Pitches that Wire Together Fire Together: Scale Degree Associations Across Time Predict Melodic Expectations

The ongoing generation of expectations is fundamental to listeners’ experience of music, but research into types of statistical information that listeners extract from musical melodies has tended to emphasize transition probabilities and n-grams, with limited consideration given to other types of statistical learning that may be relevant. Temporal associations between scale degrees represent a different type of information present in musical melodies that can be learned from musical corpora using expectation networks, a computationally simple method based on activation and decay. Expectation networks infer the expectation of encountering one scale degree followed in the near (but not necessarily immediate) future by another given scale degree, with previous work suggesting that scale degree associations learned by expectation networks better predict listener ratings of pitch similarity than transition probabilities. The current work outlines how these learned scale degree associations can be combined to predict melodic continuations and tests the resulting predictions on a dataset of listener responses to a musical cloze task previously used to compare two other models of melodic expectation, a variable-order Markov model (IDyOM) and Temperley's music-theoretically motivated model. Under multinomial logistic regression, all three models explain significant unique variance in human melodic expectations, with coefficient estimates highest for expectation networks. These results suggest that generalized scale degree associations informed by both adjacent and nonadjacent relationships between melodic notes influence listeners’ melodic predictions above and beyond n-gram context, highlighting the need to consider a broader range of statistical learning processes that may underlie listeners’ expectations for upcoming musical events.     

Expectation confirmation: An examination of three competing models

We discuss three theoretical models from met expectations research in the fields of organizational behavior and consumer psychology. Based on the fundamental arguments in the models, we term these models: disconfirmation, ideal point, and experiences only. We present three-dimensional graphical and analytical representations of the models, with satisfaction being a function of expectations and experiences. We tested the models in the context of a new information system implementation in an organization, with expectations, experiences, and system satisfaction measured for both ease of use and usefulness, the focal constructs of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). We found that an experiences only model in which expectations had no measurable effect best explained the data for ease of use. The results for usefulness indicated a modified version of the experiences only model in which the positive effect of experiences becomes slightly stronger—i.e., more positive—as expectations increase.     

La balance optimisme/pessimisme : détermination des styles d’expectations envers le futur en se basant sur la bidimensionnalité du Life Orientation Test–Revised

IntroductionSince the 1980s, two major conceptions of the representation of optimism and pessimism have been disputed: a unidimensional structure and a bidimensional structure.ObjectiveThe bidimensional properties of the LOT-R in French are further explored in order to determine the styles of expectations towards the future according to the levels of optimism and pessimism.MethodA study carried out on a sample of 913 adults from France (72.7% women, M = 41.14 years) proposes (1) to analyze the factorial structure of the instrument, the relationship between the two constructs as well as their separability, (2) to explore the styles of expectations according to the levels of positive and negative expectations by latent profile analysis, (3) to study the influence of socio-demographic factors (age, sex, socio-professional category) on cognitive expectations about the future.ResultsThe confirmatory factor analyzes establish the replicability of the bidimensional latent structure of the instrument across age and gender groups, with the separability between the two constructs increasing with advancing age. The latent profile analysis supports the existence of three styles of expectations towards the future within the sample: the optimistic style, the mixed style and the pessimistic style. The MIMIC model demonstrates that increasing age and socio-professional category are determinants of levels of optimism and pessimism as well as of expectation styles.ConclusionThis research makes it possible to use the styles of expectations towards the future which empirically models the balance between the levels of optimism and pessimism.     

