Subjective utility,anticipated utility,and the Allais paradox

One of the most notable counterexamples to expected utility theory is the “Allais paradox” (M. Allais, 1953, Econometrica, 31, 503–546). A number of alternative theories have been proposed in an attempt to resolve this paradox, notably including Karmarkar, 1978, Karmarkar, 1979, 24, 67–72). It is shown that SWU theory necessarily involves violations of dominance, but that the theory can be modified to avoid these violations. The result is a special case of J. Quiggin's anticipated utility theory (1982, Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organisation, 3, 323–343).     

On aspiring to present a developmental theory of occupational aspirations: A reader's guide to Gottfredson

L. S. Gottfredson's preceding comment (Journal of Vocational Behavior 1983, 23, 203–212)is characterized by undocumented and arbitrary assertions. Moreover, we still maintain and cite further evidence that the features of the stages she describes represent an implausible account of development. We conclude that there is nothing in either L. S. Gottfredson's original (Journal of Counseling Psychology 1981, 28, 545–579) article or her preceding paper that leads us to alter our belief that the views we present in our own article (Journal of Vocational Behavior 1983, 23, 179–212) will be useful for the future development of vocational theory and intervention.     

Informational cues and attributions based on role behavior

A recent experiment by Messick and Reeder (Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1972, 18, 482–491) attempted to extend Jones, Davis, and Gergen's (Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1961, 63, 302–310) classic finding that out-of-role behavior.is more informative for person perception than in-role behavior. It is argued, however, that this study confounded two variables, role performance and occupation. Evidence is presented that the occupation variable alone could have produced Messick and Reeder's results. Both variables seem to affect attributions. The importance of these findings for relating attribution theory and role theory is discussed.     

Enhanced recognition of memorable pictures in ultra-fast RSVP

Long-term recognition memory for some pictures is consistently better than for others (Isola, Xiao, Parikh, Torralba, & Oliva, IEEE Transaction on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI), 36(7), 1469–1482, 2014). Here, we investigated whether pictures found to be memorable in a long-term memory test are also perceived more easily when presented in ultra-rapid RSVP. Participants viewed 6 pictures they had never seen before that were presented for 13 to 360 ms per picture in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) sequence. In half the trials, one of the pictures was a memorable or a nonmemorable picture and perception of this picture was probed by a visual recognition test at the end of the sequence. Recognition for pictures from the memorable set was higher than for those from the nonmemorable set, and this difference increased with increasing duration. Nonmemorable picture recognition was low initially, did not increase until 120 ms, and never caught up with memorable picture recognition performance. Thus, the long-term memorability of an image is associated with initial perceptibility: A picture that is hard to grasp quickly is hard to remember later.     

Occupational prestige: Exploration of a theoretical basis

Drawing on the theory and research of psychophysics, a nonlinear model is hypothesized to explain the connection between education and income and occupational prestige. To achieve this, Weber's (R. L. Gregory, 1981, Mind in Science, Cambridge, Cambridge Univ. Press, pp. 501–503) and Stevens' (S. S. Stevens, 1970, Science170, 1043–1050) laws are brought together in an intrinsically nonlinear model. Guided by the earlier work of R. L. Hamblin (1971, Sociometry, 34, 423–452) and others, the work of O. D. Duncan (1961, in A. J. Reiss, Jr., O. D. Duncan, P. K. Hatt, & C. C. North (Eds.), Occupations and Social Status, New York, Free Press) is reanalyzed testing the possibility that work on the socioeconomic index can be understood as a prestige allocation process which follows psychophysical principles. That is, prestige is assigned to occupations, given specifiable levels of educational and income attainment, in a manner parallel to the way in which individuals respond to changes in the intensity of other stimuli. Using first the data developed by Duncan (1961) to test the model and the 1963 NORC data (R. W. Hodge, P. M. Siegel, & P. H. Rossi, 1964, American Journal of Sociology, 70, 286–302) to replicate it, a measurement model consistent with the theoretical model is evaluated. Comparing the results of the nonlinear model to that of the linear, it is concluded that a model is obtained yielding theoretical confirmation with no loss in predictive accuracy. The resultant nonlinear model yields alternative substantive implications concerning the relative influence of income and education on occupational prestige to those to be inferred from linear models. Perhaps most important, however, is the candidacy given by these results to psychophysics as the explanatory mechanism in the prestige allocation process.     

