Selectivity and strategy in early search

Early information-processing strategies were examined in a study of very young children's search for hidden objects. Sixteen younger children (mean age: 1 year; 11 months) and sixteen older children (mean age: 2;6) received search problems in which observational and/or verbal information about an object's location was provided. The question of primary interest was how they would respond when given two conflicting sources of information, which differed in modality (observational vs verbal) and in currentness. Both younger and older children showed some use of an appropriate strategy of relying on the more current information, although they did not follow it consistently. Children also showed preferential use of observational over verbal information and response biases favoring the middle location. Age differences were found in children's use of verbal information, in the degree to which they benefitted from practice, and in response biases. These results suggested a distinction between two aspects of the development of search: the acquisition of new search skills and the establishment of appropriate priorities among skills already in the child's repertoire.     

Developments in infants' search for displaced objects

In an exploratory study of infants' search for displaced objects, 13-month-olds and 21-month-olds were tested on three kinds of displacement problems—visible displacements, invisible displacements, and transpositions—as well as singlehiding problems. Two aspects of performance on the displacement problems were distinguished: (1) searching within the locations involved in the displacement rather than at a control location, and (2) selecting between the displacement locations. Both the younger and the older infants were able to select the correct location on visible displacement problems and to search within the displacement locations on invisible problems. Neither age group was able to solve the transposition problems, but the older infants did at least search within the relevant locations on those problems. Age differences appeared to be due primarily to improved skill at identifying relevant locations rather than to improvements in selecting among those locations. Other factors contributing to the age differences in performance were a decrease in response biases and an increase in skills for coping with multiple possibilities.     

Selective information use and perseveration in the search behavior of infants and young children

Two experiments examined the early development of selective information use in search. The first experiment tested 9- and 16-month-olds on a modification of Piaget's Stage IV object permanence task. It examined infants' use of information from previous experiences with an object (prior information) and from the most recent hiding (current information) to locate a hidden object. In the second experiment, 2-, $\text{2}\text{1}\text{2}$-, and 4-year-old children received these same sources of information along with new forms of prior and current information: information about the typical locations of objects (location specificity) and verbal information. No systematic perseveration was observed at 9 months, although previous findings related to perseveration were replicated. Perseveration was found at 16 months, but there was also evidence of selectivity at that age. When errors occurred, they tended to be to the prior location, but they were infrequent in comparison to correct searches at the current location. The preschoolers, while continuing to show perseveration, were more consistently selective than the infants. They also showed considerable generality in extending their selectivity to new sources of information.     

The role of elaborations in memory for prose

In two experiments, subjects read stories and were asked to make plausibility judgments about statements with respect to the stories. The inherent plausibility of the queried statements, the amount of attention subjects focused on information necessary for making a judgment, and the interval between presentation of the relevant story information and the test probe were varied orthogonally. The pattern of latencies obtained to make these judgments cast strong doubt on the notion that question answering is typically accomplished by searching for a single fact in memory. Rather, people seem to retrieve any relevant, available information and then use this to compute whether a statement seems true. The independent variables in these experiments can be interpreted according to whether they affect the retrieval or the judgment phase.     

Structural models for the mediation of salience effects on attribution

Previous research has demonstrated that salient information is overrepresented in causal attributions. Two experiments were conducted to investigate potential mediators for this effect and to make a case for the use of structural models in explanations of process. Two mediators were considered: enhanced visual recall of salient stimuli and exaggerated schema-relevant recall of salient stimuli. Although analyses of variance supported the visual recall model, structural analyses demonstrated its implausibility. Analyses of variance and structural models revealed that schema-relevant recall, that is, information seen as representative of causal influence, is a plausible mediator; this was particularly true of relevant visual information. Results suggest that salience effects (S. E. Taylor & S. T. Fiske in L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 11). New York: Academic Press, 1978) are due to: (a) the attentional advantage of inherently salient visual events and (b) the influence of stored visual and nonvisual schema-relevant information on causal judgments.     

Imaging,empathy, and causal attribution

Three studies were conducted to test whether imagery accounts for the effects of empathy on attributions, that is, whether attributers construct and scan a mental image of social scenarios the same way that actual participants scan a real environment. According to this interpretation, attributers “see” the world as the participant does and make vicarious attributions. An alternative interpretation holds that subjects base vicarious attributions on recreating the motivations and affect of the actor, so that imaging is irrelevant to empathy and attributions. In the first study, subjects who imagined a story from the perspective of a particular character later showed differential recall of story details as a function of role, but not differential attributions. In Experiment 2, role-taking subjects showed clear effects of imaged perspective on recall for story details, but no effects on attributions of causality for an accident. Further, recall and attribution were uncorrelated. In the last study, empathy and imagery role-taking instructions produced independent effects: imagers showed pronounced perspective-relevant recall and empathizers did not. Neither showed unambiguous vicarious attributions. Recall and attribution were again uncorrelated. These studies suggest that the imagery explanation of empathy effects is untenable, and imply that the recall of perspective-relevant details is unlikely to mediate attributions of causality in imaginary scenarios.     

