Executive career management: Switching organizations and the boundaryless career

There has been little research examining executives who change jobs by specifically following these individuals both before and after their employer changes. By incorporating research on the boundaryless career [Arthur, M. B., & Rousseau, D. M. (Eds.). (1996). The boundaryless career: A new employment principle for a new organizational era. New York: Oxford University Press; Sullivan, S. E., & Arthur, M. B. (2006). The evolution of the boundaryless career concept: Examining physical and psychological mobility. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 69, 19-29] and applying Frank’s theory of relative standing (1985), this study examined factors that may cause executives to change jobs in the context of managing their careers. Our findings revealed that factors, such as age and compensation, were related to the likelihood of job movements as well as declining organizational health. Post-hoc analyses also indicated that executive job-changers received significantly greater increases in total compensation and were more likely to receive increases in organizational status.     

Faulty assumptions: A comment on Blanton, Jaccard, Gonzales, and Christie (2006)

Blanton, Jaccard, Gonzales, and Christie [Blanton, H., Jaccard, J., Gonzales, P., Christie, C. (2006). Decoding the Implicit Association Test: implications for criterion prediction. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 192-212.] assert that the Implicit Association Test (IAT) imposes a model that portrays relative preferences as the additive difference between single attitudes. This assertion is misplaced because relative preferences do not necessarily reduce to component attitudes. BJGC also assume that the IAT conditions represent two indicators of the same construct. This assumption is incorrect, and is the cause of their poor-fitting models. The IAT, like other experimental paradigms, contrasts performance between interdependent conditions, and cannot be reduced to component parts. This is true whether calculating a simple difference between conditions, or using the IAT D score. D—an individual effect size that is monotonically related to Cohen’s d—codifies the interdependency between IAT conditions. When their unjustified psychometric assumptions are replaced with plausible assumptions, the models fit their data very well, and basis for their poor-fitting models becomes clear.     

Meadow voles, Microtus pennsylvanicus, can distinguish more over-marks from fewer over-marks

Is it possible that voles have a sense of number? To address this question, we determined whether voles discriminate between two different scent-marking individuals and identify the individual whose scent marks was on top more often than the other individual. We tested whether voles show a preference for the individual whose scent marks was on top most often. If so, the simplest explanation was that voles can make a relative size judgement—such as distinguishing an area containing more of one individual’s over-marks as compared to less of another individual’s over-marks. We found that voles respond preferentially to the donor that provided a greater number of over-marks as compared to the donor that provided a lesser number of over-marks. Thus, we concluded that voles might display the capacity for relative numerousness. Interestingly, female voles were better able than male voles to distinguish between small differences in the relative number of over-marks by the two scent donors.     

Syntactic Complexity Effects in Sentence Production

Syntactic complexity effects have been investigated extensively with respect to comprehension (e.g., Demberg & Keller, 2008; Gibson, 1998, 2000; Gordon et al., 2001, 2004; Grodner & Gibson, 2005; King & Just, 1991; Lewis & Vasishth, 2005; Lewis et al., 2006; McElree et al., 2003; Wanner & Maratsos, 1978). According to one prominent class of accounts (experience‐based accounts; e.g., Hale, 2001; Levy, 2008; Gennari & MacDonald, 2008, 2009; Wells et al., 2009), certain structures cause comprehension difficulty due to their scarcity in the language. But why are some structures less frequent than others? In two elicited‐production experiments we investigated syntactic complexity effects in relative clauses (Experiment 1) and wh‐questions (Experiment 2) varying in whether or not they contained non‐local dependencies. In both experiments, we found reliable durational differences between subject‐extracted structures (which only contain local dependencies) and object‐extracted structures (which contain nonlocal dependencies): Participants took longer to begin and produce object‐extractions. Furthermore, participants were more likely to be disfluent in the object‐extracted constructions. These results suggest that there is a cost associated with planning and uttering the more syntactically complex, object‐extracted structures, and that this cost manifests in the form of longer durations and disfluencies. Although the precise nature of this cost remains to be determined, these effects provide one plausible explanation for the relative rarity of object‐extractions: They are more costly to produce.     

Predictability influences whether outcomes are processed in terms of original or relative values

Previous studies have provided insights into the representations of original and relative values and the influence of predictability on decision making. However, whether the predictability of outcomes can influence the processing manner of outcomes (i.e. whether the outcomes are processed in terms of original or relative values) is still unknown. To investigate this issue, we had participants perform a monetary decision task which resulted in two outcomes with the same relative values but different original values in either a predictable or unpredictable condition, while recording event-related potentials (ERP). ERP results showed that the outcome processing in the unpredictable condition elicited more positive deflections in the time window of 300–500 ms (P300) than did those in the predictable condition. More importantly, the outcome with high original value elicited a greater P300 component than did that with low original value in the unpredictable condition even though these two outcomes had the same relative values, while in the predictable condition no significant difference was observed between ERPs elicited by the two outcomes even though their original values were different. These results suggest that the outcomes might be processed in terms of relative values in the predictable condition but original values in the unpredictable condition.     

A non-commutative generalization of Łukasiewicz rings

The goal of the present article is to extend the study of commutative rings whose ideals form an MV-algebra as carried out by Belluce and Di Nola [1] to non-commutative rings. We study and characterize all rings whose ideals form a pseudo MV-algebra, which shall be called here generalized Łukasiewicz rings. We obtain that these are (up to isomorphism) exactly the direct sums of unitary special primary rings.     

Updating a progic

This paper presents a progic, or probabilistic logic, in the sense of Haenni et al. [8]. The progic presented here is based on Bayesianism, as the progic discussed by Williamson [15]. However, the underlying generalised Bayesianism differs from the objective Bayesianism used by Williamson, in the calibration norm, and the liberalisation and interpretation of the reference probability in the norm of equivocation. As a consequence, the updating dynamics of both Bayesianisms differ essentially. Whereas objective Bayesianism is based on a probabilistic re-evaluation, orthodox Bayesianism is based on a probabilistic revision. I formulate a generalised and iterable orthodox Bayesian revision dynamics. This allows to define an updating procedure for the generalised Bayesian progic. The paper compares the generalised Bayesian progic and Williamson's objective Bayesian progic in strength, update dynamics and with respect to language (in)sensitivity.