Individual differences in Sternberg’s memory scanning task

This study provides a new perspective on both the cognitive processes actually implemented and the effect of a simple experimental control - the recall constraint - in Sternberg’s memory scanning task. These findings were highlighted by adopting a new approach based on the comparison of qualitative and quantitative results.The analysis of individual processing, on 72 adults, each participating in one of two experimental conditions (with or without sequence recall), highlighted a large variability in quantitative results as well as qualitative procedures. Based on the participants’ retrospective verbalisations, two categories of strategies were identified: (1) the procedures used to memorize the sequence of digits, and (2) the procedures used to compare this sequence with the test digit, which includes strategies for coding the items and processes for searching them in memory. The analysis of the strategies shows that their frequencies of use depend not only on the experimental condition, but also on the participants, the level of task difficulty and the interaction between participants and level of difficulty. This variability questions the accuracy of Sternberg’s mean model. Furthermore, this approach suggests some answers to the old debate concerning the exhaustive search pattern for the yes response. Indeed, our results show three types of strategies that can be identified according to the different models of search suggested in the literature. The “exhaustive” search, that would only be involved in the recall condition and only for some of the participants, the “self-terminating” search and the “immediate” strategy, which can be identified with a model of parallel search with limited resources. Thus our study suggests that the different search models are appropriate but depend on both the specific experimental conditions and participant’s strategy. Our results should help to improve the interpretation of data collected with this paradigm in cognitive and neuroscientific studies of memory.     

Information-gathering processes: Diagnosticity,hypothesis-confirmatory strategies,and perceived hypothesis confirmation

Recent research has investigated the information-gathering strategies that people employ as they attempt to test hypotheses. Three such strategies of information seeking were examined. Two kinds of hypothesis-confirmation strategies were considered. The first of these concerned evidence being sought to the extent that it is more likely under the hypothesis being tested than under the alternative. The second kind of hypothesis-confirmation strategy refers to the tendency to ask questions that will have the effect of making the hypothesis under test appear to be true. In addition, a third kind of strategy is a diagnosing strategy under which people prefer evidence that is most differentially probable under the hypothesis and the alternative. Important changes in methodology from past work were made, and the data supported a predominant diagnosing strategy and a less significant, but nonetheless strong and consistent, tendency to ask hypothesis-confirming questions. In addition, subjects' choice of questions made it likely that they would perceive as confirmed the specific hypotheses they were testing. This occurred even though the questions employed were not constraining. Discussion involves the strategies of information gathering and the reasons underlying them as well as the implications of these strategies for the inferences people make about their predictive abilities.     

The Influence of Temporal Orientation and Affective Frame on use of Ethical Decision-Making Strategies

This study examined the role of temporal orientation and affective frame in the execution of ethical decision-making strategies. In reflecting on a past experience or imagining a future experience, participants thought about experiences that they considered either positive or negative. The participants recorded their thinking about that experience by responding to several questions, and their responses were content-analyzed for the use of ethical decision-making strategies. The findings indicated that a future temporal orientation was associated with greater strategy use. Likewise, a positive affective frame was associated with greater strategy use. Future orientation may permit better strategy execution than a past orientation because it facilitates more objective, balanced contemplation of the reflected-upon situation, and minimizes potential self-threat associated with past behavior. A positive affective frame likely improves strategy execution because it facilitates active analysis of the experience. Future directions and implications of these findings are discussed.     

The Influence of Temporal Orientation and Affective Frame on Use of Ethical Decision-Making Strategies

This study examined the role of temporal orientation and affective frame in the execution of ethical decision-making strategies. In reflecting on a past experience or imagining a future experience, participants thought about experiences that they considered either positive or negative. The participants recorded their thinking about that experience by responding to several questions, and their responses were content-analyzed for the use of ethical decision-making strategies. The findings indicated that a future temporal orientation was associated with greater strategy use. Likewise, a positive affective frame was associated with greater strategy use. Future orientation may permit better strategy execution than a past orientation because it facilitates more objective, balanced contemplation of the reflected-upon situation and minimizes potential self-threat associated with past behavior. A positive affective frame likely improves strategy execution because it facilitates active analysis of the experience. Future directions and implications of these findings are discussed.     

