Audio-visual simultaneity judgments

The relative spatiotemporal correspondence between sensory events affects multisensory integration across a variety of species; integration is maximal when stimuli in different sensory modalities are presented from approximately the same position at about the same time. In the present study, we investigated the influence of spatial and temporal factors on audio-visual simultaneity perception in humans. Participants made unspeeded simultaneous versus successive discrimination responses to pairs of auditory and visual stimuli presented at varying stimulus onset asynchronies from either the same or different spatial positions using either the method of constant stimuli (Experiments 1 and 2) or psychophysical staircases (Experiment 3). The participants in all three experiments were more likely to report the stimuli as being simultaneous when they originated from the same spatial position than when they came from different positions, demonstrating that the apparent perception of multisensory simultaneity is dependent on the relative spatial position from which stimuli are presented.     

Pollyanna's personal judgments

The Pollyanna hypothesis is extended into the field of intertrait inference to predict that inferential thresholds for positively evaluated characteristics will be lower than those for negatively evaluated characteristics. This prediction is confirmed, and is shown to have important implications for models of inference rules. Data from several studies are analysed to reveal that the Pollyanna threshold effect is reliably greater for women than for men, and it is shown that this effect is unrelated to sex differences in extremity of responding.     

Somatosensory prior entry assessed with temporal order judgments and simultaneity judgments

Attention is central to perception, yet a clear understanding of how attention influences the latency of perception has proven surprisingly elusive. Recent research has indicated that spatially attended stimuli are perceived earlier than unattended stimuli across a range of sensory modalities-an effect termed prior entry. However, the method commonly used to measure this, the temporal order judgment (TOJ) task, has been criticized as susceptible to response bias, despite deliberate attempts to minimize such bias. A preferred alternative is the simultaneity judgment (SJ) task. We tested the prior-entry hypothesis for somatosensory stimuli using both a TOJ task (replicating an earlier experiment) and an SJ task. Prior-entry effects were found for both, though the effect was reduced in the SJ task. Additional experiments (TOJ and SJ) using visual cues established that the earlier perception of cued tactile targets does not result from intramodal sensory interactions between tactile cues and targets.     

Direct quantitative judgments of sums and a two-stage model for psychophysical judgments

Judged magnitudes of differences between stimuli have previously been shown to support a two-stage interpretation of magnitude estimation, in which input transformations and output transformations are each describable as power functions. In an effort to provide support for the model independent of the difference estimation procedure. the present investigation employed two additional judgment tasks. We obtained magnitude judgments and category judgments of the combined magnitudes (sums) of paired weights from two groups of Ss. Values of the inferred input exponent k calculated from the two sets of data were very similar and were also remarkably similar to the exponent previously calculated from magnitude estimations of differences between weights. The output exponent calculated from magnitude judgments of sums described a concave upward function; however. the similar function describing category judgments was essentially linear. These results show that the inferred input exponent is not the result of the difference estimation task, and in addition provides support for the contention that the interval scale may be a less biased sensory measure than the magnitude scale. The introduction of an additive constant to the model improved its fit to the data but the rule by which it was introduced made very little difference.     

Single judgments of numerosity

In previous studies, subjects generally underestimated the number of elements present in a display. To eliminate the range and intertrial effects that arise when several displays are judged in succession and that might have produced the underestimation, subjects in the present study judged only a single display. The single judgments fitted a power function having an exponent of .83, which is consistent with previous data. Single judgments of loudness, area, and duration, by contrast, have produced abnormally low exponents apparently because the built-in scale unit, or modulus, available on numerosity is lacking for other modalities. The tendency to underestimate numerosity was much stronger for female than for male subjects.     

