Inferring Behavior From Partial Social Information Plays Little or No Role in the Cultural Transmission of Adaptive Traits

Many human cultural traits become increasingly beneficial as they are repeatedly transmitted, thanks to an accumulation of modifications made by successive generations. But how do later generations typically avoid modifications which revert traits to less beneficial forms already sampled and rejected by earlier generations? And how can later generations do so without direct exposure to their predecessors' behavior? One possibility is that learners are sensitive to cues of non-random production in others' behavior, and that particular variants (e.g., those containing structural regularities unlikely to occur spontaneously) have been produced deliberately and with some effort. If this non-random behavior is attributed to an informed strategy, then the learner may infer that apparent avoidance of certain possibilities indicates that these have already been sampled and rejected. This could potentially prevent performance plateaus resulting from learners modifying inherited behaviors randomly. We test this hypothesis in four experiments in which participants, either individually or in interacting dyads, attempt to locate rewards in a search grid, guided by partial information about another individual's experience of the task. We find that in some contexts, valid inferences about another's behavior can be made from partial information, and these inferences can be used in a way which facilitates trait adaptation. However, the benefit of these inferences appears to be limited, and in many contexts—including some which have the potential to make inferring the experience of another individual easier—there appears to be no benefit at all. We suggest that inferring previous behavior from partial social information plays a minimal role in the adaptation of cultural traits.     

Inferring agency from sound

In three experiments we investigated how people determine whether or not they are in control of sounds they hear. The sounds were either triggered by participants’ taps or controlled by a computer. The task was to distinguish between self-control and external control during active tapping, and during passive listening to a playback of the sounds recorded during the active condition. Experiment 1 required detection of a change in control mode within trials. Experiments 2 and 3 introduced a simple rhythm reproduction task that requires discrimination of control modes between trials. The results demonstrate that both sensorimotor cues and perceptual cues are used to infer agency. In addition, there may be further influences of cognitive expectation and/or multimodal integration. In accordance with hierarchical models of intention [e.g., Pacherie, E. (2008). The phenomenology of action: A conceptual framework. Cognition, 107, 179-217] this suggests that the sense of agency is not situated on one specific level of action control but subject to multiple influences.     

Personality Traits, Partisan Attitudes, and Voting Behavior. Evidence from Germany

Political psychology has paid rather little attention to personality traits when explaining political attitudes and political behavior in mass publics. The present paper argues that personality traits contribute to our understanding of political attitude formation and decision making of ordinary citizens. Based on the Five Factor Model of Personality, we state hypotheses regarding the effects of personality traits on partisan attitudes and vote choice in Germany. We test the hypotheses using survey data obtained from a random sample of the Germans eligible to vote. The evidence confirms that personality traits indirectly affect partisan attitudes and voting behavior in Germany in predictable ways even after controlling for sociodemographic characteristics. More specifically, Openness makes citizens more inclined to support parties endorsing social liberalism whereas low scores on Conscientiousness increase the likelihood of liking and voting for parties subscribing to economic or social liberalism as do high levels on Agreeableness . High levels of Neuroticism appear to promote support for parties that offer shelter against material or cultural challenges.     

Inferring causal networks from observations and interventions

Information about the structure of a causal system can come in the form of observational data—random samples of the system's autonomous behavior—or interventional data—samples conditioned on the particular values of one or more variables that have been experimentally manipulated. Here we study people's ability to infer causal structure from both observation and intervention, and to choose informative interventions on the basis of observational data. In three causal inference tasks, participants were to some degree capable of distinguishing between competing causal hypotheses on the basis of purely observational data. Performance improved substantially when participants were allowed to observe the effects of interventions that they performed on the systems. We develop computational models of how people infer causal structure from data and how they plan intervention experiments, based on the representational framework of causal graphical models and the inferential principles of optimal Bayesian decision‐making and maximizing expected information gain. These analyses suggest that people can make rational causal inferences, subject to psychologically reasonable representational assumptions and computationally reasonable processing constraints.     

Intelligence, Callous-Unemotional Traits, and Antisocial Behavior

Research has consistently shown that children with severe conduct problems often exhibit intellectual deficits, especially in their verbal abilities. We investigated whether or not this finding only applies to certain subgroups of children with severe conduct problems. In a sample of 117 clinic-referred children between the ages of 6 and 13, we assessed for Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) and Conduct Disorder (CD) symptoms using a structured diagnostic interview with each child's parent and teacher, callous and unemotional traits using parent and teacher ratings, and intellectual functioning using a standard individually administered intelligence test. Children with an ODD or CD diagnosis who did not show callous and unemotional traits showed a deficit on subtests measuring verbal reasoning ability relative to a clinic control group. Children with an ODD or CD diagnosis who also showed callous and unemotional traits did not show a verbal deficit and, in fact, showed a trend toward having weaker nonverbal abilities. These results highlight the importance of recognizing distinct subgroups of children with severe conduct problems when studying potential intellectual deficits in these children.     

