The spatial thinking of origami: evidence from think-aloud protocols

Origami, the ancient Japanese art of paper folding, involves spatial thinking to both interpret and carry out its instructions. As such, it has the potential to provide spatial training (Taylor and Hutton under review). The present work uses cognitive discourse analysis to reveal the spatial thinking involved in origami and to suggest how it may be beneficial for spatial training. Analysis of think-aloud data while participants folded origami and its relation to gender, spatial ability measures, and thinking style suggest that one way that people profit from spatial training is through the possibility to verbalize concepts needed to solve-related spatial tasks.     

Choose Your Words Wisely: What Verbal Hesitation Indicates About Eyewitness Accuracy

Researchers have demonstrated qualitative differences in witness verbal reports made in the presence and absence of misinformation. The present study examined changes in linguistic markers present in verbal reports in the context of a repeated‐retrieval misinformation study. After witnessing an event, an immediate retrieval group engaged in a free‐recall test associated with the event. The delayed retrieval group completed a filler task. Following, all participants were presented with a post‐event narrative that included neutral, consistent, and misleading details. Both groups then took two free‐recall tests. We found that hesitations were more likely to accompany correctly remembered details if those details were altered in the narrative, than if there was consistency between the original event and narrative. We also found that retrieval prior to misinformation positively influenced the inclusion of hesitations in free‐recall reports that immediately followed the narrative.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The verbalization of multiple strategies in a variant of the traveling salesperson problem

What kinds of strategies do humans employ when confronted with a complex spatial task, and how do they verbalize these strategies? Previous research concerned with the well-known traveling salesperson problem (TSP) typically aimed at the identification of a generally applicable heuristics that adequately represents human behavior in relation to the abstract task of combining points. This paper adopts a novel perspective in two respects. On the one hand, it addresses the strategies people employ when confronted with a more complex task, involving distractors and feature information rather than identical points. On the other hand, retrospective linguistic representations of the strategies used are analyzed in relation to the behavioral data, using discourse analytic methods. Results show that both the behavioral results and the verbalizations point to a range of strategies related to those proposed for solving abstract TSPs. However, in contrast to earlier accounts in the literature, the participants employ a repertory of multi-faceted strategies and planning processes, simplifying and structuring the problem space across subtasks and processes in flexible ways. These findings provide further insight into the nature of human strategies in spatial problem solving tasks and their retrospective verbalization, highlighting how procedures generally known in the literature may be adapted to more complex tasks, and how they may be verbalized spontaneously.     

Individual differences in effective interview design: Factors affecting question choice

Despite the evidence that structured interviews are superior to unstructured interviews, interviewers remain reluctant to use them for personnel selection. The current research replicated and extended recent research examining how individual differences relate to the ability to identify effective interview questions. Question judgments were made across questions that varied substantially in quality and across two different jobs. Across two samples of data, respondents evaluated past behavioral and traditional interview questions more favorably than oddball questions and questions about job‐irrelevant competencies. Furthermore, general mental ability and social aptitude were strongly related to skill in identifying effective interview questions, with results suggesting these traits are associated with customizing questions to specific job contexts.     

Let’s Talk it Out: The Effects of Calibration Meetings on Performance Ratings

ABSTRACT

Despite their use in practice, calibration meetings of performance appraisal ratings have received little attention in the academic literature to date. The current paper addresses this gap by formally defining calibration meetings and by investigating the nature and impact of calibration meetings on performance ratings across two field studies. Results indicated that calibration meetings do occur in organizations. The nature and cadence of calibration meetings varied considerably, but managers generally perceived calibrations as attempts to improve rating quality. Calibration meetings were also associated with increases in perceived frame-of-reference, perceived accountability, and perceived total information to base ratings upon. Further, results showed that post-calibration ratings correlated more with other measures assessing the job performance domain than pre-calibration ratings.