Moral judgments and self-presentations

Meehan, Woll, and Abbott (Journal of Research in Personality, 1979, 13, 25–38) have shown that scores on Hogan's Survey of Ethical Attitudes (SEA) are affected by instructions to simulate politically liberal or conservative attitudes. They also found that scores are affected by instructions to present one's self in a socially desirable or undesirable light, and that group ratings of the social desirability of the items could account for as much as 78% of the item response variance. Meehan et al. argue from these data that the SEA is a measure of political attitudes rather that moral judgments, and that the SEA is susceptible to dissimulation in the form of role playing and impression management. The present paper argues that test-taking is a form of self-presentation, identical to what goes on in everyday social interaction; this renders the Meehan et al. findings meaningful rather than problematic. The paper concludes with a discussion of the relationship between personality testing, self-presentation, moral judgments, and political attitudes.     

Grouping information for judgments

Models of cue weighting in judgment have typically focused on how decision-makers weight cues individually. Here, the authors propose that people might recognize and weight groups of cues. They examine how judgments change when decision-makers focus on cues individually or as parts of groups. Several experiments demonstrate that people can spontaneously pack information into cue groups. Moreover, group-level weighting depends on how people assess similarity or how they think of categorical hierarchies.     

Anchoring in sequential judgments

Building on the scale distortion theory (Frederick & Mochon, 2012), we explore the boundary conditions of anchoring outside of the standard paradigm. We argue that the conditions needed for anchoring effects are much more restrictive than those suggested by some theories, but much less restrictive than those suggested by others. Our findings illuminate both the scope and limits of this well-known effect and provide a framework for predicting its occurrence in novel settings.     

Audiotactile temporal order judgments

We report a series of three experiments in which participants made unspeeded 'Which modality came first?' temporal order judgments (TOJs) to pairs of auditory and tactile stimuli presented at varying stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) using the method of constant stimuli. The stimuli were presented from either the same or different locations in order to explore the potential effect of redundant spatial information on audiotactile temporal perception. In Experiment 1, the auditory and tactile stimuli had to be separated by nearly 80 ms for inexperienced participants to be able to judge their temporal order accurately (i.e., for the just noticeable difference (JND) to be achieved), no matter whether the stimuli were presented from the same or different spatial positions. More experienced psychophysical observers (Experiment 2) also failed to show any effect of relative spatial position on audiotactile TOJ performance, despite having much lower JNDs (40 ms) overall. A similar pattern of results was found in Experiment 3 when silent electrocutaneous stimulation was used rather than vibrotactile stimulation. Thus, relative spatial position seems to be a less important factor in determining performance for audiotactile TOJ than for other modality pairings (e.g., audiovisual and visuotactile).     

Refractoriness in same-different judgments

Subjects judged as “same” or “different” pairs of visual stimuli, each either an X or an O, whose onsets were separated by intervals of 50, 100, 150 or 200 ms. When the interstimulus interval (ISI) was held constant within a block of 40 trials (Experiment I), decision time was independent of ISI. But when ISI was varied unpredictably from trial to trial (Experiments II and III), decision times increased the shorter the ISI. This effect was more marked for “same” than for “different” decisions. These results fail to support a single-channel interpretation, but suggest that variations in decision time depend on the subject's expectancy as to when the second stimulus will follow the first.     

Extreme judgments depend on the expectation of following judgments: A calibration analysis

Objectives

Judges avoid extreme judgments in the beginning of evaluation sequences. The calibration hypothesis attributes this bias to judges’ need to preserve their judgmental degrees of freedom. It follows that the expectation of a sequence leads to avoiding extreme judgments in the beginning. Thus, judges may make extreme judgments if they expect only one performance but should avoid extreme judgments if they expect a sequence.

Design

A between-group design was used.

Method

One experimental group (n = 21) expected to judge only one gymnastics performance whereas the other group (n = 20) expected to judge a sequence of performances. Both groups then judged only one identical performance.

Results

Groups differed significantly in the frequency of extreme judgments. Participants expecting one performance used extreme judgment categories more often; participants expecting a series avoided extreme judgments.