对新员工入职期望变化的一项纵向研究

通过对419名企业新员工入职期望的纵向研究,并运用LGM分析,结果表明：①在组织社会化初期,新员工入职期望的变化呈独特规律,即,工作期望线性下降,团队和企业期望的变化呈不定义曲线形式;②新员工入职期望各维度的变化率都存在显著的个体差异,但仅工作期望初始状态的个体差异显著;③新员工入职期望各维度的初始状态和变化速度之间都存在显著的正相关。由本研究而引发的诸如个体差异的预测因素等问题,还有待进一步研究     

Information‐Theoretic Properties of Auditory Sequences Dynamically Influence Expectation and Memory

A basic function of cognition is to detect regularities in sensory input to facilitate the prediction and recognition of future events. It has been proposed that these implicit expectations arise from an internal predictive coding model, based on knowledge acquired through processes such as statistical learning, but it is unclear how different types of statistical information affect listeners’ memory for auditory stimuli. We used a combination of behavioral and computational methods to investigate memory for non‐linguistic auditory sequences. Participants repeatedly heard tone sequences varying systematically in their information‐theoretic properties. Expectedness ratings of tones were collected during three listening sessions, and a recognition memory test was given after each session. Information‐theoretic measures of sequential predictability significantly influenced listeners’ expectedness ratings, and variations in these properties had a significant impact on memory performance. Predictable sequences yielded increasingly better memory performance with increasing exposure. Computational simulations using a probabilistic model of auditory expectation suggest that listeners dynamically formed a new, and increasingly accurate, implicit cognitive model of the information‐theoretic structure of the sequences throughout the experimental session.     

The Affective Tipping Point: Do Motivated Reasoners Ever “Get It”?

In order to update candidate evaluations voters must acquire information and determine whether that new information supports or opposes their candidate expectations. Normatively, new negative information about a preferred candidate should result in a downward adjustment of an existing evaluation. However, recent studies show exactly the opposite; voters become more supportive of a preferred candidate in the face of negatively valenced information. Motivated reasoning is advanced as the explanation, arguing that people are psychologically motivated to maintain and support existing evaluations. Yet it seems unlikely that voters do this ad infinitum. To do so would suggest continued motivated reasoning even in the face of extensive disconfirming information. In this study we consider whether motivated reasoning processes can be overcome simply by continuing to encounter information incongruent with expectations. If so, voters must reach a tipping point after which they begin more accurately updating their evaluations. We show experimental evidence that such an affective tipping point does in fact exist. We also show that as this tipping point is reached, anxiety increases, suggesting that the mechanism that generates the tipping point and leads to more accurate updating may be related to the theory of affective intelligence. The existence of a tipping point suggests that voters are not immune to disconfirming information after all, even when initially acting as motivated reasoners.     

Self-efficacy expectations and coping with career-related events

The process of self-efficacy expectation development, coping with a difficult task, and task performance is examined using a path analytic framework. A model of this process is examined with a job interview task as a way of assessing the generalizability of self-efficacy theory to career-related behavior. Results show that self-efficacy expectation theory generalizes to a career-related task, and that emotion-focused coping mediates the relationship between self-efficacy expectations and perceived performance, but not performance as assessed by the interviewer. The importance of self-efficacy expectations and emotion-focused coping as mediating the relationship of perceived past performance and pretask anxiety with subsequent behavior and outcomes is discussed.     

Countering conspiracy theory beliefs: Understanding the conjunction fallacy and considering disconfirming evidence

Research suggests that a number of cognitive processes—including pattern perception, intentionality bias, proportionality bias, and confirmation bias—may underlie belief in a conspiracy theory. However, there are reasons to believe that conspiracy theory beliefs also depend in part on a failure to understand the probability of actual events allegedly supporting those conspiracy theories as well as a failure to entertain disconfirming evidence that may contradict those beliefs. Study 1 examines the relationships between general beliefs in conspiracy theories, belief in a novel conspiracy theory, conjunctive error propensity, and the propensity to consider disconfirming evidence. Study 2 investigates the roles of confronting both the propensity to make conjunctive errors and the failure to consider disconfirming evidence in changing conspiracy theory beliefs as well as attitudes associated with those beliefs. The results of both studies suggest that corrections to one's propensity to make conjunctive errors and mindful consideration of disconfirming evidence may serve as viable methods of self-persuasion pertaining to conspiracy theory beliefs.     

