SDT analysis of binary decisions and sensory intensity ratings to noxious thermal stimuli

During three sessions, each of 24 Ss responded to noxious thermal stimuli, using the following judgments: binary decision, S responded “high” or “low”; sensory intensity rating, S rated his sensory experience along a thermal intensity continuum; and concurrent report, S’s binary decision was followed by an intensity rating. The binary-decision d’ was significantly higher than the rating d′, suggesting that Ss could not maintain multiple thermal criteria in a consistent fashion. The criteria for pain obtained with single and concurrent intensity rating judgments did not differ. These results suggest that the most efficacious and valid method for the study of experimental pain is to obtain concurrent responses, and to use binary decisions to compute d’ and sensory intensity ratings to locate S’s criterion for reporting pain.     

A note comparing three measures of subjective probability,their validity and reliability

An attempt was made to compare three measures of subjective probability: estimates out of ten, confidence ratings and time to decide. The validity and reliability of these measures was also investigated. Estimates out of ten and confidence ratings were found to be closely similar measures, but the results from decision times were not so closely comparable. However, the results might be considered to offer sufficient support for the use of decision time when there are strong advantages for a scale which does not require Ss' active participation and deliberation.     

决策信心在信息化从众中的作用

研究采用JAS范式,通过操纵群体信息的性质（支持和反对）以及一致性程度,考察了决策信心在信息化从众过程中的作用。结果表明：（1）个体仅在接收到反对信息时会发生决策的偏转,表现出从众;（2）群体参照信息能够显著影响个体的信心：支持性的群体信息使个体的信心显著增高,而反对性的群体信息使信心显著降低,且表现出一种“负性偏向”（即个体对来自群体的负性信息更加敏感）;（3）在反对条件下,个体信心降低的程度能够很好地预测其决策偏转的概率,即信息化从众行为。这说明,决策信心可能在信息化从众中起着核心的中介作用——反对性的群体信息使得决策信心下降,而决策信心的下降导致了决策的偏转,从而表现出从众行为。     

SELECTION INTERVIEWING IN THE LIFE INSURANCE INDUSTRY: AN UPDATE OF RESEARCH AND PRACTICE

Over the past decade, the Life Insurance Marketing and Research Association has been researching and implementing the use of structured selection interviews in the agent selection process. The practical problems encountered during this period are reviewed, and studies of the most recent interview guide are presented. These studies are based on interview evaluations made by 270 managers in interview training sessions, as well as field managers'evaluations of 163 applicants in actual agent selection situations. The results indicate that it is possible for managers to agree on their evaluation ratings of an applicant, that there is a stable factorial structure for the ratings, and that the ratings are related to the selection decision although not all items carry the same weight. The implications of these results for the use of structured selection interviews and for further research are discussed.     

Judging confidence influences decision processing in comparative judgments

Current theories of confidence in human judgment assume that confidence and the decision it is based on are inextricably tied to the same process (decisional locus theories) or that confidence processing begins only once the primary decision has been completed (postdecisional locus theories). In the absence of auxiliary assumptions, however, neither class of theory permits the judgment of confidence to affect primary decision processing. In the present study, we examined the effect of rendering confidence judgments on the properties of the decision process in a sensory discrimination task. An examination of the properties of the time taken to determine confidence (i.e., the time taken to render the judgment of confidence) revealed clear evidence of postdecisional confidence processing. Concomitantly, the requirement of confidence judgments was found to substantially increase decisional response times, suggesting that some confidence processing occurs during the primary decision process. We discuss the implications of these findings for contemporary models of confidence in human judgment.     

Being confident without seeing: What subjective measures of visual consciousness are about

Can observers be confident about the accuracy of a discrimination response without a visual experience of the stimulus? In a series of five experiments, observers performed a masked orientation discrimination task, a masked shape discrimination task, or a random-dot motion discrimination task, followed by two subjective ratings after each trial, in which participants reported either their visual experience of the stimulus or their confidence in being correct. We observed that the threshold for ratings of the perception of the stimulus was above the threshold for ratings of a decision, that decision ratings outperformed stimulus ratings in predicting trial accuracy, and that different decision-related scales were more strongly associated with other decision-related scales than with ratings of stimulus clarity. We propose a taxonomy of subjective measures of consciousness that differentiates between subjective measures relating to the percept of the stimulus and measures relating to a discrimination decision and discuss the relation to type II blindsight.     

