Inhibition of return: support for generality of the phenomenon.

Inhibition of return (IOR), first described in 1984, was considered to be a general phenomenon for ensuring that attention would be allocated to successive stimuli in the environment. In the present research, IOR was expressed in forced-choice identification tasks with either reaction time or accuracy as the dependent measure. Thus, the generality of IOR was supported, because response inhibition cannot explain IOR found with accuracy measures. Concepts from the variable and permeable filters metaphor are used to suggest how changes in attention can change expression of IOR by rapid variation in perceptual threshold.     

The specificity of the generality problem

In “Why the generality problem is everybody’s problem,” Michael Bishop argues that every theory of justification needs a solution to the generality problem. He contends that a solution is needed in order for any theory to be used in giving an acceptable account of the justificatory status of beliefs in certain examples. In response, first I will describe the generality problem that is specific to process reliabilism and two other sorts of problems that are essentially the same. Then I will argue that the examples that Bishop presents pose no such problem for some theories. I will illustrate the exempt theories by describing how an evidentialist view can account for the justification in the examples without having any similar problem. It will be clear that other views about justification are likewise unaffected by anything like the generality problem.     

Epistemic luck and the generality problem

Epistemic luck has been the focus of much discussion recently. Perhaps the most general knowledge-precluding type is veritic luck, where a belief is true but might easily have been false. Veritic luck has two sources, and so eliminating it requires two distinct conditions for a theory of knowledge. I argue that, when one sets out those conditions properly, a solution to the generality problem for reliabilism emerges.

On the generality of the contingent orienting hypothesis

The contingent-orienting hypothesis states that attentional capture by a task-irrelevant stimulus is contingent on whether that stimulus shares a feature property that is critical to the task at hand [Folk, C. L., Remington, R. W., & Johnston, J. C. (1992). Involuntary covert orienting is contingent on attentional control settings. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 18, 1030-1044]. Studies supporting this hypothesis have mostly used set size four displays throughout the experiment and thus constrict its ecological validity, since conclusions drawn from experiments using fixed set-size displays may not be generalized to other conditions with different set sizes. We used a spatial cueing paradigm in which a non-informative onset or color cue preceded an onset or a color target, and manipulated set size as a within- or between-subject factor. In four experiments, the original finding of Folk et al. (1992) was replicated only when a fixed set size (four) was used throughout. When both set-size four and eight were used in an experiment, stimulus-driven capture by onset in search of a color target was found even for set-size four displays. These results raise doubts as to the generality of the contingent-orienting hypothesis and help to delineate the boundary conditions on this hypothesis.     

On the generality of some memory laws

Several memory laws have been established for the free recall of word lists. The generality of some of these laws were tested, using tasks which the subjects performed (SPTs) as to-be-recalled list items. SPT recall obeyed one law of word recall in showing a strong positive recency effect in immediate free recall, which appeared to be due to these events being in a temporary state of high accessibility. Differences between word and SPT recall were: 1) The reliable primacy effect associated with word recall did not appear in SPT recall; 2) Subjects reported using active memorisation strategies for word lists, but not for SPT lists; 3) Unlike word recall, diverting the subject's attention to so-called deep or shallow features of the SPTs during presentation did not affect the level of their recall. These results considered together with Cohen & Stewart's (1981) finding that SPT recall was not age-sensitive were taken to indicate that SPTs should be regarded as a different class of memory event than words, and that memory models dealing with SPT recall should de-emphasize the importance of encoding, stressing instead retention, and retrieval operations.     

A test of the generality of the word-context effect

Three experiments tested the generality of the finding of Reicher (1969) and Wheeler (1970) that a word context facilitated the accuracy of recognition of an embedded target letter. In the present experiments, the context was a letter and the target was a letter fragment. The letter context greatly facilitated the recognition of the letter fragment. In Experiment I, this improvement was in many cases from chance level to perfect performance. An interpretation of this effect in terms of greater familiarity of the fragment and its context was disconfirmed in Experiment II. A procedure of preexposure cueing in Experiment III eliminated the superior recognizability of fragments having a letter context.     

Synonym comprehension and the generality of categorization models

Memory & Cognition - When subjects classify a two-word display as representing the “same” category or two “different” categories, semantic similarity between the words...     

Attributional style and the generality of learned helplessness

According to the logic of the attribution reformulation of learned helplessness, the interaction of two factors influences whether helplessness experienced in one situation will transfer to a new situation. The model predicts that people who exhibit a style of attributing negative outcomes to global factors will show helplessness deficits in new situations that are either similar or dissimilar to the original situation in which they were helpless. In contrast, people who exhibit a style of attributing negative outcomes to only specific factors will show helplessness deficits in situations that are similar, but not dissimilar, to the original situation in which they were helpless. To test these predictions, we conducted two studies in which undergraduates with either a global or specific attributional style for negative outcomes were given one of three pretreatments in the typical helplessness triadic design: controllable bursts of noise, uncontrollable bursts of noise, or no noise. In Experiment 1, students were tested for helplessness deficits in a test situation similar to the pretreatment setting, whereas in Experiment 2, they were tested in a test situation dissimilar to the pretreatment setting. The findings were consistent with predictions of the reformulated helplessness theory.     

The generality of learned helplessness in the rat

Two experiments were simultaneously conducted in which two different groups of 40 rats each were exposed to one of two different stressors. In both experiments half the subjects were pretreated with shock, half with underwater exposure. For each pretreatment stressor, half the subjects were allowed to escape, the other half were not. The experiments differed in the test task used. Approximately 24 hr after pretreatment, one-half the subjects from each pretreatment group received 20 water-escape trials in an underwater maze, the other half received 20 shock-escape trials in a two-way shuttle box. The subjects in each of the inescapable pretreatment conditions were slower to escape in the subsequent shock-escape and water-escape tasks when compared with subjects in the corresponding escapable pretreatment condition. The “learned helplessness” effect appeared to be no smaller when aversive stimuli were changed between pretreatment and test than when they remained the same.     

On the perceptual generality of the unit-decade compatibility effect

Number magnitude is assumed to be holistically represented along a single mental number line. Recently, we have observed a unit-decade-compatibility effect which is inconsistent with that assumption (Nuerk, Weger, & Willmes, 2001). In two-digit Arabic number comparison, we have demonstrated that compatible comparisons in which separate decade and unit comparisons lead to the same decision (32_47, 3 < 4 and 2 < 7) were faster than incompatible trials (37_52, 3 < 5, but 7 > 2). Because overall distance was matched, a holistic model could not account for the compatibility effect. However, one could argue that the compatibility effect was due to the specific vertical perceptual arrangement of the two-digit numbers in Nuerk et al.'s (2001) experiment where the decade digits and unit digits were presented column-wise above each other. To examine this objection, we studied the perceptual generality of the compatibility effect with diagonal presentation. We replicated the compatibility effect with diagonal presentation. It is concluded that the compatibility effect is not due to encoding characteristics imposed by the perceptual setting of the original experiment. In particular, the assumption of an overall analog magnitude representation for two-digit numbers is not consistent with these data.