An experimental and theoretical investigation of the constant-ratio rule and other models of visual letter confusion

The constant-ratio rule (CRR) and four interpretations of R. D. Luce's (In R. D. Luce, R. R. Bush, & E. Galanter (Eds.), Handbook of mathematical psychology (Vol. 1). New York: Wiley, 1963) similarity choice model (SCM) were tested using an alphabetic confusion paradigm. Four stimulus conditions were employed that varied in set size (three, four or five stimulus elements) and set constituency (block letters: A, E, X; F, H, X; A, E, F, H; A, E, F, H, X), and were presented to each subject in independent blocks. The four interpretations of the SCM were generated by constraining one, both, or neither of its similarity and bias parameter sets to be invariant in across-stimulus set model predictions. The strictest interpretation of the SCM (both the similarity and bias parameters constrained), shown to be a special case of the CRR, and the CRR produced nearly equivalent across-set predictions that provided a reasonable first approximation to the data. However, they proved inferior to the least strict SCM (neither the similarity nor bias parameters were constrained; the common interpretation of the SCM in visual confusion). Additionally, the least strict SCM was compared to J. T. Townsend's (Perception and Psychophysics, 1971, 9, 40–50, 449–454) overlap model, the all-or-none model (J. T. Townsend, Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 1978, 18, 25–38), and a modified version of L. H. Nakatani's (Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 1972, 9, 104–127) confusion-choice model. Both the least strict SCM and confusion-choice models produced nearly equivalent within stimulus set predictions that were superior to the overlap and all-or-none within-set predictions. Measurement conditions related to model structure and equivalence relations among the models, many of them new, were examined and compared with the statistical fit results of the investigation.     

The interaction of semantic memory with storage and retrieval processes

A procedure for separating storage from retrieval (R. Chechile & D. L. Meyer, Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 1976, 14, 430–437) lead to the conclusion that memory development involves changes in both storage and retrieval. Nevertheless, these changes resulted from the interaction of storage and retrieval mechanisms with the age-related elaboration of the semantic memory system. This study shows that the memory improvement with age, between kindergarten and second grade, vanished when the meaningfulness of the materials were equated. The most plausible interpretation of the results is the hardware invariance hypothesis. According to that hypothesis, the memory apparatus for information processing is constant across ages, but the hardware is used more effectively if there is a better-developed semantic memory system.     

Finite automata and S−R models

Suppes (1969, Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 6) apparently proved that any finite automaton could be mimicked by the asymptotic behavior of a stimulussampling S?R model, broadly implying that cognitive theory could be reduced to S?R theory. Here it is shown that the finite automata used by Suppes are more restricted and less powerful than finite automata in general. Furthermore, the S?R models proposed by Suppes are limited to producing the behavior of only these restricted automata, and cannot mimic all finite automata. Hence, the formal claim that S?R models are adequate to produce all behaviors obtainable from finite automata, and the informal claim that cognitive theory reduces to S?R theory, do not follow from Suppes's (1969) result. Some alternative S?R models and their problems are also briefly discussed.     

Verb semantic structures in memory for sentences: Evidence for componential representation

This research contrasts two hypotheses concerning componential storage of meaning. The Complexity Hypothesis assumed by Fodor (The language of thought, NY: Crowell, 1975), Kintsch (The representation of meaning in memory, Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1974), and Thorndyke (Conceptual complexity and imagery in comprehension and memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1975, 14, 359–369) states that a word with many semantic components will require more processing resources, comprehension time, and long-term memory space than a word with few components, and thus will interfere more with memory for surrounding words. This memory prediction was tested against an alternative prediction based on connectivity. The Connectivity Hypothesis views verb semantic structures as frames for sentence representation and states that memory strength between two nouns in a sentence increases with the number of underlying verb subpredicates that connect the nouns. Thus, the Complexity Hypothesis predicts that a verb with many subpredicates will lead to poorer memory strength between the surrounding nouns than a verb with few subpredicates, while the Connectivity Hypothesis predicts that verbs with many subpredicates will lead to greater memory strength between nouns in cases when the additional subpredicates provide semantic connections between the nouns.In three experiments, subjects recalled subject-verb-object sentences, given subject nouns as cues. General verbs, with relatively few subpredicates, were compared with more specific verbs whose additional subpredicates either did or did not provide additional connections between the surrounding nouns. The level of recall of the object noun, given the subject noun as cue, was predicted by the relative number of connecting subpredicates in the verb, but not by the relative number of subpredicates. This finding supports the Connectivity Hypothesis over the Complexity Hypothesis. These results are interpreted in terms of a model in which the verb conveys a structured set of subpredicates that provides a connective framework for sentence memory.     