Decision making and memory: a critique of Juslin and Olsson's (1997) sampling model of sensory discrimination.

P. Juslin and H. Olsson's (1997) distinction between Thurstonian and Brunswikian uncertainty is examined and their sampling model of sensory discrimination analyzed as a representative of the class of memoryless decision processes. The separate characteristics and combined behavior of 4 main components of the model are explored: (a) the basic decision process, (b) the assumption of deadline responding, (c) the moving window model of memory, and (d) the hypothesized basis for confidence. It is argued that grafting a moving window memory onto a memoryless decision process has several undesirable consequences. Moreover, the suggested basis for confidence leads to predictions that are counterintuitive and unsupported by empirical evidence. It is concluded that the window-sampling model is a maladapted combination of inappropriate elements, which is implausible as a model of decision making, memory, or confidence, in sensory discrimination.     

Applicant Race, Job Status, and Racial Attitude as Predictors of Employment Discrimination

It is important to understand why biased employee selection occurs in the workplace. We examined applicant race, job status, and the evaluator's attitudes toward blacks as possible predictors of unfair selection decisions. After completing an attitude toward blacks scale, one hundred and eighty-one people evaluated the qualifications of either a black or white applicant for either a high or low status job. Results showed no differences in the hiring decision. However, evaluators with more negative attitudes toward blacks reported greater confidence in their decision to hire the black applicant than the white applicant for the low status job compared to the confidence of evaluators with more positive attitudes. They also reported greater confidence in their decision to hire the white applicant than the black applicant for the high status job as compared to evaluators with more positive attitudes towards blacks. We observed the opposite results for less biased individuals. Evaluator ratings do not explain these findings. These data suggest that unfair discrimination may operate in subtle ways.     

Anchoring effects in the judgment of confidence: Semantic or numeric priming?

Over the last decade, researchers have debated whether anchoring effects are the result of semantic or numeric priming. The present study tested both hypotheses. In four experiments involving a sensory detection task, participants first made a relative confidence judgment by deciding whether they were more or less confident than an anchor value in the correctness of their decision. Subsequently, they expressed an absolute level of confidence. In two of these experiments, the relative confidence anchor values represented the midpoints between the absolute confidence scale values, which were either explicitly numeric or semantic, nonnumeric representations of magnitude. In two other experiments, the anchor values were drawn from a scale modally different from that used to express the absolute confidence (i.e., nonnumeric and numeric, respectively, or vice versa). Regardless of the nature of the anchors, the mean confidence ratings revealed anchoring effects only when the relative and absolute confidence values were drawn from identical scales. Together, the results of these four experiments limit the conditions under which both numeric and semantic priming would be expected to lead to anchoring effects.     

Knowing that you know: an essay on mechanistic metaknowledge

Humans are adept at providing accurate statements of confidence in their perceptual identification and recall memory responses. In spite of this, mechanical pattern-recognition systems and other artificial intelligence devices seldom express response certainty. The purpose of this paper is to show how useful confidence ratings can be in integrating the results of a variety of pattern-recognition systems to produce a single, optimal decision concerning the target to be recognized. We outline several ways neural network pattern-recognition systems could be modified to issue confidence ratings with each classification response. In sketching a mechanical system of confidence ratings we find we have also provided a preliminary framework for understanding human confidence judgments and human metacognition.     

“先扬后抑”vs.“先抑后扬”:反馈顺序对决策信心建构的影响

本研究采用2×3被试内设计,通过操纵不同性质信息的反馈比例和反馈顺序,重点考察了反馈顺序对决策信心动态建构的影响。结果表明:(1)在不同反馈比例条件下,当个体接收到的正性反馈多于负性反馈时,个体的决策信心上升,反之则下降;当个体接收到的正性反馈等于负性反馈时,个体的决策信心下降,表现出"负性偏向";(2)"先扬后抑"与"先抑后扬"的信息反馈顺序对决策信心的动态建构产生了不同影响,表现出类似于"近因效应"的现象,"惊讶假设(surprise hypothesis)"可为此提供解释。本研究表明,在决策信心的动态建构过程中,信息的反馈顺序发挥着重要作用。     

