General mental ability and two types of adaptation to unforeseen change [Elektronische Ressource] / vorgelegt von Jonas W. B. Lang

Jonas W. B. Lang

Sujets

• Psychologie

Informations

• Publié par: rheinisch-westfalischen_technischen_hochschule_-rwth-_aachen
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 17
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

General Mental Ability and Two Types of
Adaptation to Unforeseen Change
Von der Philosophischen Fakultat der
Rheinisch-Westfalischen Technischen Hochschule Aachen
zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades eines Doktors der Philosophie
genehmigte Dissertation
vorgelegt von
Dipl.-Psych. Jonas W. B. Lang aus Aachen
Berichter: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Lutz F. Hornke
Paul D. Bliese, PhD.
Tag der mundlichen Prufung: 16. Juni 2007
Diese Dissertation ist auf den Internetseiten der Hochschulbibliothek online verfugbar.Promotionskommission:
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Klaus Willmes-von Hinckeldey (Vorsitz)
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Lutz F. Hornke
Paul D. Bliese, PhD.
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Iring KochTo Jessica and JulianAcknowledgements
I thank Lutz F. Hornke for his ongoing support, mentoring, and teaching over the
three years of my doctoral studies and his role as scientic advisor of this dissertation.
I thank Paul D. Bliese for answering questions, teaching, and providing deeper
insights on mixed-e ects modeling and other data-analytic issues over the last two
years of my doctoral studies.
I thank Verena Buddrus, Tieu Duyen (Soujen) Chung, Johannes Kleikamp, Immo
Koster, Jessica Lang, Simon T. K. Lang, Ricarda Schmitz, and Anne Vieten for their
help in collecting and entering data.
Finally, I thank Jessica Lang and Rachel Prayner for helping me to improve the
language of this dissertation.
Aachen, April 2007 Jonas W. B. Lang
I thank Klaus Willmes-von Hinckeldey, Lutz F. Hornke, Paul D. Bliese, and Iring
Koch for serving on my dissertation committee and providing valuable discussions
and comments.
Aachen, June 2007 Jonas W. B. Lang
vvi General Mental Ability and Two Types of AdaptationContents
1. Introduction 1
1.1. Adaptation to Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2. Aims of the Present Dissertation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2. Conceptual and Methodological Section: De ning and Operationalizing
Adaptability to Change 9
2.1. Denitions of Adaptation to Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2. The Task-Change Paradigm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.3. Conceptual and Methodological Problems in Research on Adaptation
to Change and Recent Methodological Approaches to Deal with Them 16
2.3.1. Issue 1: Separating Adaptive and Non-Adaptive Performance . 16
2.3.2. Issue 2: Considering the Process Nature of Adaptive Perfor-
mance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.4. Multilevel Mixed-E ects Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.5. Application of Discontinuous Growth Modeling Techniques to Adapt-
ability Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.5.1. Basal Task Performance and Skill Acquisition . . . . . . . . . 24
viiviii General Mental Ability and Two Types of Adaptation
2.5.2. Transition Adaptation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.5.3. Reacquisition Adaptation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.5.4. Illustration and Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.6. Brief Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3. Empirical Section: General Mental Ability and the Two Types of Adap-
tation 35
3.1. Theoretical Background: General Mental Ability . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.2. The Relationship Between General Mental Ability and Adaptation:
Theoretical and Empirical Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.3. Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.3.1. Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.3.2. Task . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.3.3. General Mental Ability Testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
3.3.4. Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3.3.5. Statistical Analyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.4. Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
3.4.1. Descriptive Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
3.4.2. Model Building and Model Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
3.4.3. Hypothesis and Research Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
4. Discussion 83
4.1. Transition Adaptation, Reacquisition Adaptation, Skill Acquisition,
and Basal Task Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
4.1.1. Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84