Psychology Dictionary of Arguments

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Performance: In cognitive psychology, performance relates to how well an individual can carry out tasks that require mental processes. It focuses on aspects like attention, perception, memory, problem-solving, and decision-making. See also Attention, Perception, Memory, Problem-solving, Decision-making processes.
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Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments.

 
Author Concept Summary/Quotes Sources

William Revelle on Performance - Dictionary of Arguments

Corr I 406
Performance/Revelle/Resource theory/cognitive psychology/Matthews: Humphreys-Revelle Theory: Humphreys and Revelle (1984)(1) described separate resource pools for sustained information transfer (SIT; similar to attention) and for short-term memory (STM). Arousal, in their model, leads to increased availability of SIT resources, but loss of STM resources. Directing effort to the task is distinct from arousal, and influences SIT resources only. Traits that influence arousal and effort will then have differing effects on qualitatively different tasks, overcoming a major weakness of traditional arousal theory.
Causal chain:

personality traits - (arousal or effort) - resource availability > performance

Corr I 407/408
VsRevelle/VsHumphreys: for a criticism of this theory see
>VsResource Theory.
Further problems:
1) The Humphreys and Revelle (1984)(1) theory attributes Extraversion x arousal interactions to variations in resource availability. Hence, these interactive effects should be found primarily with those more demanding tasks that are highly resource-limited, rather than simple tasks requiring little attentional capacity. A review of the evidence (Matthews 1997)(2) failed to confirm this prediction. In fact, interactive effects of Extraversion and arousal on performance were most reliable with rather simple, routine encoding tasks, as opposed to demanding, resource-limited tasks (Matthews 1997(2); Matthews and Harley 1993(3)). Alternative mechanisms such as automatic activation processes may provide a better explanation, as explored in a study that modelled the effect using neural nets (Matthews and Harley 1993)(3). >VsResource Theory.


1. Humphreys, M. S. and Revelle, W. 1984. Personality, motivation and performance: a theory of the relationship between individual differences and information processing, Psychological Review 91: 153–84
2. Matthews, G. 1997. Extraversion, emotion and performance: a cognitive-adaptive model, in G. Matthews (ed.), Cognitive science perspectives on personality and emotion, pp. 339–442. Amsterdam: Elsevier
3. Matthews, G. and Harley, T. A. 1993. Effects of Extraversion and self-report arousal on semantic priming: a connectionist approach, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65: 735–56


Gerald Matthews, „ Personality and performance: cognitive processes and models“, in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press


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Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments
The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition.
Revelle, William
Corr I
Philip J. Corr
Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009

Corr II
Philip J. Corr (Ed.)
Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018


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