Reduced Distractibility in a Remote Culture

Background In visual processing, there are marked cultural differences in the tendency to adopt either a global or local processing style. A remote culture (the Himba) has recently been reported to have a greater local bias in visual processing than Westerners. Here we give the first evidence that a greater, and remarkable, attentional selectivity provides the basis for this local bias. Methodology/Principal Findings In Experiment 1, Eriksen-type flanker interference was measured in the Himba and in Western controls. In both groups, responses to the direction of a task-relevant target arrow were affected by the compatibility of task-irrelevant distractor arrows. However, the Himba showed a marked reduction in overall flanker interference compared to Westerners. The smaller interference effect in the Himba occurred despite their overall slower performance than Westerners, and was evident even at a low level of perceptual load of the displays. In Experiment 2, the attentional selectivity of the Himba was further demonstrated by showing that their attention was not even captured by a moving singleton distractor. Conclusions/Significance We argue that the reduced distractibility in the Himba is clearly consistent with their tendency to prioritize the analysis of local details in visual processing

Family labour supply and labour force participation decisions

The main objective of this study is the empirical estimation of family labour force participation functions. The appropriate estimation procedure for a model involving choice among multiple discrete alternatives requires a statistical technique different from ordinary least squares. In this study I use the binomial and multinomial logit model to estimate parameters affecting the probabilities of choosing a particular labour force alternative. A theoretical contribution of this thesis to the econometric literature is the development of a procedure which, in the context of the multinomial logit model, allows one to test whether decision making is sequential or simultaneous. This procedure is applied in testing whether the family chooses simultaneously among possible alternatives or whether one partner decides first about participation and the other partner decides conditional upon the first. Using a Bayesian dicrimination technique it is found that the simultaneous decision model is more probable posteriori than the sequential model. A substantial portion of the empirical research in this study involves the estimation and comparison of family labour force participation and labour supply decisions. I attempt to discriminate statistically between the hypothesis that the parameters of supply and participation are either the same or that they are different and conclude that the hypothesis of different parameters is more probable, posteriori. In addition, the comparison of the parameters of family labour supply and labour force participation leads to interesting results, e.g., the substitution effect on both participation and supply behaviour of husband and wife. Another use of the estimated labour supply and labour force participation functions involves combining them to form unconditional labour supply functions. It is indicated that unconditional labour supply functions could be useful to evaluate the combined effect on supply and participation of a labour market policy.Arts, Faculty ofVancouver School of EconomicsGraduat

Retirement, financial incentives and health

This research was initiated when the authors were at the Centre for Economi

Search, Benefits and Entitlement.

In a simultaneous analysis of unemployment duration and search intensity, the authors estimate a nonstructural search model accounting explicitly for two features of the benefit system: benefit level and time remaining until exhaustion of the entitlement period (residual entitlement). Special attention is paid to the number of search contacts as an indicator for search intensity. To assess the effect of the benefit level and residual entitlement on the number of search contacts, the authors estimate a Poisson model. Their results suggest that benefits work through a reduction of search efforts, whereas residual entitlement is effective mainly through the reservation wage. Copyright 1993 by The London School of Economics and Political Science.