Conclusion

The results support calibration processes in sequential judgments. The specification of the underlying process will allow testing possible interventions to avoid serial position biases in serial evaluations in the future.     

Judgments about judgments: the dissociation of consideration price and transaction commitment judgments

There are many contexts in which people make judgments about prior judgments. For example, Internet shopping bots (e.g., NexTag.com) allow consumers to search for products and, if the price is too high, list a price at which they would consider making the purchase (i.e., base judgment). If the price drops to this level, the vendor generates an e-mail inviting the consumer to execute the transaction at the reduced price (i.e., contingent judgment). The authors show that the consideration price depends on the content of retrieved information, whereas the willingness to execute the transaction at the consideration price depends on the ease-of-retrieving the information. The authors use different offer prices to encourage the consumer to retrieve information consistent with different product quality levels. The authors also select offer prices so that information retrieval is more difficult at moderate offer prices than at high or low offer prices. Accordingly, the authors show that the consideration price increases as the offer price increases, but the willingness to execute the transaction at the consideration price is greater when there are high and low, as opposed to moderate, offer prices.     

An investigation of the link between attributional judgments and stereotype‐based judgments

Three experiments investigated the relationship between the attributions made for stereotype‐relevant behavior and stereotype‐based judgments. In Experiment 1 participants were presented with a short scenario describing a single stereotypic behavior and were given either a situational or a dispositional explanation for the behavior, before evaluating both the target and the group as a whole on stereotype‐based dimensions. As predicted, participants given a situational explanation for the stereotypic behavior described in the target and the group in less stereotype‐based terms than did baseline participants. In Experiment 2 and 3 participants were presented with a short scenario describing either a single stereotypic or counter‐stereotypic behavior but were asked to provide an explanation for the behavior, rather than being given one. As predicted, stereotypic behavior was attributed more strongly to dispositional than situational factors and counter‐stereotypic behavior more strongly to situational than dispositional factors. No overall moderation of group‐based beliefs relative to baseline was seen in either experiment. Correlations between the attributions and stereotypic‐based judgments did, however, show a relationship between the strength of the attributions made for the behaviors and stereotype‐based judgements. Implications for the moderation of stereotype‐based judgments are discussed. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hemispheric asymmetries in categorical judgments of direction versus coordinate judgments of velocity of motion

Three experiments on visual field differences in motion perception are reported. Experiment 1 employed circular stimuli that grew or shrank either quickly or slowly. Experiments 2 and 3 employed circles that moved upward or downward either quickly or slowly. Judgments based on categorical equivalence classes (i.e., grow/shrink, upward/downward) generally yielded small and nonsignificant right visual field advantages. Judgments based on the precise coordinates of motion (i.e., quickly/slowly) yielded significant left visual field advantages across all three experiments. Results are interpreted in light of Kosslyn’s (1987) model of hemispheric differences in the processing of categorical versus coordinate spatial relations.     

Moral realism and moral judgments

For moral realists moral judgments will be a kind of factual judgment that involves the basically reliable apprehension of an objective moral reality. I argue that factual judgments display at least some degree of conceptual sensitivity to error, while moral judgments do not. Therefore moral judgments are not a kind of factual judgment.     

Temporal judgments and contextual change

Three experiments investigated effects of environmental context on temporal memory judgments. An equal number of items occurred within each of two equal durations (D1 and D2). Subjects subsequently were asked to judge the length of a given duration in comparison with the other, then to discriminate the correct list and serial position for each recognized item on a test. If environmental context was unchanged, D1 was remembered as being longer than D2; if the context was disrupted during the interval separating D1 and D2, this effect was reduced; and if the context prevailing during D2 also was changed, the effect was eliminated. List discrimination was improved only if the context was changed. Serial-position judgment was not affected by either manipulation. Changes in process context--the internal context produced by the performance of specific cognitive processes--lengthened remembered duration, but the effect did not simply add on to the effects of environmental context. Results are discussed in terms of a contextual-change hypothesis.