A causal model theory of the meaning of cause, enable, and prevent

The verbs cause , enable , and prevent express beliefs about the way the world works. We offer a theory of their meaning in terms of the structure of those beliefs expressed using qualitative properties of causal models, a graphical framework for representing causal structure. We propose that these verbs refer to a causal model relevant to a discourse and that "A causes B" expresses the belief that the causal model includes a link from A to B. "A enables/allows B" entails that the model includes a link from A to B, that A represents a category of events necessary for B, and that an alternative cause of B exists. "A prevents B" entails that the model includes a link from A to B and that A reduces the likelihood of B. This theory is able to account for the results of four experiments as well as a variety of existing data on human reasoning.     

Cognitive Style and Entrepreneurial Drive of New and Mature Business Owner-Managers

Purpose  

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether cognitive style and entrepreneurial drive are important for identifying individuals who have the potential to become successful entrepreneurs, and for discriminating between owner-managers operating in mature and early stages of venture creation and growth.     

Sudden Death and Gradual Decay in Visual Working Memory

ABSTRACT— General Douglas MacArthur remarked that "old soldiers never die; they just fade away." For decades, researchers have concluded that visual working memories, like old soldiers, fade away gradually, becoming progressively less precise as they are retained for longer periods of time. However, these conclusions were based on threshold-estimation procedures in which the complete termination of a memory could artifactually produce the appearance of lower precision. Here, we use a recall-based visual working memory paradigm that provides separate measures of the probability that a memory is available and the precision of the memory when it is available. Using this paradigm, we demonstrate that visual working memory representations may be retained for several seconds with little or no loss of precision, but that they may terminate suddenly and completely during this period.     

Acute Stress Modulates Risk Taking in Financial Decision Making

ABSTRACT— People's decisions are often susceptible to various demands exerted by the environment, leading to stressful conditions. Although a goal for researchers is to elucidate stress-coping mechanisms to facilitate decision-making processes, it is important to first understand the interaction between the state created by a stressful environment and how decisions are performed in such environments. The objective of this experiment was to probe the impact of exposure to acute stress on financial decision making and examine the particular influence of stress on decisions with a positive or negative valence. Participants' choices exhibited a stronger reflection effect when participants were under stress than when they were in the no-stress control phase. This suggests that stress modulates risk taking, potentially exacerbating behavioral bias in subsequent decision making. Consistent with dual-process approaches, decision makers fall back on automatized reactions to risk under the influence of disruptive stress.     

Bootstrapping and knowledge of reliability

This is a critical discussion of a paper on the problem of bootstrapping by Jose Zalabardo.

The interaction of word frequency and concreteness in immediate serial recall

Word frequency and word concreteness are language attributes that have been shown to independently influence the recall of items in verbal short-term memory (STM). It has been argued that such effects are evidence for the action of long-term memory knowledge on STM traces. However, research to date has not investigated whether these variables interact in serial recall. In two experiments, we examined the behavior of these variables under factorial manipulation and demonstrated that the effect of word frequency is dependent on the level of concreteness of items. Serial recall performance is examined with reference to two explanatory approaches: Walker and Hulme’s (1999) dual-redintegration account and language-based models of STM. The data indicate that language-based models are more compatible with the observed effects and challenge the view that frequency and concreteness effects in STM are the products of distinct mechanisms.     

Self-perceived employability: Investigating the responses of post-graduate students

This paper reports the further testing of a research instrument to examine the expectations and self-perceptions of employability of business students at post-graduate level, building on previously reported research with undergraduates [Rothwell, A., Herbert, I., & Rothwell, F. (2008). Self perceived employability: Construction and initial validation of a scale for university students. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 73(1), 1-12]. On this occasion the scale was again found to have a good internal reliability coefficient (α = .84), and discriminant validity from university commitment. Forcing a four-factor solution found components relating to the university’s reputation, individual self-confidence and proactivity, external labor market factors, and finally the individuals’ engagement with study and academic performance. For this multi-cultural post-graduate sample, perceptions of employability were good, but within that they placed significant emphasis on the brand and reputation of the university. Results indicate the potential for further studies with refined scales, particularly the combined scale of employability and ambition.     

The influence of category coherence on inference about cross-classified entities

A critical function of categories is their use in property inference (Heit, 2000). However, one challenge to using categories in inference is that most entities in the world belong to multiple categories (e.g., Fido could be a dog, a pet, a mammal, or a security system). Building on Patalano, Chin-Parker, and Ross (2006), we tested the hypothesis that category coherence (the extent to which category features go together in light of prior knowledge) influences the selection of categories for use in property inference about cross-classified entities. In two experiments, we directly contrasted coherent and incoherent categories, both of which included cross-classified entities as members, and we found that the coherent categories were used more readily as the source of both property transfer and property extension. We conclude that category coherence, which has been found to be a potent influence on strength of inference for singly classified entities (Rehder & Hastie, 2004), is also central to category use in reasoning about novel cross-classified ones.