Exposing Worry’s Deceit: Percentage of Untrue Worries in Generalized Anxiety Disorder Treatment

Theories of cognitive therapy have long proposed that those with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) have inaccurate expectations. By challenging them with objective evidence, symptoms are thought to decrease. To test these premises, this study used ecological momentary assessment (EMA) during the Worry Outcome Journal (WOJ) treatment to determine the percentage of GAD worries that did not come true. We then analyzed the association between participants’ untrue worry percentages and GAD symptom change across treatment. Twenty-nine participants with GAD recorded worries when prompted for 10 days, reviewed them online nightly, and tracked their worry outcomes across 30 days. These recordings were then coded by independent raters. Analyses applied bias-correct bootstrapping path analysis on slopes extracted from longitudinal linear mixed models. Primary results revealed that 91.4% of worry predictions did not come true. Higher percentages of untrue worries significantly predicted lower GAD symptoms after treatment, as well as a greater slope of symptom reduction from pre- to post-trial. Participants’ average expected likelihoods of worries coming true were much greater than actual observed likelihoods. The most common percentage of untrue worries per person was 100%. Thus, worries in those with GAD were mostly inaccurate. Greater evidence of this inaccuracy predicted greater improvement in treatment. As theorized, disconfirming false expectations may significantly contribute to treatment’s effect.     

No expectation bias in elite-level cricket umpires’ leg-before-wicket (LBW) decisions according to batting order position

ObjectivesPrevious studies have shown that sport officials’ decisions can be impacted by biases associated with expectations. The aim of this study was to determine whether elite cricket umpires’ decisions are also influenced by expectations associated with batter skill.MethodsLBW decisions (n = 5578) from actual elite level cricket matches in Australia between 2009 and 2016 were analysed in a multi-level binomial logistic regression paradigm. In our first model, we predicted the likelihood that an umpire will answer ‘out’ for batters in the top order (1–4), middle order (5–7), and low order (8-11). In our second model, we controlled for the correctness of a decision.ResultsUmpires were more likely to respond ‘out’ as the batting order progressed, however this did not appear to be due to biased decision-making. Instead, as batting order progressed, batters were more likely to actually be ‘out’.ConclusionsCricket umpires do not seem to be impacted by expectation bias associated with batting order. This study highlights the importance of controlling for the correctness of a decision when exploring bias in sport officials’ decisions.     

Compensatory Response to Anticipated Densities1

The coping processes associated with crowding stress were conceptualized as dynamic sequences of personal or situational adjustments and readjustments directed toward maintaining desired frequencies of social contact. By studying ongoing coping processes as subjects prepared for anticipated crowding, evidence of social withdrawal as a response to crowding was obtained. In addition, findings suggested that these processes were sensitive to change in the situation, seeking or avoiding interaction as anticipated group size changed. Subjects who were subsequently told that they would be interacting in small groups rather than in larger groups reported less crowding and discomfort than subjects whose anticipation of large group interaction was maintained. Furthermore, subjects whose expectations of large group interaction were disconfirmed increased facial regard for others following disconfirmation, indicating a greater willingness to interact. These findings were discussed as evidence of optimization processes governing desired levels of social contact, intimacy, and personal space.     

Seek,and You Will Find: The Influence of Expectations on Evaluations of Physical Activity

Despite hundreds of studies on the effects of expectations on evaluations, few commentaries have focused on summarising the relevance of these findings for physical activity pursuits. Moreover, a parsimonious framework on the nature of these relationships in physical activity is yet to be developed. Such a framework is important given the significance of physical activity evaluations in predicting future physical activity participation. Based on existing models on persuasion, it is premised that the self can be persuaded by one's own expectations about physical activity and that such persuasion can support or refute those expectations. Which of these effects are created, and the extent of one's psychological and physical involvement in the creation of physical activity evaluations, is likely to hinge on motivation and ability to confirm or disconfirm expectations. Evidence from related bodies of literature is presented to support the primary tenets of the model, which is termed the expectation‐to‐evaluation model, and recommendations for practitioners and future research are offered.     

