Memory and judgment: Availability versus explanation-based accounts

Two theories about the relationship between memory and decisions are examined. In an explanation-based model, the organization in memory of decision-relevant information determines decisions. In an availability model, the amount of information sampled from memory that supports competing decisions is crucial. In Experiment 1, subjects read evidence from a legal trial, made decisions, and provided free-recall data. Evidence presentation order was manipulated to produce differences in evidence coherence. When the prosecution evidence order was coherent, the subjects were more likely to choose guilty verdicts, and recall of prosecution evidence, relative to defense evidence, was greater. Thus, both evidence coherence and availability of information in memory could account for the basic findings. In Experiment 2, recall differences were eliminated as a function of evidence order. The results show that verdict effects favoring the more coherent prosecution evidence are obtained even when the relative amounts of prosecution and defense recall are equated across conditions.     

Kant, Nonaccidentalness and the Availability of Moral Worth

Contemporary Kantians who defend Kant's view of the superiority of the sense of duty as a form of motivation appeal to various ideas. Some say, if only implicitly, that the sense of duty is always ``available' to an agent, when she has a moral obligation. Some, like Barbara Herman, say that the sense of duty provides a ``nonaccidental' connection between an agent's motivation and the act's rightness. In this paper I show that the ``availability' and ``nonaccidentalness' arguments are in tension with one another. And the ``availability' idea, although certainly supported by some passages in Kant himself, is also clearly denied in other passages. My conclusion is that Kantians will need to abandon either availability or nonaccidentalness if they wish to have a consistent set of views about the sense of duty.     

Quality of Information and Availability of Social Indices1

Quality of 14-to 16-year-olds information about occupations was studied. The results show that in general, the degree of correspondence between adolescents and experts was not extremely high (70%); similarly, no major differences were associated with gender, SES, or habitat (rural vs. urban). The quality of information adolescents have at their disposal as concerns a dimension such as Income or Contacts for example depends to a greater extent on the richness of the set of social indices for the dimension than to the importance this dimension can take on in determining occupational preference.     

Time estimation and expectancies

The purpose of this research was to examine the influence of different types of expectancies on time estimation behavior. In Experiment 1, subjects were led to expect that a given number of trials would occur in a music perception task. In Experiment 2, expectancies concerning the duration of a given waiting period were varied. Results of both experiments indicated that the confirmation/violation of expectancies exerted a significant im acton4urationjudgments. When subjects received more/fewer trials than expected or waited for a duration-that-waslonger/shorter than expected, the total duration of these time spans was over- and underestimated, respectively. Conversely, time estimates were relatively accurate whensubjects' expectancies were confirmed. The results of Experiment 1 further revealedthat reaction time responses within-the-music perception task were also systematically influenced by the expected amount of activity. Results are discussed in terms of a framework that emphasizes the role of anticipatory attending on time estimation behavior.     

Distraction and time estimation

It is argued that events which occur during an interval of time which is being judged may be classified in terms of their effects on the alertness of the subject, and in terms of the degree to which they distract him from the task of detecting and processing time-relevant cues. A distracting task, defined by the number of arithmetical operations a subject was required to perform, was presented while reproductions of an interval were being made. The data support the prediction that the higher the level of distraction, the less time a subject will judge to have elapsed during an objective period.     

Regional Patterns of Religious Affiliation and Availability of Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Complementary and alternative medicines (CAMs) retain an enduring popularity in spite of the fact that there is poor evidence of their efficacy. Public attraction toward CAM may be based, in part, on a public appetite for mysticism; in many countries, increases in interest in CAM may in turn result from decreasing social acceptance of participation in formal religions. The present study examined patterns of CAM availability and self-declared religious affiliation across 30 geographical regions in Ireland. After controlling for differences in population, the data show a statistically significant inverse correlation between CAM availability and religious affiliation. Implications are discussed. Brian M. Hughes is Lecturer in Psychology at the National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland     