Inferring psychological significance from physiological signals

A century has passed since the publication of William James's Principles of Psychology, yet most of the questions James raised about the relation between physiological events and molar psychological or behavioral processes, such as emotion, remain unanswered. The sluggish progress in capitalizing on physiological signals to address general psychological questions is due in part to shortcomings in the quantification of physiological signals in humans and, perhaps more important, to the way in which investigators have been thinking about the relation between physiological signals and psychological operations. In this article, we illustrate these points, and we provide a conceptual framework to foster research and analysis of psychological phenomena based on physiological signals. Psychological operations and physiological responses are defined in terms of configural and temporal properties, and psychophysiological relations are conceptualized in terms of their specificity (e.g., one-to-one versus many-to-one) and their generality (e.g., situation or person specific versus cross-situational and pancultural). This model yields four classes of psychophysiological relations: (a) outcomes, (b) concomitants, (c) markers, and (d) invariants. Finally, the model specifies how to determine whether a psychophysiological relation is an outcome, concomitant, marker, or invariant, and it describes important limitations in inferences of psychological significance based on physiological signals when dealing with each.     

Inferring Gender from Handwriting in Urdu and English

Abstract

Handwriting samples in both English and Urdu from 30 donors were judged for masculinity-femininity by 25 judges (both judges and donors were adult Pakistanis, bilingual and literate in both Urdu and English). Inferences about gender were made reliably and accurately in both Urdu and English. Levels of accuracy (about 68%) were similar to those reported in studies of handwriting in English. Judged gender of handwriting was significantly stable across the two languages studied. These effects are relevant for the study of gender roles and gender stereotyping in assessment.     

Personality Traits That Predict Academic Citizenship Behavior

The association between personality and organizational citizenship behaviors is rarely examined in student populations. The present research tested the hypothesis that conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism predict unique variance in academic citizenship attitudes. In the first study, 270 college students completed an online questionnaire assessing their personality and academic citizenship attitudes. The results confirmed the hypothesis. In Study 2, we also tested the hypothesis that academic citizenship attitudes mediate the association between personality and citizenship behavior. Participants (n = 50) completed the online questionnaire. At a later session, they were asked to engage in an extra‐role helping behavior after completing the assigned task. The results showed that general conscientiousness was associated with citizenship behavior, but academic conscientiousness attitudes mediated this association.     

Preliminary Observations on Play Behavior in Puppies

Previous research suggested that the experimenter variable in conservation assessment procedures has not been adequately studied. This experiment investigated the effect of sex of experimenter on length conservation responses in second-grade subjects under group testing procedures. Results of contingency table analysis of observed frequencies suggested that there are significantly more operational conservers under female test administration than under male test administration. Further analysis revealed no significant difference in the number of operational conservers for male and female Ss with either male or female examiners. The sex of experimenter variable does appear to be an important factor in conservation assessment at the lower elementary level.     

Inferring interventional predictions from observational learning data

Previous research has shown that people are capable of deriving correct predictions for previously unseen actions from passive observations of causal systems (Waldmann & Hagmayer, 2005). However, these studies were limited, since learning data were presented as tabulated data only, which may have turned the task more into a reasoning rather than a learning task. In two experiments, we therefore presented learners with trial-by-trial observational learning input referring to a complex causal model consisting of four events. To test the robustness of the capacity to derive correct observational and interventional inferences, we pitted causal order against the temporal order of learning events. The results show that people are, in principle, capable of deriving correct predictions after purely observational trial-by-trial learning, even with relatively complex causal models. However, conflicting temporal information can impair performance, particularly when the inferences require taking alternative causal pathways into account.     

Directions of Effects between Adolescent Psychopathic Traits and Parental Behavior

The present study examined the directions of effects between adolescent psychopathic traits and parental behaviors. The data are from a community-based cohort-sequential study. Data were collected annually over 4 years. Participants were 875 adolescents, aged 13-15 at Time 1, and we analyzed their reports of negative and positive parental behavior, delinquency, and psychopathic traits. In results from cross-lagged models, adolescent psychopathic traits predicted changes over time in all of the parental behaviors at nearly all of the time intervals, whereas the prediction from parental behaviors to psychopathic traits was inconsistent across parenting measures and time intervals. These findings suggest that parental behavior is more a reaction than a predictor of psychopathic traits in adolescence.     