The effect of imagining an event on expectations for the event: An interpretation in terms of the availability heuristic

Previous studies have indicated that explaining a hypothetical event makes the event seem more likely through the creation of causal connections. However, such effects could arise through the use of the availability heuristic; that is, subjective likelihood is increased by an event becoming easier to imagine. Two experiments were designed to demonstrate this principle. In Experiment 1, subjects asked to imagine Jimmy Carter winning the presidential election (prior to the election) predicted that he was more likely to win than subjects asked to imagine Gerald Ford winning. In Experiment 2, subjects asked to imagine a good college football season for the previous championship team were more likely to predict a major bowl bid than subjects asked to imagine a bad season, although the effect did not appear in predictions of the season record. In both studies, subjects who were also asked to explain the imaginary event were no different from subjects who only imagined. Several other attributional distortions are interpreted in terms of the availability heuristic.     

Does recognition memory improve with age?

In order to test the hypothesis that recognition is a developmentally stable component of the memory system, age differences in recognition of faces were examined while controlling for nonmemory factors that might contribute to differences between the groups. Three groups of children (mean ages: 3 years, 4 months; 4 years, 9 months; and 6 years, 11 months) and a group of college students were tested on a recognition task and a similar matching task. The results indicated no change in recognition across the preschool years but an improvement from the later preschool period to the first grade. Further analyses indicated that this improvement was not due to changes in decision criteria or perceptual skills. These findings call into question the view that recognition is a developmentally invariant component of the memory system.     

The development of children's problem solving in a gears task: A problem space perspective

I examined two contexts of development in children's problem solving: (1) the macro-context of different age cohorts (8–9 vs 11–12 years of age); and (2) the micro-context of an approximately one-hour experimental session. Twenty subjects (even divided across sexes and these two age groups) were individually presented a collection of variously sized gears, a board onto which these gears could be easily attached and rotated, and a knob. Each subject was asked to find all solutions, in which two marked gears were turning the same way, and to represent these solutions graphically. Subjects applied four different problem spaces to the task: the Euclidean, the Kinematic, the Dynamic, and the Topological. The Arithmetic Modifier could be applied to any of these problem spaces, resulting in a numerical characterization of the gear constructions and/or production strategies. The 11–12's tended to shift problem spaces adaptively; the 8–9's seldom did so. Analysis of the pathways of transition between the problem spaces revealed a complex picture of partial or complete incorporation, and substitution.     

Formal assessment of problem-solving and planning processes in preschool children

While much is known about adult problem-solving, the materials, analyses, and theoretical issues from the adult literature rarely make contact with the tasks typically used to investigate children's thinking. This paper examines the behavior of 4-, 5-, and 6-year-old children attempting to solve a novel variant of the Tower of Hanoi task. Problems varied in difficulty (one to seven moves for the minimum path solution) and in goal type: tower (all objects on one peg) or flat (all pegs occupied). For each problem, children gave verbal statements of their complete solution plan. The Plan Analysis examined performance as a function of goal type and age. Better performance was observed for tower ending problems, and among older children. The Error Analysis revealed that specific error propensities were related to both age and goal type. The Strategic Analysis compared the first move profiles of 6-year-olds to those of several plausible move selection models, and a high degree of correspondence was obtained between specific models and individual children. Young children appear to have rudimentary forms of many of the problem-solving processes previously identified in adults, but they may differ in encoding and representational processes.     

Self-directed attention and the comparison of self with standards

Several theorists have assumed that self-directed attention causes a comparison between one's present behavior or state and whatever is salient and relevant as a standard of comparison. Indirect evidence bearing on this assumption was gathered in a series of four studies by monitoring subjects' tendencies to access concrete information needed to make such behavior-standard comparisons. Self-focus was varied in two of these studies by experimental manipulations: a mirrored surface, and a live observer. In the other two studies, self-focus was operationalized in terms of subjects' dispositional tendencies to direct attention to themselves (self-consciousness). Consistent with expectations, in Experiments 1 and 2, self-directed attention led to increased frequency of referring to drawings of geometric figures when attempting to reproduce them. In Experiments 3 and 4, self-focused attention increased subjects' tendencies to seek out information about ostensible performance norms reflecting the behavior of other subjects, also as predicted.     