Short-term recognition memory of tones

Four Os participated in a recognition memory experiment for a period of 5 weeks. The task required O to judge whether two temporally sequenced tones (ISI = 0.5, 2.0, or 8.0 sec) were the “same” or “different ” Latencies and confidence ratings were obtained for each judgment. TSD analyses applied to individual O’s data indicated consistent and rapidly decreasing d’s as a function of ISI. ROC functions generated from the latencies and ratings produced comparable results, indicating the feasibility of using latency measures along with the type of judgments made to obtain sensitivity measures. Response bias, as indicated by the differences in the latencies between “same” and “different” judgments, did not produce consistent trends.     

‘Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is!’: Effects of Streaks on Confidence and Betting in a Binary Choice Task

Human choice under uncertainty is influenced by erroneous beliefs about randomness. In simple binary choice tasks, such as red/black predictions in roulette, long outcome runs (e.g. red, red, red) typically increase the tendency to predict the other outcome (i.e. black), an effect labeled the “gambler's fallacy.” In these settings, participants may also attend to streaks in their predictive performance. Winning and losing streaks are thought to affect decision confidence, although prior work indicates conflicting directions. Over three laboratory experiments involving red/black predictions in a sequential roulette task, we sought to identify the effects of outcome runs and winning/losing streaks upon color predictions, decision confidence and betting behavior. Experiments 1 (n = 40) and 3 (n = 40) obtained trial‐by‐trial confidence ratings, with a win/no win payoff and a no loss/loss payoff, respectively. Experiment 2 (n = 39) obtained a trial‐by‐trial bet amount on an equivalent scale. In each experiment, the gambler's fallacy was observed on choice behavior after color runs and, in experiment 2, on betting behavior after color runs. Feedback streaks exerted no reliable influence on confidence ratings, in either payoff condition. Betting behavior, on the other hand, increased as a function of losing streaks. The increase in betting on losing streaks is interpreted as a manifestation of loss chasing; these data help clarify the psychological mechanisms underlying loss chasing and caution against the use of betting measures (“post‐decision wagering”) as a straightforward index of decision confidence. © 2014 The Authors. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.     

Personality Correlates of Confidence in One's Decisions

ABSTRACT Taylor and Brown (1988) hypothesized that certain illusions, such as unrealistic optimism, are predictably associated with positive affect, social skills, and intellectual functioning. To test this hypothesis, we obtained data from 162 students who first filled out a questionnaire containing dispositional measures of affect, social skills, and approaches to problem solving; in a second session they completed three tasks requiring difficult decisions, reporting their confidence in each decision. Accuracy of judgments was found to vary considerably from task to task, but confidence ratings showed a consistent pattern of individual differences. This result lent support to Taylor and Brown's hypothesis, as did other features of the data, most notably several small but significant Pearson r s between confidence ratings and dispositional variables. Removing the effects of accuracy from these r s reduced their magnitude very little; it yielded partial r s interpretable as evidence that illusory confidence is associated with personality traits which, in this case, load saliently on factors labeled ( a ) affective, and ( b ) cognitive/social.     

Sources of confidence judgments in implicit cognition

Subjective reports of confidence are frequently used as a measure of awareness in a variety of fields, including artificial grammar learning. However, little is known about what information is used to make confidence judgments and whether there are any possible sources of information used to discriminate between items that are unrelated to confidence. The data reported here replicate an earlier experiment by Vokey and Brooks (1992) and show that grammaticality decisions are based on both the grammatical status of items and their similarity to study exemplars. The key finding is that confidence ratings made on a continuous scale (50%—100%) are closely related to grammaticality but are unrelated to all of the measures of similarity that were tested. By contrast, confidence ratings made on a binary scale (high vs. low) are related to both grammaticality and similarity. The data confirm an earlier finding (Tunney & Shanks, 2003) that binary confidence ratings are more sensitive to low levels of awareness than continuous ratings are and suggest that participants are conscious of all the information acquired in artificial grammar learning.     

