Factors Influencing Award of Compensation Contraacts: An Analysis of Written Protocols

This study reports the results of an analysis of written protocols collected in a laboratory experiment from 77 subjects while they were making compensation contract selection decisions. Each subject made compensation decisions for four divisional managers operating under them. The researchers varied the level of environmental uncertainty, as well as the level of perceived agent effectiveness. The results show that the type of factors considered by the individuals differed significantly. Subjects indicated that they focused more heavily on one of the two manipulated conditions, but not equally on both. It was also found that, overall, agent effectiveness factors weighed more heavily in the compensation decisions than uncertainty considerations. Additionally, it was found that subjects used some factors in their decisions that were not part of the experimental treatments, lending further evidence to the individuality of influences on compensation contract selections

Memory for medication side effects in younger and older adults: the role of subjective and objective importance

Older adults often experience memory impairments, but can sometimes use selective processing and schematic support to remember important information. The current experiments investigate to what degree younger and healthy older adults remember medication side effects that were subjectively or objectively important to remember. Participants studied a list of common side effects, and rated how negative these effects were if they were to experience them, and were then given a free recall test. In Experiment 1, the severity of the side effects ranged from mild (e.g., itching) to severe (e.g., stroke), and in Experiment 2, certain side effects were indicated as critical to remember (i.e., “contact your doctor if you experience this”). There were no age differences in terms of free recall of the side effects, and older adults remembered more severe side effects relative to mild effects. However, older adults were less likely to recognize critical side effects on a later recognition test, relative to younger adults. The findings suggest that older adults can selectively remember medication side effects, but have difficulty identifying familiar but potentially critical side effects, and this has implications for monitoring medication use in older age

Dry Sliding-Friction and Wear Behavior of Hot-Extruded Al6061/Si3N4/Cf Hybrid Metal Matrix Composite.

The effects of reinforcement addition and hot extrusion on the microstructures, micro hardness, friction, and wear behavior of aluminium (Al) hybrid composite were investigated. Al6061 dispersed with electroless nickel-coated Si3N4 (6wt.%) and copper-coated carbon fiber (Cf) (1wt.%) hybrid composites was developed through stir casting followed by hot extrusion. Optical micro structural studies confirmed that the size of reinforcements decreased, and their orientations were in the extrusion direction. The decrease in the grain size (29%) of hybrid composites was larger than that in the grain size of matrix alloys under hot-extruded conditions. The synthesized hot-extruded Al6061 hybrid composite exhibited a lower coefficient of friction (51%) and high wear resistance (39%) compared with the hotextruded Al6061base alloy

Impact of task properties data display format and cognitive characteristics on recall performance : a cumulative research investigation

Mintzberg classifies real-time management activities typically performed by lower-level managers as a distinct management function characterized by unexpected problems and opportunities that demand immediate attention. Routine reliance on recall of problem-specific data is an important ingredient of successful real-time management. In addition, human memory as an information source is said to be orders of magnitude superior to external information sources (e.g., texts) for performing such tasks as deductive reasoning and decision making. Consequently, a focused examination of recall in the context of real-time problem solving/decision making merits attention. Since many organizational issues employ information systems (IS) as the vehicle for data gathering/information portrayal, enhancement of recall through proper manipulation of MIS variable(s) becomes an interesting MIS research issue. This research evaluates individual performance in an information recall context examining the effects due to MIS variables, task environment and individual cognitive characteristics. The principal MIS variables manipulated here are data display format and order of presentation. Task-related variables are claimed to be capable of explaining a substantial amount of variance in the response variable of interest. To date, the rich and potentially significant factor, task properties, has not been sufficiently harnessed for use as a treatment variable(s) in MIS-oriented research. Three basic elements, content, structure and complexity, may, in combination, provide a reasonable description of 'task'. Experiments in this research attempt to measure task characteristics by manipulating one or more of these three task elements simultaneously. Individual differences, especially individual cognitive style/skill, have been used as moderator(s) in several studies/experiments that assess the impact of IS on managerial performance. Though the value of cognitive style as an explanatory variable in MIS-related inquiries is questioned by some, this research attempts to examine the merits/demerits of cognitive factors (cognitive style and skill) in an information recall context. A framework reflecting the theme of the inquiry was developed to guide the research effort. A research strategy based on the concept of the cumulative research paradigm (a series of studies/experiments that are conducted such that every study/experiment in the program is firmly anchored to and builds on the findings of its predecessor(s)) was adopted. In all, five experiments and a field survey were conducted. The cumulative findings of this research clearly demarcate recall performance into two operational categories, viz., point value and pattern recall. Point value recall performance was repeatedly found to be significantly better with the use of tabular displays rather than graphics and was also relatively indifferent to all other effects examined. Pattern recollection, on the other hand, was found to be vulnerable to task characteristics, display format, order of presentation as well as imagery-oriented individual cognitive style. The chief contributions of this research are, it is hoped, (a) the reinstatement of 'recall' as a context of evaluation in the problem solving/decision making scenario, (b) the operationalization of attributes of task environment in the context of information recall and (c) the demonstration of the cumulative research approach in empirical investigations.Business, C. T. Bauer College o

Event memory: A theory of memory for laboratory, autobiographical, and fictional events.

An event memory is a mental construction of a scene recalled as a single occurrence. It therefore requires the hippocampus and ventral visual stream needed for all scene construction. The construction need not come with a sense of reliving or be made by a participant in the event, and it can be a summary of occurrences from more than one encoding. The mental construction, or physical rendering, of any scene must be done from a specific location and time; this introduces a "self" located in space and time, which is a necessary, but need not be a sufficient, condition for a sense of reliving. We base our theory on scene construction rather than reliving because this allows the integration of many literatures and because there is more accumulated knowledge about scene construction's phenomenology, behavior, and neural basis. Event memory differs from episodic memory in that it does not conflate the independent dimensions of whether or not a memory is relived, is about the self, is recalled voluntarily, or is based on a single encoding with whether it is recalled as a single occurrence of a scene. Thus, we argue that event memory provides a clearer contrast to semantic memory, which also can be about the self, be recalled voluntarily, and be from a unique encoding; allows for a more comprehensive dimensional account of the structure of explicit memory; and better accounts for laboratory and real-world behavioral and neural results, including those from neuropsychology and neuroimaging, than does episodic memory