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The concept of novelty has important implications for theories of cognition, as familiar objects are categorically distinct from novel ones; accessing a stored representation of a known stimulus influences perception in a way that is precluded for a novel stimulus. The experiments that constitute this dissertation shed light on the perception-action cycle, as it is a persistent feature of human life; we see things and we act upon them. When those things are novel, how does cognitive processing change? Specifically, how do people who deliberately practice seeing things act upon them, and are there observable differences between trained and "casual" perceivers' perceptual processing? Some argue that any processing advantages possessed by experts are limited to objects or relations among objects within an expert's particular domain of expertise. However, a central point of contention revolves around what exactly constitutes a domain in the first place. Expertise may boil down to a long-term memory advantage for deliberately-practiced categories of stimuli, or to a heuristic that is only applicable to one trained goal or category of goals, or to a heuristic independent of task that can be applied to any novel situation. The present set of experiments examined visual cognition with the perceptual goal of fine-motor output (i.e., accurate sketching) as a candidate for a domain of expertise that confers advantages in visual perception in general. The extent to which visual processing is altered in expert visual artists was examined; whether they are more efficient only at sketching images of familiar stimuli, or whether their advantage extends to other visual cognition tasks. Familiarity and complexity of stimuli were manipulated, as were the goals of perception, including sketching and recognition. Finally, retention durations were manipulated before responses or sketches were made in order to examine the limits on experts' advantage on tasks that are known to tax the perceptual system. Results suggest that expertise in visual art confers a robust visual cognition advantage that generalizes beyond a narrowly-defined domain of expertise. / Psychology

The present research investigates the universality of design in a transnational marketing context. Specifically, it looks into designers' expertise transfer and knowledge calibration across cultures and explores cross-cultural differences in consumer responses (affect, attitude, and meaning) to design in two studies. With 256 graphic designs created by 16 Chinese designers and 16 U.S. designers, study 1 explores the universality of design by comparing consumer responses in a series of surveys among Chinese and American college students. Study 2 involves 64 product designs created by 8 Chinese designers and 8 U.S. designers and investigates the effect of culture and expertise level on design responses of consumers from China and the U.S. The results suggest that universality of design is a complex, multi-faceted phenomenon. Affect and attitude appear to be universal while meaning of design seems less universal and is difficult to be transferred cross-culturally. The results suggest a mixed effect of culture on design expertise transfer. Design expertise can be transferred to another culture without decrease in order to elicit positive affect among consumers. However, design expertise transfer is moderated by culture with regard to attitude and meaning. Expert designers' designs receive less positive attitudinal responses in a foreign market than in the home market and can convey intended meaning much better in the home market than in a foreign market. When it comes to knowledge calibration, the results indicate that both expert designers and non-expert designers are poorly calibrated and overconfident. The paper also discusses theoretical and managerial implications as well as limitations and future research directions. / Business Administration/Marketing

The aim of this research is to explore a need for improving marketing in the small business sector among restaurants. Furthermore, if a potential need was found, starting to dissect how to increase the demand for the need of marketing expertise services through crafting an attractive customer value proposition (CVP). By understanding this, it would allow marketing expertise to have a clearer idea regarding how to attract smaller businesses and increase demand for the needed services. In this way, a new type of market opens up for various types of marketing expertise. The study focuses on finding the smaller restaurants' pains and gains which are needed components of an attractive CVP. The study will also build upon the current knowledge and theory regarding the creation of a VP for smaller businesses, although focused on the restaurant industry. This is done by conducting four separate cases with the help of semi-structured interviews and documentary research. Briefly presented, the results show that the pains and gains which need to be considered for marketing expertise to craft a CVP geared towards attracting small restaurants are; allowing for better positioning which decreases the amount of unsatisfied customers, increasing the restaurants profitability and making them stand out in comparison to their competitors.