The functional equivalence of problem solving skills

The tower of Hanoi problem is used to show that, even in simple problem environments, numerous distinct solution strategies are available, and different subjects may learn different strategies. Four major classes of solution strategies are described for the problem. Different strategies have different degrees of transferability, place different burdens on short-term memory and on perception, and require different learning processes for their acquisition. The analysis underscores the importance of subject-by-subject analysis of “what is learned” in understanding human behavior in problem-solving situations, and provides a technique for describing subjects' task performance programs in detail.     

Self-consciousness,self-report of aggressiveness,and aggression

Private self-consciousness consists of attending to one's thoughts, feelings, and motives. Public self-consciousness consists of attending to oneself as a social object. The effect of dispositional self-consciousness on the accuracy of self-reports was studied in research on aggression. High- and low-private self-conscious subjects rated their own aggressiveness. Several weeks later their aggressive behavior was objectively measured. The correlation between self-report of aggressiveness and aggressive behavior was significantly higher for high-than for low-private self-conscious subjects. The correlation between self-report and behavior was unaffected by public self-consciousness. The implications of these findings for self-consciousness theory and personality dispositions are discussed.     

Modeling strategy shifts in a problem-solving task

A computer simulation model was fitted to human laboratory data for the Missionaries and Cannibals task to explain (1) the effects upon problem performance of giving a hint, and (2) the effects of solving the problem a second time after one successful solution had been achieved. Most of the variance in the relative frequencies of different moves can be explained by positing that the effect of the hint, or of previous experience in solving the problem, is to cause subjects to switch more promptly from a strategy of balancing the numbers of missionaries and cannibals on both sides of the river, to a means-ends strategy.     

Self-focused attention and reactions to fear

Two studies were conducted to study the effect of self-focused attention on behavioral responses to fear. In Experiment 1, phobics and nonphobics were asked to approach and hold a snake either in the presence of a mirror or with no mirror. In Experiment 2, high and low private self-conscious subjects were asked to submit to a series of either mild or strong electric shock for humanitarian reasons. In each case, self-directed attention caused increased responsivity to the fearful affect and made subjects more likely to withdraw from the situation, regardless of the fact that a behavioral standard existed which called for an opposite response. The theoretical and behavioral implications of the findings were discussed.     

Self-consciousness, self-awareness, and self-attribution

Self-awareness was either manipulated by a mirror (experimental) or not (control). Subjects were selected for being high or low in private self-consciousness (disposition to attend to one's thoughts, feelings, motives). Private self-consciousness had a stronger effect on self-attributions than did self-awareness. These findings have implications for attribution, self-consciousness, and the relationship between manipulations and dispositions.     

Eye fixations and cognitive processes

This paper presents a theoretical account of the sequence and duration of eye fixation during a number of simple cognitive tasks, such as mental rotation, sentence verification, and quantitative comparison. In each case, the eye fixation behavior is linked to a processing model for the task by assuming that the eye fixates the referent of the symbol being operated on.     

Three aspects of cognitive development

An attempt was made to characterize and explain developmental differences in children's thinking, specifically in their understanding of balance scale problems. Such differences were sought in three domains: existing knowledge about the problems, ability to acquire new information about them, and process-level differences underlying developmental changes in the first two areas. In Experiment 1, four models of rules that might govern children's performance on balance scale problems were proposed. The rules proved to accurately describe individual performance and also to accurately predict developmental trends on different types of balance scale problems. Experiment 2 examined responsiveness to experience; it was found that older and younger children, equated for initial performance on balance scale problems, derived different benefits from identical experience. Experiment 3 examined a potential cause of this discrepancy, that younger children might be less able than older ones to benefit from experience because their encoding of stimuli was less adequate. Independent assessment procedures revealed that the predicted differences in older and younger children's encoding were present; it was also found that these differences were not artifactual and that reducing them also reduced the previously observed differences in responsiveness to experience. It was concluded, therefore, that the encoding hypothesis explained a large part of the developmental difference in ability to acquire new information.     

Comprehending quantified sentences: The relation between sentence-picture and semantic memory verification

People were timed as they decided whether quantified sentences like All (some) of the round figures are red were true or false of an accompanying picture. The response latency was a function of the quantifier and the relation between the sets mentioned in the subject and predicate of the sentence. The pattern of latencies was similar to the pattern found for sentences that refer to concepts in semantic memory, e.g., All (some) dogs are animals (Meyer, 1970). This result suggests that the same process may be operating in both domains. Two alternative models of the process are considered. One model assumes that the common process consists of computing the relation between the two sets mentioned in the sentence. The other model assumes that the common process consists of comparing the representation of the sentence to the representation of information computed from the second source. Both models are integrated with broader theories of performance in various comprehension tasks.