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Why does sociology teaching uniquely require study of its classics? The answer, it is suggested, lies in the indeterminacy of the idea of what is social—what constitutes and exemplifies it, at different levels of abstraction, about which the classical sociologists diverge, as do their continuing legacies. Synthesis aiming at disciplinary-wide consensus is not, therefore, a promising path. Selective perception, it is further suggested, deepens insight.

This article addresses the importance of being a conscious and reflective observer in the best interest of the child. The article discusses findings from interviews with three early childhood education and care teachers. The focus was on how and why observation was carried out in kindergartens. A topic of discussion is how unreflected observation practices can have a negative impact on children`s opportunities for growth in everyday life. Among all, I discuss the importance of being reflective when working with observations. One of the questions asked is what possibilities the observer is able to see and if s/he only observes what is expected in a practice characterized by selective perception. Furthermore, the article is critical towards kindergarten teachers’ observation practice in a hectic work-day characterized by a tight framework concerning observation, and where reflection and cooperation are not emphasized.

Board-level decision-makers often fail to understand that a crisis is imminent and to proactively interpret environmental stimuli through their cognitive schemas. Directors have a selective perception of the environment, resulting in a filtered and narrowed vision of a crisis; this explains why boards often lack proactivity in crisis detection and response. This study draws on qualitative data from interviews with directors, chairs and CEOs of medium-large companies that were in crisis at the time of the interview or had recently tackled a crisis. We identify three main categories of factors that can hinder directors’ cognitive schemas: individual, collective and hybrid constraints. Our research contributes to the cognitive model in a context of uncertainty, exploring the mechanisms underpinning board passivity during a crisis. This study has implications for both boards of directors, who should re-design the ways in which directors respond during crisis situations, and the policymakers who support this process.

Parties in government are widely expected to be broadly responsive to public opinion. However, history is littered with examples of governments pursuing unpopular courses of action. This article explores how public opinion influences elite decision-making by tracing the process behind the Liberal Democrats’ notorious U-turn on tuition fees. Interviews with the politicians and advisers who took the decision reveal that the party’s policy priorities in government owed more to the preferences of elite decision-makers than to the preferences of the party’s supporters. They also provide evidence that selective perception compromised elites’ ability to anticipate voters’ reactions. The findings demonstrate that it cannot be assumed that parties in office will prioritise vote-seeking goals above policy-seeking goals.

Debates about short-termism in business tend to center around the role of shareholder pressures and managers’ incentives, while the role of organizational structure remains understudied. In our paper, we adopt an attention-based lens to elucidate the role of organizational structure in directing the attention of management towards pressures for short-term results at the expense of the long term. Specifically, we argue that greater scale of operations, hierarchy, bureaucracy, and workforce flexibility reduce slack resources available to senior managers and increase the complexity of information presented to them in different ways. As a result, the senior managers shift their attention to short-term pressures, which are more easily understood, at the expense of attention for long-term considerations. Analysis based on a survey of senior managers in 3221 private firms in the Netherlands provides support for our arguments. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd

Rapid advancement of machine learning makes it possible to consider large amounts of data to learn from. Learning agents may get data ranging on real intervals directly from the environment they interact with, in a process usually time expensive. To improve learning and manage these data, approximated models and memory mechanisms are adopted. In most of the implementations of reinforcement learning facing this type of data, approximation is obtained by neural networks and the process of drawing information from data is mediated by a short-term memory that stores the previous experiences for additional relearning, to speed-up the learning process, mimicking what is done by people. In this paper, we are proposing a novel computational approach able to selectively filter the information, or cognitive load, for the agent’s short-term memory, thus emulating the attention mechanism characteristic of human perception. In this work, we use genetic algorithms in order to evolve the most efficient attention filter mechanism that would be able to provide the agent with an optimal perception for a specific environment by discriminating which experiences are valuable for the learning process. This approach can evolve a filter which can able to provide an optimal cognitive load of the experiences entering in the agent’s short-term memory of a limited capacity. The evolved sampling dynamics can also lead to the emergence of intrinsically motivated curiosity.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze the perception of professors, students, administrative staff and academic directors about social responsibility in four universities of Rio Grande do Norte (RN) – Brazil. Design/methodology/approach The research was carried out in four universities in RN, Brazil. A survey was conducted with 1,318 students, 118 members of the administrative team, 104 professors and 29 academic directors, to whom a Likert-type questionnaire was applied, with 65 items allocated in seven dimensions as follows: organizational governance, human rights, work practices, environment, legal practices, consumer issues and community involvement and development. Exploratory factorial analysis and Cronbach’s alpha were the statistics used to analyze the data. Findings The research showed difficulties in assessing social responsibility aspects because of the lack of discussion and little socialization and debate of the data. Concerning everyday issues such as student service, environment issues, working conditions and local development is an exception because they have explicit opinions and often negative perceptions. Research limitations/implications The data used were self-reported they were subjected to bias, such as self-attribution and selective perception by community members. The lack of a theoretical model of social responsibility to study a non-profit organization. This study offers a theoretical contribution to analyzing six variables in non-profit organizations. Practical implications The data collection instrument also contribute to Brazilian universities can meet the evaluation criteria of higher education institutions in Brazil by Law 10.861/04, which established the national higher education evaluation system. Social implications This contribution allowed the authors to understand, which of them find the most consensus among stakeholders and which are the most contradictory, as well as to promote improvements in the implementation of social responsibility policies. The proposal of the instrument results in concrete actions for the adoption of the university, to accelerate the implementation of ISO 26000 in its statutes. Originality/value The study on social responsibility at universities of RN, Brazil, under dimensions of organizational governance, human rights, work practices, environment, legal practices, consumer issues, and community involvement and development is innovative and supports other universities to think their processes and better contribute in training new generations of citizens and professionals.