A Comparison of Single-Step and Multiple-Step Transition Analyses of Multiattribute Decision Strategies

Evaluating information is a fundamental component of multiattribute decision making that can be guided by one of many cognitive strategies. Considerable research has examined the factors that influence strategy selection; however, the identification of strategies remains problematic. The search sequence or transitions that a decision maker uses when searching a matrix of decision information can provide important clues to the strategy guiding the processing of decision information. The most common form of strategy analysis is to examine each transition from one piece of information to the next to establish whether these transitions are primarily alternative or attribute based. However, the resulting single-step transition indices often restrict strategy identification to a quantitative measure of compensatoriness and were found to provide conflicting results for the same search data. The current paper proposes a multiple-step transition analysis that records more complex, longer transitions to provide a multivariate profile of the strategy. Empirical support for the advantages of a multiple-step transition analysis over single-step transition indices is also provided.     

Change through paradox: using self-verification to alter beliefs

Past research has shown that conventional strategies of persuasion tend to be ineffective against people who are highly certain of their beliefs. To change the beliefs of such individuals, we devised a paradoxical strategy that consisted of posing superattitudinal leading questions (questions that encouraged respondents to make statements that were consistent with, but more extreme than, their own viewpoints). We expected that individuals who were high in belief certainty would resist such questions and, therefore, change their beliefs in the opposite direction. To test this reasoning, we used either a conventional or a paradoxical strategy to change people's beliefs about women's roles. As suggested by earlier research, the conventional strategy was effective in changing the beliefs of targets who were low in belief certainty only. In contrast, the paradoxical strategy was effective in changing the beliefs of targets who were high in belief certainty only. A follow-up investigation replicated this effect and indicated that paradoxical injunctions change people's positions on belief dimensions rather than their perception of the dimension itself. The implications of these findings for an understanding of the interpersonal mechanisms that generate stability and change in people's beliefs are discussed.     

Search Strategies in Syntactic Reanalysis

We first consider the nature of syntactic reanalysis, paying particular attention to questions about whether and how it differs from the construction of an initial analysis, such as whether it is encapsulated or whether alternatives are considered in parallel or not. We then outline different strategies that the processor may use in reanalysis, and review the relevant evidence. We show that our experimental evidence is compatible with an encapsulated serial search strategy.     

Research-Based Knowledge in Psychology: What,if Anything,is Its Incremental Value to the Practitioner?

This essay reflects an ongoing dialogue between a clinician versed in mainstream psychological research and theory, and a social psychologist with experience both as a researcher and contributor to applied undertakings in various domains about the “incremental value” of research-based knowledge—that is, its value beyond that provided by the other sources of knowledge available to the practitioner. These sources include knowledge about the needs and coping strategies of all human beings, as well as knowledge both about the specific life circumstances of those one is seeking to help, and knowledge about language and culture. Examples from the clinical practice of the first author are offered, coupled with in-principle arguments about the underspecified and contingent nature of research-based generalizations. By way of rebuttal, examples of arguably useful findings are provided by the second author—especially findings that serve as correctives to biases in lay psychology (notably unwarranted “dispositionism”) and to widespread shortcomings in judgment and decision-making (particularly, Kahneman and Tversky’s work on “prospect theory” ). Both authors agree on the value of a “bricoleur” treatment strategy that relies on careful attention to the specifics of the case at hand and avoids one-size-fits-all applications of theory and prior research, and both agree that research-based findings are more useful in predicting behavior and designing intervention strategies that apply to groups and large samples of individuals rather than single actors. A concluding discussion focuses on necessary criteria and strategies for increasing the usefulness of laboratory and field research for the practitioner.     

Response selection strategies and realism of confidence judgments

Two studies were conducted to examine how response selection strategy is related to confidence ratings and to performance on general knowledge questions. In both studies subjects were asked to answer 80 general knowledge questions and to rate their confidence in the correctness of the answer selected. A pilot study, in which subjects thought aloud while answering general knowledge questions, was carried out to identify different response selection strategies. In the first study, 40 subjects were asked to indicate which of four strategies (immediate recognition, inference, intuition, or guessing) they used for selecting an answer. In Study 2, think aloud reports from 20 subjects were coded into the same four strategies. The distribution of strategies differed between the studies, but there were very similar relations among strategy, confidence, and correctness of answer in the two studies. Response selection strategy was related to correctness of answer when confidence was partialed out. More specifically, immediate recognition was associated with higher proportion correct than with the other strategies. It was also found that ratings of how difficult the knowledge questions were to fellow students of the subjects were on a much more realistic level than the confidence ratings were. It is concluded that people could improve their confidence judgments by taking into account (a) how difficult a question is to other people, and (b) the response selection strategy used for answering the question.     