Traits,processes, and the purpose of templates

The template method proposed by D. J. Bem and D. C. Funder 1978, Psychological Review, 85, 485–501) can have two separate purposes. First, template-behavior pairs can be used as a type of explanation in which situational influences are incorporated within a trait theory. Second, template matching can be used as a method for evaluating process theories. Recent discussion (D. J. Bem, 1983; Psychological Review, 90, 390–393; D. C. Funder, 1983; Psychological Review, 90, 283–289; W. Mischel & P. K. Peake, 1982, Psychological Review, 89, 730–755) confuses these two purposes. If used as a type of explanation, then templates can be criticized on the grounds of blunt empiricism; but if templates are used as a method for evaluating process theories, then process theorists should welcome this new technique.     

Dissonance theory revised again: Comment on the paper by Fazio,Zanna, and Cooper

Fazio, Zanna, and Cooper (Dissonance and self-perception: An integrative view on each theory's proper domain of application. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1977, 13, 464–479) specified mutually exclusive domains of application for dissonance and self-perception theory and used a misattribution-of-arousal procedure to distinguish between dissonance reduction and self-perception processes. Because their proposed limitations of the domains of the two theories and their use of the misattribution procedure are not directly derivable from earlier statements of either theory, it may be best to regard their analysis as a new theory, rather than as a conciliation of the parent theories. New analyses based on the Fazio et al. results indicate that their data provide an insufficient basis for preferring their theory to earlier versions of dissonance and self-perception theories. Dissonance and self-perception: An integrative view of each theory's proper domain of application. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1977, 13, 464–479.     

Decrements in children's responses to big and tall: A reconsideration of the potential Cognitive and Semantic causes

The potential causes of decrements in children's understanding of big and tall (Maratsos, 1973, Maratsos, 1974, 10, 367–375) are reconsidered. On the basis of data from English-speaking children, two of these hypotheses, the Strong Cognitive Hypothesis and the Strong Semantic Hypothesis, offer equally plausible explanations for those decrements. However, data from Arabic-speaking children between 2;9 and 6;3, who do not show a similar decrement in their understanding of kabiir, support the Strong Semantic Hypothesis that decrements in English-speaking children's understanding of big and tall are due to their positing semantic features such as [+ Vertical] for one word and overgeneralizing them to related words. This, in turn, supports Carey's (M. Halle, J. Bresnan, & G. Miller (Eds.), Linguistic theory and psychological reality. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978. Pp. 264–293) theory that features are abstracted out for words after children are able to use those words correctly on the basis of stored haphazard examples. Further, the results support the view that children at least sometimes posit features for a word on the basis of its individual privileges of occurrence, rather than on the basis of what that word contrasts with.     

The effects of delay and imagery training on the recall and recognition of object pairs

The present study represents a further investigation of an imagery training procedure previously developed by the authors (Yuille & Catchpole, 1973). Subjects given a brief training session in the use of an interacting imaginal mnemonic showed significantly higher performance than nontrained Ss on tests of immediate, delayed, and second learning set memory. While both recognition and recall were equally affected by the procedure, with recognition showing its usual superiority, the type of immediate memory test did not affect delayed recall. The findings are interpreted as supporting the preference of young children for visual coding.     

Encoding and incidental memory in children

First, third, and fifth graders (7.1, 8.8, 11.1 years old) performed semantic, acoustic, and orthographic orienting activities to different words in a list. Without forewarning, their free recall of the words was tested after the orienting activity. The semantic task yielded better recall than the acoustic or orthographic tasks, but the latter two did not differ. Age differences in recall were absent, and the effect of the three orienting tasks did not vary as a function of the child's age. The results support a direct extension of levels of processing theory (Craik, F. I. M., & Lockhart, R. S. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1972, 11, 671–684) to children's memory. An obligatory-optional encoding distinction was suggested as a developmentally relevant addition to the levels of processing framework.     

Measurement foundations for multiattribute psychophysical theories based on first order polynomials

The class of first order polynomial measurement representations is defined, and a method for proving the existence of such representations is described. The method is used to prove the existence of first order polynomial generalizations of expected utility theory, difference measurement, and additive conjoint measurement. It is then argued that first order polynomial representations provide a deep and far reaching characterization of psychological invariance for subjective magnitudes of multiattributed stimuli. To substantiate this point, two applications of first order polynomial representation theory to the foundations of psychophysics are described. First, Relation theory, a theory of subjective magnitude proposed by Shepard (Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 1981, 24, 21–57) and Krantz (Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 1972, 9, 168–199), is generalized to a theory of magnitude for multiattributed stimuli. The generalization is based on a postulate of context invariance for the constituent uniattribute magnitudes of a multiattribute magnitude. Second, the power law for subjective magnitude is generalized to a multiattribute version of the power law. Finally, it is argued that a common logical pattern underlies multiattribute generalizations of psychological theories to first order polynomial representations. This abstract pattern suggests a strategy for theory construction in multiattribute psychophysics.     