Impact of Location and Availability of Behavioral Health Services for Children

Literature suggests advantages for co-locating behavioral health care in primary care. We compared the impact of location of services on attendance at behavioral health appointments when access to care was assured for externalizing behavior problems with referral as usual. Two primary care pediatric practices had an evidence-based parenting program co-located in the practice for parents of children aged 2?C12 years and two practices had the program available using an enhanced-referral procedure for locations external to the practices. The program was available at the regional children??s hospital (referral as usual). During an 8-month period, the rate of attendance at first appointments was significantly higher in the co-located than the enhanced referral condition (.38 and .12 % of patient visits, respectively; ??² = 13.32; p < .0003; OR = 3.10; 95 % CI: 1.63, 5.89). These outcomes, while low, were better than the near 0 rate of attendance to referral as usual. Availability of behavioral health services in both conditions increased rates of attended appointments. However, the low rates of attendance indicate increasing availability of services, alone, is not sufficient to decrease the unmet need of children with behavioral problems. Factors other than availability must be addressed in order to improve outcomes for children.     

Disentangling Context Availability and Concreteness in Lexical Decision and W ord Translation

This study examines contrasting predictions of the dual coding theory and the context availability hypothesis regarding concreteness effects in monolingual and bilingual lexical processing. In three experiments, concreteness was controlled for or confounded with rated context availability. In the first experiment, bilingual subjects performed lexical decision in their native language (Dutch, L1). In the second experiment, lexical decision performance of bilinguals in their second language (English, L2) was examined. In the third experiment, bilinguals translated words 'forwards' (from L1 to L2) or 'backwards' (from L2 to L1). Both monolingual and bilingual tasks showed a concreteness effect when concreteness was confounded with context availability. However, concreteness effects disappeared when abstract and concrete words were matched on context availability, and even occasionally reversed. Implications of these results for theories that account for concreteness effects, particulary in bilingual processing, are discussed.     

Time estimation and attentional perspective

The purpose of the present experiment was to investigate whether the filled interval effect is influenced by different attentional perspectives of the same event. Musically sophisticated listeners were asked to compare the duration of paired melodies that varied both in lower order contour changes and the relative timing of higher order phrase periodicities. Results indicated that a given pair of melodies could produce over- or underestimations, depending on which hierarchical level of structure was selectively tracked. These findings are discussed in terms of a framework that links event coherence and dynamic attending modes to time-estimation activities.     

Adaptive robust estimation and testing

We examined nine adaptive methods of trimming, that is, methods that empirically determine when data should be trimmed and the amount to be trimmed from the tails of the empirical distribution. Over the 240 empirical values collected for each method investigated, in which we varied the total percentage of data trimmed, sample size, degree of variance heterogeneity, pairing of variances and group sizes, and population shape, one method resulted in exceptionally good control of Type I errors. However, under less extreme cases of non‐normality and variance heterogeneity a number of methods exhibited reasonably good Type I error control. With regard to the power to detect non‐null treatment effects, we found that the choice among the methods depended on the degree of non‐normality and variance heterogeneity. Recommendations are offered.     

Availability and accessibility of information in the semantic memory of retarded and nonretarded adolescents

The availability of semantic information in storage and the accessibility of that information for retrieval were studied in retarded and nonretarded adolescents. In Experiment 1, 40 normal and 40 CA-equivalent (mean, 15 years) retarded subjects were required to retrieve information from semantic categories as well as to judge whether specific items were members of a given category. The results showed large IQ group differences on the retrieval task which could not be wholly accounted for by the items available in storage. Experiment 2 was designed as an attempt to remediate this retrieval deficit by introducing an organized retrieval plan consisting of subcategory cues. This organization facilitated retrieval as long as it was experimentally provided. Retrieval returned to its original level, however, when the cues were withdrawn. It was concluded that retarded persons had an accessibility deficit in addition to an availability deficit; one aspect of this accessibility deficit involved the failure to use spontaneously mnemonic strategies that were consistent with the semantic organization.