A test of a two-stage model of magnitude judgment

It has been suggested that the power law J = aⁿ, describing the relationship between numerical magnitude judgments and physical magnitudes, confounds a sensory or input function with an output function flawing to do with O’s use of numbers. Judged magnitudes of differences between stimuli offer some opportunity for separating these functions. We obtained magnitude judgments of differences between paired weights, as well as magnitude judgments of the weights making up the pairs. From the former we calculated simultaneously an input exponent and an output exponent, working upon Attneave’s assumption that both transformations are describable as power functions. The inferred input and output functions, in combination, closely predict the judgments of individual weights by the same Os. Although pooled data (geometric means of judgments) conform fairly well to a linear output function, individual data do not; i.e., individual Os deviate quite significantly fromlinearity and from one another in their use of numbers. Individual values of the inferred sensory exponent, k, show significantly better uniformity over Os than do values of the phenotypica! magnitude exponent previously found to describe interval judgments of weight.     

Perceptual and motor attribute ratings for 559 object concepts

To understand how and when object knowledge influences the neural underpinnings of language comprehension and linguistic behavior, it is critical to determine the specific kinds of knowledge that people have. To extend the normative data currently available, we report a relatively more comprehensive set of object attribute rating norms for 559 concrete object nouns, each rated on seven attributes corresponding to sensory and motor modalities??color, motion, sound, smell, taste, graspability, and pain??in addition to familiarity (376 raters, M = 23 raters per item). The mean ratings were subjected to principal-components analysis, revealing two primary dimensions plausibly interpreted as relating to survival. We demonstrate the utility of these ratings in accounting for lexical and semantic decision latencies. These ratings should prove useful for the design and interpretation of experimental tests of conceptual and perceptual object processing.     

Probability assessment with response times and confidence in perception and knowledge

In both a perceptual and a general knowledge comparison task, participants categorized the time they took to decide, selecting one of six categories ordered from “Slow” to Fast”. Subsequently, they rated confidence on a six-category scale ranging from “50%” to “100%”. Participants were able to accurately scale their response times thus enabling the treatment of the response time (RT) categories as potential confidence categories. Probability assessment analyses of RTs revealed indices of over/underconfidence, calibration, and resolution, each subject to the “hard-easy” effect, comparable to those obtained with the actual confidence ratings. However, in both the perceptual and knowledge domains, resolution (i.e., the ability to use the confidence categories to distinguish correct from incorrect decisions) was significantly better with confidence ratings than with RT categorization. Generally, comparable results were obtained with scaling of the objective RTs, although subjective categorization of RTs provided probability assessment indices superior to those obtained from objective RTs. Taken together, the findings do not support the view that confidence arises from a scaling of decision time.     

Decision criteria do not shift: Commentary on Mueller and Weidemann (2008)

The effects of base rates and payoffs on the shapes of rating receiver operating characteristic curves are inconsistent with the basic assumptions of signal detection theory (SDT), in particular the notion of a shifting decision criterion. Mueller and Weidemann (2008) propose that these unexpected phenomena are not due to problems with the decision- criterion construct but are instead due to two compounded effects: instability of the decision criterion across trials, and even greater instability in the flanking criteria that determine which confidence rating will be reported. There are several problems with the authors’ decision-noise hypothesis. First, even if their hypothesis about decision noise were taken for granted, the key feature of the ratings data that rejects the SDT model would remain a mystery. Second, the same violations of SDT that are exhibited in the ratings paradigm are also exhibited in the yes-no detection task when response time is substituted for confidence as a basis for analysis. Finally, the decision-noise hypothesis predicts that sensitivity will increase when one source of this variation-the response on a previous trial-is controlled for. This prediction was consistently violated in both the yes-no and ratings conditions of Mueller and Weidemann’s experiment. In an Addendum, we respond to Weidemann and Mueller’s (2008) reply to this Comment.     

Measuring any conscious content versus measuring the relevant conscious content: Comment on Sandberg et al.

Sandberg et al. show that the Perceptual Awareness Scale (PAS) scale is sensitive compared to confidence ratings and wagering in detecting accurate perception. They go on to argue that the PAS scale is hence a sensitive measure of conscious perception compared to confidence ratings, a claim disputed here. The fact that some visual content is conscious does not entail that the visual content relevant to making a discrimination is conscious. For example, if one saw a square but was only aware of seeing a flash of something, then one has not consciously seen a square. When PAS and confidence ratings come in conflict, we suggest that it is confidence ratings that more reliably indicate the conscious status of contents allowing discrimination.