Summation: Further assessment of a configural theory

Rats received Pavlovian conditioning in which food was signalled by a visual stimulus, A+, an auditory stimulus, B+, and a compound composed of different visual and auditory stimuli, CD+. Test trials were then given with the compound AB. Experiments 1 and 2A revealed stronger responding during AB than during CD. In Experiment 2B, there was no evidence of a summation of responding during AB when A+ B+ training was conducted in the absence of CD+ trials. A further failure to observe abnormally strong responding during ABwas found in Experiment 3 for which the training trials with A+ B+ CD+ were accompanied by trials in which C and D were separately paired with food. The results are explained in terms of a configural theory of conditioning, which assumes that responding during a compound is determined by generalization from its components, as well as from other compounds to which it is similar.     

Relationships between Personality and Organization Switching: Implications for utility estimates

This study examined individuals' tendencies to migrate from one organization to another (i.e., the propensity to switch employers). Previous researchers have suggested that switching organizations throughout the career span may be partially heritable and therefore related to individual differences in personality traits. If personality traits are indeed related to a tendency to turnover from organizations, this suggests that current procedures for calculating utility may be inaccurate. Using a database of 1081 individuals who have been in the workforce for several years, results indicated that personality traits measured by the Occupational Personality Questionnaire (non‐ipsative; OPQn) were modestly related to organization switching (i.e., repeated moves from organization to organization). We found that higher scores on extraversion, openness to experience, and conscientiousness‐related traits were modestly correlated with more frequent organization switching. However, we demonstrate that these modest relationships can produce large inaccuracies in utility estimates.     

Truth,fallibility, and justification: new studies in the norms of assertion

Synthese - This paper advances our understanding of the norms of assertion in two ways. First, I evaluate recent studies claiming to discredit an important earlier finding which supports the...