Memory and aging: Implications for theories of memory development during childhood

Research is reviewed suggesting that early school age children and older adults demonstrate a similar pattern of performance deficits (relative to the performance of young adults) on memory tasks, raising the possibility that age-related changes in some common factor might account for both memory development and memory decline. It is argued here that whereas “metamemory” theory of memory development does not provide a viable theory of memory decline, Craik's (F. I. M. Craik & M. Byrd, 1982, in F. I. M. Craik & S. E. Trehub (Eds.), Aging and cognitive processes, New York: Plenum; F. I. M. Craik & E. Simon, 1980, in L. W. Poon, J. L. Fozard, L. S. Cermak, D. Arenberg, & L. W. Thompson (Eds.), New directions in memory and aging, Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum) attentional deficit theory of memory decline provides a viable theory of memory development as well. Evidence supporting this position is reviewed, and directions for future research are discussed.     

Depiction and plastic perception. A critique of Husserl’s theory of picture consciousness

In this paper, I will present an argument against Husserl’s analysis of picture consciousness. Husserl’s analysis of picture consciousness (as it can be found primarily in the recently translated volume Husserliana 23) moves from a theory of depiction in general to a theory of perceptual imagination. Though, I think that Husserl’s thesis that picture consciousness is different from depictive and linguistic consciousness is legitimate, and that Husserl’s phenomenology avoids the errors of linguistic theories, such as Goodman’s, I submit that his overall theory is unacceptable, especially when it is applied to works of art. Regarding art, the main problem of Husserl’s theory is the assumption that pictures are constituted primarily as a conflict between perception/physical picture thing and imagination/picture object. Against this mentalist claim, I maintain, from a hermeneutic point of view, that pictures are the result of perceptual formations [Bildungen]. I then claim that Husserl’s theory fails, since it does not take into account what I call “plastic perception” [Bildliches Sehen], which plays a prominent role not only within the German tradition of art education but also within German art itself. In this connection, “plastic thinking” [Bildliches Denken] was prominent especially in Klee, in Kandinsky, and in Beuys, as well as in the overall doctrine of the Bauhaus. Ultimately, I argue that Husserl’s notion of picture consciousness and general perceptive imaginary consciousness must be replaced with a more dynamic model of the perception of pictures and art work that takes into account (a) the constructive and plastic moment, (b) the social dimension and (c) the genetic dimension of what it means to see something in something (Wollheim).

Elkind on egocentrism

The purpose of this paper is to respond to D. Elkind's (1985, Developmental Review, 5, 218–226) reply to D. Lapsley and M. Murphy's (1985, Developmental Review, 5, 201–217) critique of the adolescent egocentrism theory. After a reprise of the issues in contention, we address the problem of theoretical consistency and self-other differentiation in Dr. Elkind's (1967, Child Development, 38, 1025–1034) theory. The role of formal operations in the Lapsley and Murphy (1985) account of the imaginary audience and personal fable is revised, and the empirical support for Elkind's theory is reviewed. We conclude that there are good conceptual and empirical grounds for doubting the major assumptions of the adolescent egocentrism theory, and that the Lapsley and Murphy (1985) framework has promise in suggesting theoretical integration with other approaches to the self.     

Why Reading? Because it's there

Three papers (V. A. Mann, Reading skill and language skill. Developmental Review, 1984, 4, 1–15; G. Wolford & C. A. Fowler, Differential use of partial information by good and poor readers. Developmental Review, 1984, 4, 16–35; F. J. Morrison, Reading disability: A problem in rule learning and word decoding. Developmental Review, 1984, 4, 36–47) are critiqued from the standpoint of their adequacy in advancing our understanding of a problem as complex as reading disability. Experimenters should be explicit about their guiding theoretical assumptions, and should think through the relations, if any, between their laboratory tasks and the actual processes of reading. The reading protocol of a dyslexic child is provided, and is interpreted within the frameworks of the Mann, Wolford and Fowler, and Morrison viewpoints.     

Implied motion language can influence visual spatial memory

How do language and vision interact? Specifically, what impact can language have on visual processing, especially related to spatial memory? What are typically considered errors in visual processing, such as remembering the location of an object to be farther along its motion trajectory than it actually is, can be explained as perceptual achievements that are driven by our ability to anticipate future events. In two experiments, we tested whether the prior presentation of motion language influences visual spatial memory in ways that afford greater perceptual prediction. Experiment 1 showed that motion language influenced judgments for the spatial memory of an object beyond the known effects of implied motion present in the image itself. Experiment 2 replicated this finding. Our findings support a theory of perception as prediction.