The role of affinity for prosumption experiences and values

Prosumers are individuals who produce goods they consume themselves. The prosumption literature suggests that prosumption can be enhanced through knowledge sharing, creativity and innovation, and developing expertise. In this article, we investigate the relationships between prosumption experiences, prosumption values, and affinity with a prosumption activity. We use a structural equation model approach to evaluate the relationships between these constructs and assume that affinity can mediate the relationship between prosumption experiences and values. We collect empirical data from prosumers who homebrew their own beer and confirm that prosumption experiences and values are positively related, and that affinity mediates the relationship between experiences and values. Implications deriving from these findings are discussed along with directions for future research.     

The reliability and validity of a measure of reported affinity for figurative language

Figurative language, as the linguistic expression of metaphoric thought, occupies a central place in the study of human cognition and creativity. This article describes four initial investigations of the reliability and validity of a measure of affinity for figurative language. In Study 1, a factor analysis of the Language Preference Report (LPR) yielded three orthogonally rotated components of affinity for figurative language: Liking to Produce Figurative Language, General Dislike of Figurative Language, and Liking to Study Texts Which Include Figurative Language. The factors, based on 540 responses, accounted for 73% of the total variance and were correlated with each other (absolute values between .55 and .36). Study 2, based on repeated administrations to 103 students at 2‐week intervals, investigated the reliability of the LPR Internal consistency estimates ranged from .92 to .84, and test‐retest reliability estimates ranged from .86 to .69. In Study 3, 39 students responded to both the LPR and the Similes Test. Participants’ Similes Test scores were significantly correlated with the LPR Production factor (r = .53, p < .001) and the Study factor (V = .36, p < .05). In Study 4, 79 students completed the LPR and later read 3000 words of text in which they were presented with 20 opportunities to choose figurative or literal sentence completions. The number of figurative completions chosen was significantly correlated with the LPR Dislike factor (r = ‐.65, p < .0001), the Study factor (r = .63, p <. 0001), and the Production factor (r = .50, p < .001). These findings support the conclusion that this measure of affinity for figurative language is sufficiently reliable and valid for researching individual differences in creativity, problem solving, language production, and learning from text.     

The overjustification effect

After reviewing the literature on overjustification (defined as any situation in which an external reinforcer is tied to an activity that would have been performed without that reinforcer), it was concluded that reattribution cannot adequately account for response decrements following the removal of reinforcers. An alternative explanation was proposed involving the concept of “reward contrast,” in which it is argued that individuals compare their actual or expected outcomes following a response with previous outcomes. When this comparison is favorable, the response is strengthened; when unfavorable, the response is weakened. Based upon the notion of reward contrast, an experiment was performed in which 16 albino rats were permitted to wheel-run for 33 days. After 11 acquisition and 5 baseline days, rats in the experimental group were reinforced for running at their baseline rate, while control rats continued to run for no reinforcement. Following 5 days of reinforcement, experimental animals were put into extinction. As hypothesized, albino rats displayed typical over-justification effects during extinction. As also hypothesized, these effects were temporary, with a gradual return to baseline over repeated extinction trials.     

The body-inversion effect

Researchers argue that faces are recognized via the configuration of their parts. An important behavioral finding supporting this claim is the face-inversion effect, in which inversion impairs recognition of faces more than nonface objects. Until recently, faces were the only class of objects producing the inversion effect for untrained individuals. This study investigated whether the inversion effect extends to human body positions, a class of objects whose exemplars are structurally similar to each other. Three experiments compared the recognition of upright and inverted faces, houses, and body positions using a forced-choice, same/different paradigm. For both reaction time and error data, the recognition of possible human body postures was more affected by inversion than the recognition of houses. Further, the recognition of possible human body postures and recognition of faces showed similar effects of inversion. The inversion effect was diminished for impossible body positions that violated the biomechanical constraints of human bodies. These data suggest that human body positions, like faces, may be processed configurally by untrained viewers.     

The mirror effect and the spacing effect

In the mirror effect, there are fewer false negatives (misses) and false positives (false alarms) for rare (low-frequency) words than for common (high-frequency) words. In the spacing effect, recognition accuracy is positively related to the interval (spacing or lag) between two presentations of an item. These effects are related in that they are both manifestations of a leapfrog effect (a weaker item jumps over a stronger item). They seem to be puzzles for traditional strength theory and at least some current global-matching models. A computational strength-based model (EICL) is proposed that incorporates excitation, inhibition, and a closed-loop learning algorithm. The model consists of three nonlinear coupled stochastic difference equations, one each for excitation (x), inhibition (y), and context (z). Strength is the algebraic sum (i.e., s = x − y + z). These equations are used to form a toy lexicon that serves as a basis for the experimental manipulations. The model can simulate the mirror effect forcedchoice inequalities and the spacing effect for single-item recognition, all parameters are random variables, and the same parameter values are used for both the mirror and the spacing effects. No parameter values varied with the independent variables (word frequency for the mirror effect, lag for the spacing effect), so the model, not the parameters, is doing the work.     

The acoustic similarity effect

The latency of reading 5-word sequences of 3 levels of acoustic similarity was measured. Highly similar sequences were found to have longer latencies than sequences of low similarity or control sequences. The implications of this finding for the acoustic similarity effect in STM are discussed.     

