-efficacy and the prediction of alcoholic relapse

The present study reports on a clinical instrument designed for assessing self-efficacy in alcoholics. In contrast to studies that construct general measures, it was proposed that taking an individualized approach to assessment might offer an effective methodology. Thirty-four alcoholics in an outpatient, behaviorally oriented treatment program participated as subjects. During therapy, an Individualized Self-Efficacy Survey (ISS) was developed for each subject. The ISS was developed by (a) administering the Drinking Patterns Questionnaire (DPQ) to identify important problem areas (e.g., work, children, marital) and specific drinking antecedents and (b) constructing a 15-item scale using each drinker's most important cues. The utility of having clients choose their own items was supported by finding a significant relationship between problem areas identified as important on the DPQ and the areas reported as surrounding relapse. ISS ratings were reflective of efficacy changes during treatment, while posttreatment ISS scores were predictive of subsequent relapse. Situation-specific prediction of relapse was not found. The advantages of this methodology for clinical use are discussed, while general directions for future research are suggested.     

Opportunity,opportunism, and progress:Kairos in the rhetoric of technology

As the principle of timing or opportunity,kairos serves both as a powerful theme within technological discourse and as an analytical concept that explains some of the suasory force by which such discourse maintains itself and its position in our culture. This essay makes a case for a rhetoric of technology that is distinct from the rhetoric of science and illustrates the value of the classical vocabulary for understanding contemporary rhetoric. This case is made by examining images and models of technological change that underlie and justify the thematizations ofkairos that appear in so much technological discourse and by exploring the phenomenon of technological forecasting, in which the characterization and construction of moments in the present are crucial to the projection of the future. One example of forecasting is examined in detail: the Japanese Fifth Generation computer project, which illustrates the twin themes of opportunity and threat.