因满足而幸福：婚姻期待研究回顾与展望

婚姻期待指在婚姻关系中, 个体对配偶和关系本身所期望达到、并认为可以达到的标准。婚姻期待的满足程度影响婚姻质量评价和婚姻满意度, 但受到期待弹性、夫妻沟通及归因风格等因素的调节。个体应对婚姻期待受挫的方式包括改变对方以及对现实进行理想化歪曲等。未来可从开发适用于中国文化的测量工具、深化影响婚姻期待的家庭因素研究、探索婚姻期待受挫的其它应对方式及开展婚姻期待的夫妻匹配研究等方向进行考察。     

Nine-months-old infants do not need to know what the agent prefers in order to reason about its goals: on the role of preference and persistence in infants' goal-attribution

Human infants readily interpret others' actions as goal-directed and their understanding of previous goals shapes their expectations about an agent's future goal-directed behavior in a changed situation. According to a recent proposal (Luo & Baillargeon, 2005), infants' goal-attributions are not sufficient to support such expectations if the situational change involves broadening the set of choice-options available to the agent, and the agent's preferences among this broadened set are not known. The present study falsifies this claim by showing that 9-month-olds expect the agent to continue acting towards the previous goal even if additional choice-options become available for which there is no preference-related evidence. We conclude that infants do not need to know about the agent's preferences in order to form expectations about its goal-directed actions. Implications for the role of action persistency and action selectivity are discussed.     

Do the right thing: but only if others do so

Social norms play an important role in individual decision making. We argue that two different expectations influence our choice to obey a norm: what we expect others to do (empirical expectations) and what we believe others think we ought to do (normative expectations). Little is known about the relative importance of these two types of expectation in individuals' decisions, an issue that is particularly important when normative and empirical expectations are in conflict (e.g., systemic corruption, high crime cities). In this paper, we report data from Dictator game experiments where we exogenously manipulate dictators' expectations in the direction of either selfishness or fairness. When normative and empirical expectations are in conflict, we find that empirical expectations about other dictators' choices significantly predict a dictator's own choice. However, dictators' expectations regarding what other dictators think ought to be done do not have a significant impact on their decisions after controlling for empirical expectations. Our findings about the crucial influence of empirical expectations are important for designing institutions or policies aimed at discouraging undesirable behavior. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Temporal expectation and information processing: a model-based analysis

People are able to use temporal cues to anticipate the timing of an event, enabling them to process that event more efficiently. We conducted two experiments, using the fixed-foreperiod paradigm (Experiment 1) and the temporal-cueing paradigm (Experiment 2), to assess which components of information processing are speeded when subjects use such temporal cues to predict the onset of a target stimulus. We analyzed the observed temporal expectation effects on task performance using sequential-sampling models of decision making: the Ratcliff diffusion model and the shifted-Wald model. The results from the two experiments were consistent: temporal expectation affected the duration of nondecision processes (target encoding and/or response preparation) but had little effect on the two main components of the decision process: response-threshold setting and the rate of evidence accumulation. Our findings provide novel evidence about the psychological processes underlying temporal-expectation effects on reaction time.     

Presentation Matters: The Effect of Wrapping Neatness on Gift Attitudes

While gift‐givers typically wrap gifts prior to presenting them, little is known about the effect of how the gift is wrapped on recipients’ expectations and attitudes toward the gift inside. We propose that when recipients open a gift from a friend, they like it less when the giver has wrapped it neatly as opposed to sloppily and we draw on expectation disconfirmation theory to explain the effect. Specifically, recipients set higher (lower) expectations for neatly (sloppily)‐wrapped gifts, making it harder (easier) for the gifts to meet these expectations, resulting in contrast effects that lead to less (more) positive attitudes toward the gifts once unwrapped. However, when the gift‐giver is an acquaintance, there is ambiguity in the relationship status and wrapping neatness serves as a cue about the relationship rather than the gift itself. This leads to assimilation effects where the recipient likes the gift more when neatly wrapped. We assess these effects across three studies and find that they hold for desirable, neutral, and undesirable gifts, as well as with both hypothetical and real gifts.     

