I thought members of the net might be interested in a quote from Lord &
Maher's chapter on
"Cognitive theory in industrial and organizational psychology" that appears
in Vol 2 of the Hanbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, edited
by Dunnette & Hough. Consulting Psychologists press, Inc.
" When approached from a selection perspective, work on expert problem
solving leads one to caution against an overemphasis on general
intelligence measures (Hunter, Schmidt, & Judiesch, 1990). There may be a
general aptitude for acquiring information, but that may be quite different
from an aptitude for acquiringg a specific type of information (e.g.,
information about computer programming). We think the sustained interest
in an area for 10 years or more requires a motivational as well as a
cognitive explanation, as suggested by Posner (1989) and Murphy (1989).
While it may also be true that the rate of learning as one progresses
toward expert status (which is a critical issue in applied areas) may be
movre of a motivational than a cognitive capacity issue. However, if
efficient performance of work tasks involves both explicit and implicit
processes, we doubt whether symbolically oriented test, partiulaly
paper-and-pencil tests, would tap all the relevant capacitites of potential
workers. Instead, motivational factors in developing expertise should also
be emphasized." (p. 43).
For those interested this chapter covers the following borad topics:
Cognitive archtectures, memory, representation of knowledge and information
processing, and automatic and controlled processing.
Regards, Kim Boal
--------------------------------
Kim Boal
College of Business Administration
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, TX 79409
(806) 742-2150
KimBoal@ttu.edu