Inferring latent class lexicographic rules from choice data

A lexicographic rule orders multi-attribute alternatives in the same way as a dictionary orders words. Although no utility function can represent lexicographic preference over continuous, real-valued attributes, a constrained linear model suffices for representing such preferences over discrete attributes. We present an algorithm for inferring lexicographic structures from choice data. The primary difficulty in using such data is that it is seldom possible to obtain sufficient information to estimate individual-level preference functions. Instead, one needs to pool the data across latent clusters of individuals. We propose a method that identifies latent clusters of subjects, and estimates a lexicographic rule for each cluster. We describe an application of the method using data collected by a manufacturer of television sets. We compare the predictions of the model with those obtained from a finite-mixture, multinomial-logit model.     

Inferring task performance and confidence from displays of eye movements

Eye movements reveal what is at the center of people's attention, which is assumed to coincide with what they are thinking about. Eye-movement displays (visualizations of a person's fixations superimposed onto the stimulus, for example, as dots or circles) might provide useful information for diagnosing that person's performance. However, making inferences about a person's task performance based on eye-movement displays requires substantial interpretation. Using graph-comprehension tasks, we investigated to what extent observers (N = 46) could make accurate inferences about a performer's multiple-choice task performance (i.e., chosen answer), confidence, and competence from displays of that person's eye movements. Observers' accuracy when judging which answer the performer chose was above chance level and was higher for displays reflecting confident performance. Observers were also able to infer performers' confidence from the eye-movement displays; moreover, their own task performance and perceived similarity with the performer affected their judgments of the other's competence.     

Dimensional Personality Traits Broadly and Selectively Associated with Normative Externalizing Behavior

This study aimed to distinguish personality traits that are widely associated with several types of externalizing behaviors from personality traits that are more selectively associated with one or only a few specific types of externalizing behavior. A wide range of externalizing behaviors (e.g. alcohol and drug use, risky driving, aggressive acts, sexual promiscuity and relationship infidelity, academic misconduct) typical among an undergraduate population (N?=?257) were examined along with a range of personality traits measured using the Section III personality model for the DSM-5. We found that externalizing behavior was best associated with the domain level trait Antagonism and, to a lesser degree, Disinhibition. Antagonism’s association with problematic behavior was primarily accounted for by the facet trait Deceitfulness. Deceitfulness was found to be associated with a wide range of behaviors including relationship infidelity, theft, aggressive acts, and drug and alcohol use. Associations between Disinhibition and problem behavior, especially risky driving and poor work or school performance, were best accounted for by the Irresponsibility facet, as opposed to the Impulsivity or Distractibility facet traits. This comprehensive multivariate approach is important for a more complete understanding of the complex relationship that exists between personality traits and externalizing behavior. A better understanding of factors precipitating externalizing behavior could ultimately lead to an increased ability to target interventions to individuals most susceptible to engage in problematic behavior.     

小学儿童欺负行为与个性特点和心理问题倾向的关系

本研究采用问卷的方式测量了儿童欺负行为与个性及心理问题倾向之间的关系。结果表明：欺负组被试在个性特征上以高精神质和相对外倾型为典型特征;受害组被试以高神经质和内倾型为典型特征。在心理问题倾向上欺负组被试更多地表现出冲动倾向、学习问题和师生关系紧张等问题倾向;受害组被试更多地表现出孤独倾向、缺乏自信、学习问题和同伴关系紧张等问题。     

Inferring Sublexical Correspondences from Sight Vocabulary: Evidence from 6- and 7-year-olds

We report an experiment designed to investigate 6-to-7-year-old children's ability to acquire knowledge of sublexical correspondences between print and sound from their reading experience. A computer database containing the printed word vocabulary of children taking part in the experiment was compiled and used to devise stimuli controlled for grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC) frequency and rime neighbourhood consistency according to the children's reading experience. Knowledge of GPC rules and rime units was compared by asking children to read aloud three types of nonword varying in regularity of GPC and consistency of rime pronunciation. Results supported the view that children can acquire knowledge of both GPC rules and rime units from their reading experience. GPC rule strength affects the likelihood of a GPC response; rime consistency affects the likelihood of a rime response.