Spatial cues help participants detect a visual target when it appears at the cued location. One hypothesis for this cueing effect, called selective perception, is that cueing a location enhances perceptual encoding at that location. Another hypothesis, called selective decision, is that the cue has no effect on perception, but instead provides prior information that facilitates decision-making. We distinguished these hypotheses by comparing a simultaneous display with two spatial locations to sequential displays with two temporal intervals. The simultaneous condition had a partially valid spatial cue, and the sequential condition had a partially valid temporal cue. Selective perception predicts no cueing effect for sequential displays given there is enough time to switch attention. In contrast, selective decision predicts cueing effects for sequential displays regardless of time. We used endogenous cueing of a detection-like coarse orientation discrimination task with clear displays (no external noise or postmasks). Results showed cueing effects for the sequential condition, supporting a decision account of selective attention for endogenous cueing of detection-like tasks.

The purpose of this paper is to do in depth analysis of the basic assumptions of organizational behavior. This paper is based on conceptual base reviewed from different books and research reports. The objective of the study is to identify the basic assumptions of organizational behavior. The paper concludes that there are two types of basic assumptions of organizational behavior. They are nature of people and nature of organizations. A basic assumption about nature of people incorporates individual differences, a whole person, and motivated behavior, value of the person, selective perception, and desire for involvement. A basic assumption about nature of organizations involves social system, mutuality of interest, and ethical treatment.

Almost every day, news about the Corruption Eradication Commission (in Indonesia it is known as KPK) appears in various mass media and social media, although the news is sometimes not directly related to information from the KPK itself, but from other parties who feel an interest in the existence of the KPK whether the contents of the news are in accordance with facts or hoaxes. The aim of this research is to answer the challenges of science and technology needs by real sector users, who also want to know, analyze, and discuss the selective perceptions of Islamic university students and public universities about anti-corruption prevention campaigns in society. The research method used is a survey method through a comparative descriptive study at two tertiary institutions, namely Islamic Universities and State Universities. The results of research on selective perception of Islamic university students and public universities about anti-corruption prevention campaigns in society show that in general, the students did not know or rarely paid attention to social media Facebook which presenting anti-corruption messages.

Viewer’s eye movements and behavioural responses were analysed in order to determine the relationship between selective perception and visual attention during a dual detection task in the central and peripheral fields of vision, in order to design a better functioning information display. Changes in visual attention levels were evaluated using the temporal frequency of microsaccades. Accurate rates of stimulus detection response and microsaccade frequency were estimated using a hierarchical Bayesian model. In the results, the dominance of the response in the peripheral field of vision is confirmed. Also, chronological changes in levels of attention and the contribution of these changes to behavioural responses were examined. The relationship between behavioural responses, micorsaccade frequency, and the directional dominance of certain viewing areas in the peripheral field of vision were discussed, in order to evaluate the level of visual attention of viewers.

‘Whitevertised’ skincare products are found in such societies as Nigeria where women show reverence for white skin. They are presented using a plethora of advertisement techniques that can make white skin appear desirable. Anchored on social constructionism and selective perception theory, this study aimed to find out how women in Anambra State perceive these products and their awareness of the health risks they can pose. To achieve these objectives, a quantitative approach involving survey was adopted. Data were collected from a random sample of 400 women. Findings showed that these products are prevalent and are used by most of the respondents to ‘maintain’ their skin colour. The study also showed that the perception towards these products varied with age and educational qualification, and was also shown to be influenced by price, place of origin, scientification, celebrity-endorsements and past experiences. In addition, findings from the study showed that the health risk awareness of the risks these products can pose was low among the younger respondents and the least educated. Based on these findings, this study recommended health awareness campaigns targeted at the young and least educated who were shown in this study as most vulnerable.

We see language in a purely technical way: as sending and receiving complex signals. A signal can be understood to mean a sound, but also, for example, a term. In different languages, the signals used are partly different or different in importance. Unfortunately, this is not general knowledge. Ignorance of the essential signals of a foreign language that one is learning leads to mistakes of which one is not aware and thus to rather inefficient learning. This can be remedied by consciously dealing with the relevant signals of your own and the foreign language and making yourself aware of the differences.

The increasing accessibility and prevalence of opinion-rich tools, such as the review sites for the healthcare products offered online, render it impossible for consumers to select the best product from a vast range of items. The amount of consumer opinions accessible for fashionable items can be thousands. Both reviews are challenging for consumers to interpret, and if they read just a handful of these reviews, they will have a selective perception of the product. Product manufacturers may often have trouble maintaining, monitoring, and recognizing the consumers’ opinions on the goods. Several study works have in the past been suggested for solving these problems, but they have several limitations: the structures introduced are entirely invisible and the feedback are not so easy to perceive and require longer to evaluate since, aside from individual feature opinions, the function-based description system applied is broader than those used for examination. Here, we suggested a dynamic framework for the summary of consumer views on online healthcare products centered on functionality that works according to the product domain. Each period after extraction, we conduct the following work: Initially, the recognition of the characteristics of the product from the views of customers is carried out. Their respective views are then derived for each feature and their alignment or (negative/positive) polarity is identified. Finally, feature-based analytics were summarized by taking the corresponding extracts from each feature opinion and putting them in their respective cluster-based features. These type of feature-based extracts shall be absorbed easily by the end user.

Human being reacts to the familiar things greatly and perceives the things selectively on the basis of own knowledge which is built on the neural network of brain. This function not only produces energy saving for keeping the memory but also makes human being more intelligent. Accordingly in this paper, adopting this human function Self Reorganizing Knowledge network System is proposed and tested with experimental data.