When is a cause the “same”? Incoherent generalization across contexts

A theory or model of cause such as Cheng's power (p) allows people to predict the effectiveness of a cause in a different causal context from the one in which they observed its actions. Liljeholm and Cheng demonstrated that people could detect differences in the effectiveness of the cause when causal power varied across contexts of different outcome base rates, but that they did not detect similar changes when only the cause–outcome contingency, ?p, but not power, varied. However, their procedure allowed participants to simplify the causal scenarios and consider only a subsample of observations with a base rate of zero. This confounds p, ?p, and the probability of an outcome (O) given a cause (C), P(O|C). Furthermore, the contingencies that they used confounded p and P(O|C) in the overall sample. Following the work of Liljeholm and Cheng, we examined whether causal induction in a wider range of situations follows the principles suggested by Cheng. Experiments 1a and 1b compared the procedure used by Liljeholm and Cheng with one that did not allow the sample of observations to be simplified. Experiments 2a and 2b compared the same two procedures using contingencies that controlled for P(O|C). The results indicated that, if the possibility of converting all contexts to a zero base rate situation was avoided, people were sensitive to changes in P(O|C), p, and ?p when each of these was varied. This is inconsistent with Liljeholm and Cheng's conclusion that people detect only changes in p. These results question the idea that people naturally extract the metric or model of cause from their observation of stochastic events and then, reasonably exclusively, use this theory of a causal mechanism, or for that matter any simple normative theory, to generalize their experience to alternative contexts.     

The joint influence of collaboration and part-set cueing

The present study was designed to examine the effects of retrieval cues on memory performance for both individuals and collaborating pairs. Participants worked either alone or together in the presence or absence of part-set cues to recall list items in Experiments 1 and 2 and to reconstruct the order of a list items in Experiment 3. The detrimental effects of collaborative inhibition were observed across all three experiments. In contrast, part-set cueing inhibition was found following free recall, whereas part-set cueing facilitation was observed on reconstruction tasks. Taken together, the results of the present experiments suggest that the effects of collaborative inhibition and part-set cueing may operate independently of one another.     

Subclinical social anxiety and academic performance in adolescence: analysis of theoretical and practical implications / Ansiedad social subclínica y rendimiento académico en la adolescencia: análisis de sus implicaciones teórico-prácticas

Abstract

This study analyses the relationship between self-reported social anxiety and academic performance in a sample of 1,616 Spanish students (52.1% males) in compulsory secondary education, aged 12 to 16 years old. Social anxiety was assessed by the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory (SPAI) and academic performance was measured with school grades and failing grades. Results reveal that adolescents with social anxiety show a similar academic performance to adolescents without social anxiety. Although t tests found some significant differences in academic grades and number of failing grades, the effect size analysis showed that these differences had no empirical relevance. These findings are discussed considering the gender and grade levels and their theoretical and practical implication.     

Goal setting in teams: The impact of learning and performance goals on process and performance

This study examined the impact of three alternative types of goals (specific learning, general “do your best” learning, and specific performance) on team performance. Eighty-four-person teams engaged in an interdependent command and control simulation in which the team goal and task complexity were manipulated. Contrary to research at the individual level, teams with specific learning goals performed worse than did teams with general “do your best” learning goals or specific performance goals. The negative effects of specific learning goals relative to general “do your best” learning goals and specific performance goals were amplified under conditions of increased task complexity and were explained by the amount of coordination in the teams.     

Avoiding the problem state bottleneck by strategic use of the environment

We investigated whether environmental support can be used to circumvent the problem state bottleneck in human multitasking. Previously, it was shown that people can only maintain a single chunk of information in their problem state resource, the central part of working memory. Consequently, when the problem state resource was required by multiple tasks concurrently, performance decreased. This phenomenon was termed the problem state bottleneck. To investigate whether the environment can be used to circumvent this bottleneck, we conducted an experiment with two main conditions. In the No-Support condition we replicated an earlier experiment that indicated the existence of the problem state bottleneck. In the Support condition we presented external cues, reducing the load on the problem state resource. To support the results of the experiment we present a computational cognitive model. The experiment and model indicated that the problem state bottleneck can be avoided by using external cues. However, subjects only used external cues when this led to faster behavior. These results were interpreted in the light of the Soft Constraints Hypothesis, which states that humans always follow the fastest strategy possible, as opposed to the most accurate strategy.     

Event-method directed forgetting: Forgetting a video segment is more effortful than remembering it

Videos were presented depicting events such as baking cookies or cleaning a fish tank. Periodically, the video paused and an instruction to Remember (R) or Forget (F) the preceding video segment was presented; the video then resumed. Participants later responded more accurately to cued-recall questions (E1) and to true/false statements (E2–5) regarding R segments than F segments. This difference was larger for specific information (the woman added 3 cups of flour) than for general information (the woman added flour). Participants were also slower to detect visual probes presented following F instructions compared to those presented following R instructions. These findings suggest that intentional forgetting is an effortful process that can be performed even on segments of otherwise continuous events and that the result is a relatively impoverished representation of the unwanted information in memory.     

How do within-person changes due to aging affect job performance?

As the mean age of the workforce in industrialized countries trends upward, increasing attention has been paid to group-level differences between younger and older workers in terms of job performance. The present article takes an alternative perspective by examining within-person changes that occur with aging and how the process of aging affects employees' workplace behavior. We begin by highlighting five areas in which we observe major within-person changes related to aging: (1) cognitive capacity, (2) personality, (3) goal orientation, (4) social-emotional experience, and (5) health. Then, we demonstrate why and how these within-person changes due to aging affect core task performance, citizenship behavior, and counterproductive work behavior across the lifespan.     

Community-based Research and Technoscience Activism: A Report on the Living Knowledge 3 Conference

New medical imaging technologies enable the production of photos of human cells that are magnified to make them visible to the eye. Such cellular images have gained aesthetic as well as dramatic appeal, as they have moved out of the laboratories and become available for the public. At this stage, they are refashioned to reveal matters more clearly and pedagogically. Organic matter that might be confusing to the audience is removed and colours added to distinguish various aspects—but despite such manipulations, the result appears as images of real human cells, making them different from drawings and models. One example of this is the website of a Norwegian governmental organization for information on biotechnology and bioethics which displays images of egg and sperm cells related to techniques of assisted reproduction. These images represent cells as autonomous and independent of human gendered bodies. The process whereby cells culturally become detached and disassociated from human bodies is here referred to as a process of entification whereby the cells reappear as detachable, usable entities.     

“It's Just Your Turn”: Performing Identity and Muslim Australian Popular Culture

Academic accounts of Muslim integration and inclusion in multicultural Australia are often at pains to emphasize that Muslim identity and Australian national identity are compatible with each other. While this political manoeuvre remains both important and relevant, it nevertheless chances reinscribing the very terms of debate it seeks to contest and worryingly aligns closely with prevalent governmental techniques to “domesticate” Muslim difference. Furthermore, it risks presenting both “Muslim” and “Australian” identities as self-evident, taken-for-granted categories. In this article, I consider two Muslim Australian popular cultural productions – namely, the television programme Salam Café and the stand-up comedy show Fear of a Brown Planet – in order to explore how Muslim and Australian identities, and the relationships between them, are performed, contested and rearticulated. What is most salient about both productions, the article argues, is that they present the identity of “Australian” as a site of political and cultural contestation, with the “nation” a contingent site through which multicultural politics are actualized. Such a move is salient for Australian multiculturalism more broadly, but is especially so for Muslim communities – not least because it undermines the West/Islam dichotomy altogether.