The foreperiod effect revisited

This paper explores four factors which could be important in accounting for the discrepant results which have previously been obtained with respect to the effect of foreperiod duration on reaction time (RT). In some studies a clear effect of foreperiod duration on auditory RT has been found, in contrast to a recent finding that foreperiod duration affected visual RT but not auditory RT. By means of two experiments, the effects of practice, time-on-task, reaction task (a-reaction versus selective reaction) and signal intensity were studied. The latter variable appears to be the principal determinant of the discrepant results in that there is an interaction between signal intensity, foreperiod duration and modality. The results fit the hypothesis that signals beyond a given intensity exert an immediate arousing effect which counteracts the foreperiod effect.     

The metacognitive disambiguation effect

From an early age, children show a tendency to map novel labels onto unfamiliar rather than familiar kinds of objects. Accounts of this tendency have not addressed whether children develop a metacognitive representation of what they are doing. In 3 experiments (each N = 48), preschoolers received a test of the metacognitive disambiguation effect, which involved deciding whether the referent of a novel label was located in a bucket of things “I know” or bucket of things “I don’t know.” Most 4-year-olds passed this test, whereas most 3-year-olds did not. Children’s performance was predicted by their ability to report whether various words and pseudowords were ones that they knew, even after age and vocabulary size were controlled. As children develop an awareness of their lexical knowledge/ignorance, they also develop a metacognitive representation of their tendency to map novel labels onto unfamiliar rather than familiar kinds.     

The acronym superiority effect

The visual world is replete with noisy, continuous, perceptually variant linguistic information, which fluent readers rapidly translate from percept to meaning. What are the properties the language comprehension system uses as cues to initiate lexical/semantic access in response to some, but not all, orthographic strings? In the behavioral, electromagnetic, and neuropsychological literatures, orthographic regularity and familiarity have been identified as critical factors. Here, we present a study in the Reicher—Wheeler tradition that manipulates these two properties independently through the use of four stimulus categories: familiar and orthographically regular words, unfamiliar but regular pseudowords, unfamiliar illegal strings, and familiar but orthographically illegal acronyms. We find that, like letters in words and pseudowords, letters in acronyms enjoy an identification benefit relative to similarly illegal, but unfamiliar strings. This supports theories of visual word recognition in which familiarity, rather than orthographic regularity, plays a critical role in gating processing.     

The reverse Stroop effect

In classic Stroop interference, manual or oral identification of sensory colors presented as incongruent color words is delayed relative to simple color naming. In the experiment reported here, this effect was shown to all but disappear when the response was simply to point to a matching patch of color. Conversely, strong reverse Stroop interference occurred with the pointing task. That is, when the sensory color of a color word was incongruent with that word, responses to color words were delayed by an average of 69 msec relative to a word presented in gray. Thus, incongruently colored words interfere strongly with pointing to a color patch named by the words, but little interference from incongruent color words is found when the goal is to match the color of the word. These results suggest that Stroop effects arise from response compatibility of irrelevant information rather than automatic processing or habit strength.     

The intention interference effect

Intentions have been shown to be more accessible (e.g., more quickly and accurately recalled) compared to other sorts of to-be-remembered information; a result termed an intention superiority effect (Goschke & Kuhl, 1993). In the current study, we demonstrate an intention interference effect (IIE) in which color-naming performance in a Stroop task was slower for words belonging to an intention that participants had to remember to carry out (Do-the-Task condition) versus an intention that did not have to be executed (Ignore-the-Task condition). In previous work (e.g., Cohen et al., 2005), having a prospective intention in mind was confounded with carrying a memory load. In Experiment 1, we added a digit-retention task to control for effects of cognitive load. In Experiment 2, we eliminated the memory confound in a new way, by comparing intention-related and control words within each trial. Results from both Experiments 1 and 2 revealed an IIE suggesting that interference is very specific to the intention, not just to a memory load.     

The picture-word interference effect is not a Stroop effect

A psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm was used to isolate the locus of the picture-word interference effect along the chain of processes subtended in name production. Two stimuli were presented sequentially on each trial, separated by a varying stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). The first stimulus, SI, was a tone that required a manual response. The second stimulus, S2, was a picture-word stimulus associated with picture naming. The distractor word was conceptually related to the picture on half of the trials, and unrelated in the other trials. A picture-word interference effect was found at long SOA, but not at short SOA. Such underadditive interaction between SOA and semantic relatedness suggests strongly that the locus of the picture-word interference effect is functionally earlier than the PRP effect locus. The results are discussed in relation to models of word production suggesting the involvement of central mechanisms in the selection of lexical output.     

Christianity and Islam: Theological affinity and competition

CHRISTENTUM UND ISLAM: THEOLOGISCHE VERWANDT-SCHAFT UND KONKURRENZ. By Hans Zirker. 2nd. rev. ed. Dusseldorf: Patmos, 1992. ISBN 3-491-77784-4.     

The effect of interstimulus procedures

NaCl detection and recognition thresholds were measured with and without a prior artificial raising of the level of adaptation by a molar salt mouthrinse. In both cases, it was found that an interstimulus procedure involving water mouthrinses yielded lower thresholds than a procedure with no rinses. These results were seen to be predicted from adaptation level changes. The literature was seen to confirm these results, while difficulties in threshold measurement were discussed.     

The mnemonic effect of choice

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Making choices during encoding leads to superior memory compared with having the same choices made for you. Evidence also suggests that chosen items might be...