Life Satisfaction and Alcohol Consumption Among Young Adults at Social Gatherings

Although low life satisfaction is related to alcohol abuse among young adults, there is no clear evidence of a specific relationship between wellbeing indexes and alcohol consumption. Several studies have reported different nonlinear relationships. The role of other variables may explain the inconsistent relationships between life satisfaction and alcohol consumption. Concerning individual factors, people’s expectations regarding drinking alcohol (i.e., drinking motives) are considered the most proximal antecedents of alcohol use and may mediate the relationship between life satisfaction and drinking alcohol. Regarding relational factors, social relations are related to both wellbeing and alcohol consumption. The aim of the present study was to examine the relationships among life satisfaction, drinking motives, and alcohol consumption in a sample of young adults. The data were collected by means of a self-report questionnaire from a sample of 536 young adults (median age: 22 years). We tested a structural equation model, assuming the hypothesized relationships, simultaneously on males and females to investigate gender differences. The results showed the influence of social relations on life satisfaction, which in turn influenced participants’ expectations regarding drinking alcohol. Drinking motives were antecedents of alcohol use. Among women, low satisfaction increased coping expectation, which, in turn, increased alcohol consumption. The most dangerous expectation about drinking was that alcohol may enhance a person. Prevention campaigns should aim to deconstruct this idea.     

The case for positive emotions in the stress process

For many decades, the stress process was described primarily in terms of negative emotions. However, robust evidence that positive emotions co-occurred with negative emotions during intensely stressful situations suggested the need to consider the possible roles of positive emotions in the stress process. About 10 years ago, these possibilities were incorporated into a revision of stress and coping theory (Folkman, 1997). This article summarizes the research reported during the intervening 10 years that pertains to the revised model. Evidence has accumulated regarding the co-occurrence of positive and negative emotions during stressful periods; the restorative function of positive emotions with respect to physiological, psychological, and social coping resources; and the kinds of coping processes that generate positive emotions including benefit finding and reminding, adaptive goal processes, reordering priorities, and infusing ordinary events with positive meaning. Overall, the evidence supports the propositions set forth in the revised model. Contrary to earlier tendencies to dismiss positive emotions, the evidence indicates they have important functions in the stress process and are related to coping processes that are distinct from those that regulate distress. Including positive emotions in future studies will help address an imbalance between research and clinical practice due to decades of nearly exclusive concern with the negative emotions.     

Occupational stress,psychological burnout and anxiety

Abstract

For many decades, the stress process was described primarily in terms of negative emotions. However, robust evidence that positive emotions co-occurred with negative emotions during intensely stressful situations suggested the need to consider the possible roles of positive emotions in the stress process. About 10 years ago, these possibilities were incorporated into a revision of stress and coping theory (Folkman, 1997). This article summarizes the research reported during the intervening 10 years that pertains to the revised model. Evidence has accumulated regarding the co-occurrence of positive and negative emotions during stressful periods; the restorative function of positive emotions with respect to physiological, psychological, and social coping resources; and the kinds of coping processes that generate positive emotions including benefit finding and reminding, adaptive goal processes, reordering priorities, and infusing ordinary events with positive meaning. Overall, the evidence supports the propositions set forth in the revised model. Contrary to earlier tendencies to dismiss positive emotions, the evidence indicates they have important functions in the stress process and are related to coping processes that are distinct from those that regulate distress. Including positive emotions in future studies will help address an imbalance between research and clinical practice due to decades of nearly exclusive concern with the negative emotions.