Unskilled and optimistic: Overconfident predictions despite calibrated knowledge of relative skill

Those who are less skilled tend to overestimate their abilities more than do those who are more skilled—the so-called Dunning–Kruger effect. Less-skilled performers presumably have less of the knowledge needed to make informed guesses about their relative performance. If so, the Dunning–Kruger effect should vanish when participants do have access to information about their relative ability and performance. Competitive bridge players predicted their results for bridge sessions before playing and received feedback about their actual performance following each session. Despite knowing their own relative skill and showing unbiased memory for their performance, they made overconfident predictions consistent with a Dunning–Kruger effect. This bias persisted even though players received accurate feedback about their predictions after each session. The finding of a Dunning–Kruger effect despite knowledge of relative ability suggests that differential self-knowledge is not a necessary precondition for the Dunning–Kruger effect. At least in some cases, the effect might reflect a different form of irrational optimism.     

Health-Related Quality of Life and Perceived Need for Mental Health Services in Adolescent Solid Organ Transplant Recipients

The purpose of the current investigation was to assess interest in mental health services among parents of adolescent solid organ transplant recipients and the relationship between parent perceived need for mental health services and patient health-related quality of life (HRQOL). Sixty-three parents rated interest in receiving 10 mental health services, and patient HRQOL ratings were gathered from adolescent transplant recipients and their parents. Ninety-four percent of parents expressed some level of interest in at least one of the proposed services, with over 40 % indicating maximum interest. Parents’ perceived need for mental health services was inversely related to adolescent and parent reports of HRQOL on the behavior, mental health, family cohesion, and parental impact-emotional domains. Results suggest that parents of adolescent solid organ transplant recipients are interested in receiving mental health services for their families. Assessment of need for mental health services and HRQOL may inform the medical team of families requiring intervention.     

Changes are not localized before they are explicitly detected

Change detection is in many ways analogous to visual search. Yet, unlike search, successful detection depends not on the salience of features within a scene, but on the difference between the original and modified scene. If, as in search, pre-attentive mechanisms guide attention to the change location, the change itself must produce a preattentively detectable signal. Despite recent evidence for implicit representation of change in the absence of conscious detection, few studies have yet explored whether attention is guided to a change location prior to explicit detection. In four “change blindness” experiments using several variants of the “flicker” task, we tested the hypothesis that implicit or preattentive mechanisms guide change localization prior to explicit detection. None of the experiments revealed improved localization of changes prior to explicit reports of detection, suggesting that implicit detection of change does not contribute to the eventual explicit localization of a change. Instead, change localization is essentially arbitrary, driven by the salience of features within scenes.     

Recruiting through advertising or employee referrals: Costs,yields, and the effects of geographic focus

Research on recruiting has generally considered the effects of recruiting source on employee tenure or performance, and has argued that formal employment ads are inferior to informal sources, notably employee referrals. We test two dimensions for evaluating the effects of recruiting sources on the recruiting process—cost per new hire and yield ratio. We also suggest a new dimension for distinguishing between different types of employment ads—geographical focus—which we define as the clarity and distinctiveness of the labour market that an ad is likely to reach. Geographically focused ads are shown to cost less and yield more appropriate applicants than unfocused ads. Considering the cost, yield, and focus of ads can promote the effectiveness of recruiting processes. The study therefore has both practical applications and implications for further research on recruiting sources.     

How much can you bend before you break: An experience of using constructionist consulting as a tool for organizational learning in the corporate world

This article reflects upon the experience the authors had in the process of designing and facilitating a year-long leadership development class within a division of a high-tech manufacturing corporation in the USA. The design reflected narrative (Simons, 1997; Epston & White, 1990), feminist (Ferguson, 1984; Ramsey & Calvert, 1994), and constructionist principles, and was implemented as a “learning-in-organizing process” (Abma, this issue). We have structured the article to capture the dynamic nature of this process. This includes a discussion of how we as “outsider” class instructors and “insider” participants negotiated and renegotiated the design of the class as well as the effects of these “relational negotiations” on our collective learning. We end with a consideration of the implications of our “learning-in-organizing” for other constructionist consultants (Campbell, Caldicott, & Kinsella, 1994) who are translating organizational learning theories into practice.     

WRITING THE LAND: LANGUAGE AND TERRITORY IN MODERN HEBREW LITERATURE

This essay examines one of the greatest ambitions of the Hebrew cultural revival––the creation of a modern and distinct Hebrew national culture by rewinding history and reconnecting the indeterminate Jewish subject to a determinate Hebrew soil. The essay looks at three writers from three distinct periods in the last century, S. Yizhar, Amos Oz and Orly Castel-Bloom, whose works are deeply concerned with this connection between man and land, and who demonstrate that concern through a particular use of language. The essay shows how each of these writers uses the Hebrew language to comment on these relations in the last 50 or so years and tell us something about the state of Israeli Hebrew culture in the so-called post-national age. The article looks at Yizhar's careful creation of a language-land bond, at the way Amos Oz warns against the excesses of these bonds, and at Orly Castel-Bloom's critical attempt to undermine these bonds half a century after they have been created.     

Links between neuroticism, emotional distress, and disengaging attention: evidence from a single-target RSVP task

Anxiety and depression are often associated with attention control deficits, but few studies have explored whether neuroticism can account for these links. In the present study, undergraduate students (n=146) completed self-report measures of neuroticism, worry, anxious arousal, and anhedonic depression and also completed a visual attention task in which they were asked to identify a red target letter embedded within a rapid sequence of items. Neuroticism was associated with detection of the target when it was preceded by a distracter with which it shared a feature in common (a green letter). Specifically, these distracters produced longer attentional blinks in individuals with elevated levels of neuroticism. In contrast, target detection was not significantly associated with worry, anxious arousal, or anhedonic depression. We discuss the implications of this link between neuroticism and attention for cognitive models of emotional distress and disorders.     

A load on my mind: evidence that anhedonic depression is like multi-tasking

Multi-tasking can increase susceptibility to distraction, affecting whether irrelevant objects capture attention. Similarly, people with depression often struggle to concentrate when performing cognitively demanding tasks. This parallel suggests that depression is like multi-tasking. To test this idea, we examined relations between self-reported levels of anhedonic depression (a dimension that reflects the unique aspects of depression not shared with anxiety or other forms of distress) and attention capture by salient items in a visual search task. Furthermore, we compared these relations to the effects of performing a concurrent auditory task on attention capture. Strikingly, both multi-tasking and elevated levels of anhedonic depression were associated with increased capture by uniquely colored items, but decreased capture by abruptly appearing items. At least with respect to attention capture and distraction, depression seems to be functionally comparable to juggling a second, unrelated cognitive task.     

Tree proofs for syllogistic

This paper presents a tree method for testing the validity of inferences, including syllogisms, in a simple term logic. The method is given in the form of an algorithm and is shown to be sound and complete with respect to the obvious denotational semantics. The primitive logical constants of the system, which is indebted to the logical works of Jevons, Brentano and Lewis Carroll, are term negation, polyadic term conjunction, and functors affirming and denying existence, and use is also made of a metalinguistic concept of formal synonymy. It is indicated briefly how the method may be extended to other systems.To the memory of Jerzy Supecki