Mental search processes in problem solving

A new approach to problem solving was applied to multisolution problems in a memory search task. Subjects memorized a list of eight four-letter foods, and then searched mentally through the list for answers to questions. The times between successive answers (IRTs) were recorded along with the answers themselves. This allowed a comparison of two possible memory search strategies: (1) sampling with replacement, and (2) sampling without replacement. The results were largely in agreement with the sampling-without-replacement strategy. However, a more detailed breakdown of the data revealed that most subjects searched through the list in a rigid serial order. Further, an analysis of questions with identical answers showed that the IRTs were very nearly additive. This led to an additive time component model based on the independent summation of (a) read-in time, (b) memory-search time, (c) decision-making time, and (d)response-output time. This approach appeared generally more satisfactory than previous attempts to account for problem-solving behavior.     

IN DEFENCE OF THE AGENT-CENTRED PERSPECTIVE

Abstract: This article explores certain issues that arise at the borderline between conceptual analysis and metaphysics, where answers to questions of a conceptual nature compete with answers to questions of an ontological or metaphysical nature. I focus on the way in which three philosophers, Kant, Collingwood and Davidson, articulate the relationship between the conceptual question “What are actions?” and the metaphysical question “How is agency possible?” I argue that the way in which one handles the relationship between the conceptual and the ontological question has important implications for one's conception of the nature of philosophy, and that thinking hard about what it takes to defend the autonomy of the mental and of the agent‐centred perspective should force us to think about our underlying conception of philosophy and to choose between one that understands it as first science and one that understands it as the under‐labourer of science.     

The Impact of Goal Specificity on Strategy Use and the Acquisition of Problem Structure

Theories of skill acquisition have made radically different predictions about the role of general problem-solving methods in acquiring rules that promote effective transfer to new problems. Under one view, methods that focus on reaching specific goals, such as means-ends analysis, are assumed to provide the basis for efficient knowledge compilation (Anderson, 1987), whereas under an alternative view such methods are believed to disrupt rule induction (Sweller, 1988). We suggest that the role of general methods in learning varies with both the specificity of the problem solver's goal and the systematicity of the strategies used for testing hypotheses about rules. In the absence of a specific goal people are more likely to use a rule-induction learning strategy, whereas provision of a specific goal fosters use of difference reduction, which tends to be a non-rule-induction strategy. We performed two experiments to investigate the impact of goal specificity and systematicity of rule-induction strategies in learning and transfer within a complex dynamic system. The results of Experiment 1 indicated that during free exploration of a problem space, greater learning occurred if participants adopted more systematic strategies for rule induction, and that participants come to favor such strategies. Experiment 2 revealed that participants who were provided with a specific goal performed well on the initial problem but were impaired on a transfer test using a similar problem with a different goal. Instruction on a systematic rule-induction strategy facilitated solution for both the initial and transfer problems, but participants' use of this strategy declined if they had a specific goal. Our results support Sweller's (1988) proposal that general problemsolving methods applied to a specific goal foster acquisition of knowledge about an isolated solution path but do not provide an effective way of learning the overall structure of a problem space. We interpret these results in terms of dualspace theories of search through problem space.     

Effects of college students' learning styles and gender on their test preparation strategies

This study investigated the effects of approach to studying, gender and type of examination on test preparation strategies. Educational psychology students completed the Approaches to Studying Inventory (Entwistle and Ramsden, 1983) regarding their general learning characteristics, and thus were assigned to four approach groups. Students also answered questions about how they might study for either an essay or a multiple-choice examination. Factor analysis of those items yielded several study strategy subscales. When scores on the time-effort, integration, selection and cognitive monitoring subscales were used as dependent variables in a 4×2×2 (cluster × gender × type of test) MANCOVA, a significant three-way interaction suggested that male and female students using different approaches react differently to multiple-choice or essay tests, and the patterns differ by strategy.     

