Structural and moral commitment among same-sex couples: Relationship duration, religiosity, and parental status.

This study examined ecological predictors of structural and moral commitment among cohabiting same-sex couples. Structural commitment was operationalized as the execution of legal documents, and moral commitment was operationalized as having a commitment ceremony. The authors tested 2 logistic regression models using a subsample of Rainbow Illinois survey respondents. First, the execution of legal documents was examined using the entire subsample (n=190). Because antigay victimization may sensitize individuals to the importance of legal protection, actual and feared victimization were hypothesized to predict legalization. These hypotheses were not supported. However, relationship duration, a control variable, did predict legalization. The authors then used data only from those individuals who had executed a legal document (n=150) to determine those who also reported a commitment ceremony (Model 2). Parental status, religiosity, involvement with a supportive congregation, and an interaction between gender and parental status were hypothesized to predict ritualization. Only religiosity and parental status emerged as significant. Results from this study demonstrate the importance of distinguishing between legalization and ritualization. Further, they extend knowledge about how same-sex couple commitment is shaped by noncouple factors, such as time, individual religiosity, and parental status. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Finding Syntactic Structure in Unparsed Corpora The Gsearch Corpus Query System

The Gsearch system allows the selection of sentences by syntacticcriteria from text corpora, even when these corpora contain no priorsyntactic markup. This is achieved by means of a fast chart parser,which takes as input a grammar and a search expression specified by theuser. Gsearch features a modular architecture that can be extendedstraightforwardly to give access to new corpora. The Gsearcharchitecture also allows interfacing with external linguistic resources(such as taggers and lexical databases). Gsearch can be used withgraphical tools for visualizing the results of a query.     

The phenomenology of fit: Linking the person and environment to the subjective experience of person-environment fit.

The authors distinguished 3 approaches to the study of perceived person-environment fit (P-E fit): (a) atomistic, which examines perceptions of the person and environment as separate entities; (b) molecular, which concerns the perceived comparison between the person and environment; and (c) molar, which focuses on the perceived similarity, match, or fit between the person and environment. Distinctions among these approaches have fundamental implications for theory, measurement, and the subjective experience of P-E fit, yet research has treated these approaches as interchangeable. This study investigated the meaning and relationships among the atomistic, molecular, and molar approaches to fit and examined factors that influence the strength of these relationships. Results showed that the relationships among the approaches deviate markedly from the theoretical logic that links them together. Supplemental analyses indicated that molar fit overlaps with affect and molecular fit gives different weight to atomistic person and environment information depending on how the comparison is framed. These findings challenge fundamental assumptions underlying P-E fit theories and have important implications for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Performance Effects of Combining Rationality and Intuition in Making Early New Product Idea Evaluation Decisions

New product idea evaluation decisions made by individual development team members during their idea generation activities allow for and may also benefit from the use of both rational and intuitive approaches to decision‐making. Unfortunately, there is a lack of empirical research on whether at all and, if yes, in which temporal sequence the two approaches should best be combined in making single idea evaluation decisions. To start filling this gap in the innovation and decision‐making literatures, this research empirically explores which approach (combination) increases idea evaluation decision‐making quality and speed. To this end, an experiment with product development practitioners was conducted, manipulating the use of either only intuition, only rationality, or combining intuition with rationality in both sequences in making a typical idea evaluation decision. The results show that only one combination, starting with intuitively analysing the ideas and then rationally considering the resulting intuition in making the final decision, leads to both the highest quality and speed. This finding has significant implications for theory and practice and provides ample opportunities for further research.     

Small-device users situationally impaired by input

Users of small computational devices, such as Mobile telephones or Personal Digital Assistants, are situationally impaired by both the device and the context of the device’s use. This paper describes empirical work which makes the link between the behaviour of motor impaired desktop users and non-impaired users of small-devices. This is important because it may, therefore, be possible to leverage existing solutions for motor-impaired users into the small-device domain. We find that there is significant overlap in the extent of the problems encountered, but not the magnitude. Eight of the 11 existing errors made by motor-impaired users were also present in our small-device study in which two additional error types, key ambiguity and landing errors, were also observed. In addition, small-device rates for common error types were higher than those of desktop users with no impairment, but lower than those of desktop users with motor impairments. We suggest that this difference is because all users were seated to maintain constancy between studies and assert that this magnitude difference will equalise once the small-device is used in a mobile context.