Thesis advisor: Monica O'Reilly-Jacob / Background: Emergency department crowding (EDC) is a major issue affecting hospitals in the United States and has devastating consequences, including an increased risk of patient mortality. Solutions to address EDC are traditionally focused on adding resources, including increased nurse staffing ratios. However, these solutions largely ignore the value of the experience and expertise that each nurse possesses and how those attributes can impact patient outcomes. This dissertation uses Benner’s Novice to Expert theory of professional development to describe how individual emergency nurse expertise influences patient length of stay in the emergency department and how it can be part of the strategy in addressing EDC.Purpose: The purpose of this program of research was to identify, articulate, and demonstrate a new approach to emergency nurse performance evaluation that integrates patient outcome data and emergency nurse characteristics. Methods: First, in a scoping review, we explored the different approaches to measuring nurse performance using patient outcome data and identified common themes. Second, a concept analysis introduced Emergency Nurse Efficiency as a novel framework to understand how emergency nurses can be evaluated using patient outcome data. Finally, a retrospective correlational study established the association between nurse expertise and emergency patient length of stay. Results: In Chapter Two of this dissertation, the researchers conducted a scoping review of nurse performance metrics and identified twelve articles for inclusion. We identified three themes: the emerging nature of these metrics in the literature, variability in their applications, and performance implications. We further described an opportunity for future researchers to work with nurse leaders and staff nurses to optimize these metrics. In Chapter Three, we performed a concept analysis to introduce a novel metric, called Emergency Nurse Efficiency, that is a measurable attribute that changes as experience is gained and incorporates the positive impact of an individual nurse during a given time while subtracting the negative. Using this measurement to evaluate ED nurse performance could guide staff development, education, and performance improvement initiatives. In Chapter Four, we performed a retrospective correlational analysis and administered an online survey to describe the relationship between individual emergency nurses, and their respective level of expertise, and their patients’ ED LOS. We found that, when accounting for patient-level variables and the influence of the ED physicians, emergency nurses are a statistically significant predictor of their patients’ ED LOS. A higher level of clinical expertise among emergency likely produces a lower ED LOS for their patients, and nurse leaders should seek to better understand these metrics for professional development and quality improvement activities. Conclusions: This dissertation made substantial knowledge contributions to the literature regarding the evaluation of individual emergency nurses and the influence that they have on patient outcomes. It established, first, that the measurement of individual nurse performance is varied and inconsistent; second, that considering emergency nursing as a team activity similar to professional sports results in a conceptual framework that can evaluate individual performance within a group context; and, third, that there is a relationship between the individual emergency nurse and their patients’ ED LOS, and that relationship can be further understood within Benner’s Novice to Expert theoretical model. We recommend that nurse leaders use these data as part of their strategy to decrease EDC. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Connell School of Nursing. / Discipline: Nursing.

The most recent research trend within the field of organizational justice is the study of interactional justice (Tyler & Bies, 1990; Greenberg, 1990). Most of the work conducted in this area focuses on the explanations leaders give to followers about decisions made or actions taken that frequently lead to adverse consequences or loss. These explanations are called "social accounts". While research indicates that social accounts are effective at mitigating negative reactions to adverse decisions, and improving perceptions of justice, the underlying causes remain largely unknown. This study used the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) as a theoretical base to explore what factors make an account "acceptable", and the impact that an acceptable account has on a number of organizationally relevant outcomes. Specifically, this study used an experimental design in a pay-for-performance context to assess the impact of message specificity (high vs. low) and source expertise (expert vs. non-expert), under varying conditions of outcome involvement (higher vs. lower) on the acceptability of a justification for a change in a distributive criterion that resulted in a loss. Other dependent variables investigated included perceptions of justice (procedural, interactional, and distributive fairness), attitudes (satisfaction with the trainer and the task), and behaviors (commitment to the trainer and the task, and complaints). The results indicated that justifications delivered by the expert trainer were more acceptable than non-experts under conditions of lower involvement (except when a non-expert delivered a specific justification). This effect reversed itself, however, under higher involvement. There was a main effect of specificity such that specific justifications were more acceptable than vague justifications regardless of the level of involvement. Acceptability was positively related to all dependent measures with the exception of complaints, which had a negative relationship. Furthermore, acceptability fully mediated the impact of message specificity on trainer commitment, and partially on procedural fairness, distributive fairness (assessment), and task commitment. Acceptability fully mediated the negative impact of expertise under high involvement on procedural and distributive fairness (assessment), and interactional fairness. / Ph. D.