Strategies of text retrieval: a criterion shift account.

This study scrutinized people's ability to apply different strategies to randomly intermixed immediate and delayed test items. In three experiments, participants first read one set of stories. Later, they read more stories, and after each one, answered intermixed questions about that story and one of the earlier ones. The experiments cumulatively manipulated amount of delay, test probe plausibility, probe relation (explicit, paraphrase, inference), and testing procedure (mixed versus uniform delay). Using signal detection response criterion as the index of strategy, we contrasted the single criterion hypothesis, according to which one text retrieval criterion is applied to all test items, and a multiple-criterion hypothesis. The results consistently favoured the multiple-criterion hypothesis. The results also indicated that the presence of immediate and delayed probes mutually influence one another: Less extreme signal detection criteria were adopted under mixed than uniform testing. It was concluded that text retrieval strategy is continually calibrated with reference to the quality of the test probes.     

The role of multiple-choice tests in increasing access to difficult-to-retrieve information

Answering multiple-choice questions improves access to otherwise difficult-to-retrieve knowledge tested by those questions. Here, I examine whether multiple-choice questions can also improve accessibility to related knowledge that is not explicitly tested. In two experiments, participants first answered challenging general knowledge (trivia) multiple-choice questions containing competitive incorrect alternatives and then took a final cued-recall test with those previously tested questions and new related questions for which a previously incorrect answer was the correct answer. In Experiment 1, participants correctly answered related questions more often and faster when they had taken a multiple-choice test than when they had not. In Experiment 2, I showed that the more accurate and faster responses were not simply a result of previous exposure to those alternatives. These findings have practical implications for potential benefits of multiple-choice testing and implications for the processes that occur when individuals answer multiple-choice questions.     

Competent Adolescent Readers’ Use of Internet Reading Strategies: A Think-Aloud Study

The purpose of this study was to investigate the type, pattern, and complexity of Internet reading strategies used by seven accomplished high school readers. Individual participants performed an academic Internet reading task with the goal of developing critical questions about their chosen controversial topic. Strategies for Internet reading were analyzed from the perspective of constructively responsive reading, both qualitatively and quantitatively, using participant-generated verbal reports complemented by recordings of their computer screens. The data described the nature and sequence of reading strategies that participants used to construct meaning, and the interplay of those multiple strategies in Internet settings. The results demonstrated that the participants’ Internet reading involved the iteration and modification of traditional print-based reading strategies (e.g., meaning-making, self-monitoring, information evaluation) and also the use of strategies characteristic of Internet settings (e.g., text location). Implications of the study's findings on Internet reading strategy use for theory and research are discussed.     

What can be measured in dating data: comment on Vaillant (2006)

Vaillant's 2006 paper presents data from a marriage bureau to give evidence on partner-seeking behavior. Three questions may be asked about the nature and usefulness of such work, whether it can (i) measure the efficiency of such bureaux, (ii) indicate the volume of resources devoted to partner search from commercially sourced dating data, and (iii) be used to test hypotheses about preference formation.     

Use of item ratings to examine personality test item cognitive response processes

This research examines the processes respondents use to answer personality test items. A total of 158 true/false items from four scales of the Personality Research Form and the California Psychological Inventory were used as stimuli. University students (N = 120) responded to each item and indicated one of nine strategies used in deciding on a response. Obtained response strategy ratings for items were reliable and their frequencies corresponded closely to previous findings with other items. Subsequently, the associations between item response strategy frequencies and item-total correlations were computed. Congruent with previous research, better items avoided behaviours or experiences and evoked responding based on traits and on referring to the statements of others. The associations between item response strategies and other indices of item quality are discussed and implications regarding scale development are offered.     

基于Gini指数的认知诊断计算机化自适应选题策略

Gini指数可用来描述分布的不均匀性,已广泛应用于决策树算法,本文开发了基于Gini指数的认知诊断计算机化自适应选题策略,并在饱和模型和缩减模型下与SHE, MPWKL,GDI,PWKL选题策略进行比较。模拟研究表明,基于Gini指数的选题策略与SHE,MPWKL,GDI相比,分类精度相近并提高了题库的利用率;与PWKL相比,提高了分类的精度和选题速度,综合来看,基于Gini指数的选题策略能够兼顾分类精度和题库使用均匀性。