Performance prediction in young children: Effects of skill,metacognition and wishful thinking

Research on children's performance expectations has repeatedly shown that preschoolers and kindergarten children typically overestimate their own performance across a wide range of contexts. In this study, two experiments were carried out with 4- and 6-year-old children to assess the impact of familiarity with the task, memory monitoring, and wishful thinking on children's performance predictions. Results showed that overpredictions were rather due to wishful thinking than to poor metacognition, and that overpredictions were more frequent in unfamiliar as compared to familiar task settings.     

Values and personality

Personality and differential psychology have paid little attention to values research. Consequently, the constructs used in these subdisciplines have developed independently, and evidence regarding the relations of personality to values is minimal. This study seeks to advance our understanding of these relations and to arrive at a theoretical integration of constructs. Starting from recent developments in values theory (Schwartz, 1992; Schwartz and Bilsky, 1987, 1990) and drawing on Maslow's (1955) distinction between ‘deficiency’ and ‘growth’ needs, we elaborate theoretical links between personality and values with special emphasis on structural relations. A set of hypotheses regarding these relations is generated and tested next, using data from a study with 331 German students. These students completed both the Rokeach Value Survey (RVS) and the Freiburg Personality Inventory (FPI), measuring ten primary and two secondary personality variables, namely extraversion and emotionality. Joint Similarity Structure Analyses (SSAs) of values and personality variables were conducted. The findings reveal both meaningful and systematic associations of value priorities with personality variables, confirming the hypothesized structural relationships. The compatibility of our hypotheses with the complex findings of George (1954) using totally different indexes of both values (Allport–Vernon Study of Values) and personality (drawn from Eysenck and Guilford) further supports the theoretical connections proposed in this study.     

Locus of the effect of specific practice in continuous visual search

Specific practice in a visual search task can result either in a selective elaboration of the feature lists of the task stimuli or in a selective emphasis of their status within the task (targets vs. nontargets). According to the first explanation, which is related to the differentiation principle of perceptual learning, specific practice enhances the operation of stimulus identification. According to the second explanation, which is related to the enrichment principle of perceptual learning, it enhances the operation of response selection. Evidence from two transfer experiments with a reversal paradigm argues in favor of the second view, at least for tasks with easily codable letter stimuli. The results are discussed in the framework of a recent model of information integration in visual search.     

A reconception of meaning

Nelson Goodman's proposal for a reconception of meaning consists in replacing the absolute notion ofsameness of meaning by that oflikeness of meaning (with respect to pertinent contexts). According to this view, synonymy is a matter of degree (of interreplaceability) with identity of expression as a limiting case. Goodman's demonstration that no two expressions are exactly alike in meaning is shown to be unsuccessful. Although it does not make use of quotational contexts for the test of interreplaceability, it is tantamount to their acceptance. Goodman rejects quotational contexts; I argue that they should be accepted. This move offers two advantages.Firstly, and mainly, it allows interlinguistic comparison of meaning, something that has not been deemed possible in the received version of Goodman's account.Secondly, it restores the full scale of likeness of meaning damaged by the renunciation of those contexts that guarantee difference in meaning for diverse expressions.The problems [the paper On Likeness of Meaning] deals with do not seem to me to have quite the paramount importance that is commonly attached to them these days. (Goodman, 1954, p. 54)The subversive power of a radical reorganization of categories should not be underestimated. (Goodman, 1983, p. 2)² Thanks to Oliver R. Scholz and Lorenz Lorenz-Meyer for valuable discussions and advice. Thanks to Geoff Simmons for checking my English. Israel Scheffler and Rolf Eberle both read a preliminary version of this paper. My thanks for their criticism and encouragement.     

Aging and temporal discrimination of brief auditory intervals

Summary In a duration-discrimination experiment, young adults (mean age = 25.1), middle-aged adults (mean age = 45.5), and older adults (mean age = 64.6) were presented with two very brief auditorily marked intervals per trial, and their task was to decide which of the two was longer in duration. An adaptive psychophysical procedure was used to determine difference thresholds in relation to a constant standard interval of 50 ms. It was found that duration-discrimination performance was unaffected by age; all three age groups yielded a difference threshold of approximately 17 ms. It was concluded that the ability to discriminate durations of very brief auditory intervals appears to be based on an underlying timing mechanism that does not slow down with advancing adult age.     

Does differential social support cause sex differences in bereavement outcome?

A study of a sample of bereaved and married individuals tested the prediction from stress theory that sex differences in bereavement outcome are due to differences in social support extended to the bereaved. Previous research had established that compared to same‐sex married controls, widowers suffer greater health deterioration following the death of a spouse than widows. Although there is some evidence that widows receive more social support than widowers, it has never been tested empirically whether differential social support is responsible for the sex difference in bereavement outcome. Two sets of tests were conducted to examine these hypotheses: first, sex differences in bereavement outcome and in the social support perceived by the bereaved were assessed by means of sex×marital status ANOVAs on depressive symptomatology, loneliness and social support; second, an ANCOVA was used to assess whether the marital status×sex interaction on distress was substantially reduced or eliminated when social support was used as a covariate. Although there was evidence of the expected sex differences in bereavement outcome and social support, there was no evidence that social support mediates the sex differences in bereavement outcome. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Sequential Production of Social Acts in Conversation

With reference to Mead, Peirce, speech act theory, conversation analysis, and Luhmann's phenomenological grounded version of systems theory, the paper tries to reconstruct actions as products of communication. A triadic sequence is identified as the elementary unit for the intersubjective constitution of an act. This unit combines three achievements: (a) the constitution of meaning by sequential attribution, (b) the intersubjective coordination of attributed meanings, and (c) the reproduction of rules, guiding the process of constitution and coordination of attributed meanings. Then, using the tools of systems theory and applying them to empirical results of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, it is shown how the rule scheme is integrated in a triadic sequence, functioning on three different levels of communication. Finally, a specific form of repair after next turn is discussed, relating it to the function of preserving the structure of conversational types. The analysis of such conversational types opens a possible realm of cooperation between conversation analysis and Luhmann's version of systems theory.