All professions have practitioners who are considered to be experts. Less is known, however, about how these people achieve this level of excellence and about the factors that influence the attainment of expert practice in any profession. Using acknowledged expert nurses as a focus, this dissertation explored and evaluated the following factors that the literature suggested affect the progression from novice to expert: information-processing, problem-solving, and intuition abilities: mentors and mentoring: motivation and education: experience: and institutional incentives. An additional factor -- intrinsic motivation, which was not identified a priori, emerged in the course of the research. The conceptual framework used for this study was the novice-to-expert progression developed by Dreyfus & Dreyfus and applied to nursing by Benner. Benner's framework comprises novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient, and expert. A qualitative case study method was used employing in interviews of ten clinical nurse specialists (CNSs). Data analysis was conducted following standard procedures for qualitative descriptive analysis. The study demonstrated that all of the CNSs progressed through each of Benner's stages during their careers. The following factors were identified as influential in their achieving expertise: information-processing and problem solving; mentors and mentoring; motivation and education; experience; intrinsic motivation. Institutional incentives and intuition played very weak roles and were not considered influential in achieving expertise, although the CNSs stated that the latter was an important element of their practice. This study has several implications for practice and research. With respect to practice, there is a clear need for mentoring programs, graduate education, internship programs, a stronger emphasis on experience, and policies to assure patient assignments are correlated with the level of the practitioner. Further research is suggested on all factors identified, especially the clinical ladder. The study contributes to adult education theory by clarifying the factors which foster the attainment of expertness, and to practice by suggesting areas in which interventions and innovation might be effective. / Ph. D.

This dissertation concerns the ways engineers and safety specialists acting as part-time volunteers cooperate in the setting of voluntary industrywide product safety standards in the farm equipment industry. These cooperative efforts are based, I contend, on collective investment criteria shared by both companies and individual participants. companies expect long-term benefits stemming not only from their early access to information about the proposed changes in product design, but also from the extent they can influence the outcome in ways that reduce their costs and accommodate their product design and manufacture requirements. Individual participants expect to benefit professionally from the knowledge exchanges taking place in the deliberations. I illustrate my argument through a case study in the development of a family of safety standards for agricultural tractors. The study shows that, in setting these standards, participants sought and achieved ways of making their proposed changes in product design more compatible with a changing legal order. The study also shows, however, that collective action may bring some unintended consequences. For instance, given the stiff demands of this order, participant companies' collective efforts to build such compatibility may and did ultimately compromise the voluntary character of both their participation in the deliberations and the implementation of the proposed changes in product design / Ph. D.

This dissertation presents the case for a normative vision of the relationship between technical experts and other non-expert members of a democratic citizenry. This vision is grounded in two key insights that have emerged from the field of science and technology studies. First, is the "third wave" science studies movement that identifies problems of expertise as the "pressing intellectual problem of the age." Characterized by the problems of legitimacy and extension, Collins and Evans build the case for the extension of the category of expertise to include those who have the relevant experience but lack relevant accreditation. Alongside this extension of the category of expertise is the extension of those who participate in the framing of techno-scientific issues. This dissertation builds a case for the inclusion of all democratic citizens in the problem framing process. What we are left with from the current "third wave" literature is a multi-tiered prescription for the role of non-experts in public decision-making about science and technology. On the ground floor, when the issue is being framed there is a need to include non-expert stakeholders (in theory, any concerned democratic citizen). Once a framing of the problem has been constructed, there is a need to recognize a larger category of people who count as "expert." Together, these constitute the two most powerful prescriptive elements of expertise developed in the recent science studies literature. The dissertation then explores claims that it is specifically "deliberative" theories of democracy that are best suited to make sense out of this democratization of expertise. After presenting a typology of deliberative theories of democracy that clears up a serious problem of equivocation found in appeals to deliberative democracy in current STS literature, this dissertation argues that only a specific set of deliberative theories of democracy, "discursive" deliberative theories of democracy, are capable of fulfilling the role theories of deliberative democracy are assigned in current STS literature. The dissertation then goes on to suggest how these new insights into the democratization of expertise might affect future instantiations of technology assessment mechanisms (such as the office of Technology Assessment) in the U.S. / Ph. D.