TV guide: two-year-old children learn to use video as a source of information

Learning to use symbols is a challenge for young children even when the symbol in question (e.g., a live video image) is iconic and seems transparent to adults. This research examined the effect of experience on children's use of video-presented information. Two-year-old children saw themselves "live" on their family television for 2 weeks and then participated in an object-retrieval task. The children reliably used a live video presentation of an adult hiding a toy in an adjoining room to find the toy. Most also transferred what they learned to a task involving another symbol (pictures) that typically is very difficult for this age group. The results reveal flexibility in 2-year-olds' symbol use that follows from successful representation of a symbolic relation.     

Pupils as consumers: Perceptions of guidance and counselling in a scottish school

Pupils' perceptions' of the effectiveness of counselling services were investigated within a school with a high degree of commitment to guidance and counselling. Pupils were asked to read eight problems: four were school-based, and four were personal/familial problems. Half the sample were given a list of possible sources of assistance (including counselling staff); half were unprompted On personal and familial problems, the unprompted group were as likely to cite counsellors as being sources of assistance as were the group prompted with the names of counselling staff. This was taken as an indication that counselling staff were spontaneously seen as sources of help on these matters. In addition, respondents completed semantic-differential protocols, analyses of which indicated that counselling staff were seen in more pastoral terms than were other teaching staff. These results are discussed within a perspective that sees the school's guidance and counselling system as interacting with its general ethos.     

Phenomenal experience and the measure of information

This paper defends the hypothesis that phenomenal experiences may be very complex information states. This can explain some of our most perplexing anti-physicalist intuitions about phenomenal experience. The approach is to describe some basic facts about information in such a way as to make clear the essential oversight involved, by way illustrating how various intuitive arguments against physicalism (such as Frank Jackson’s Knowledge Argument, and Thomas Nagel’s Bat Argument) can be interpreted to show that phenomenal information is not different in kind from physical information, but rather is just more information than we typically attribute to our understanding of a physical theory. I clarify how this hypothesis is distinct from Nagel’s claim that the theory of consciousness may be inconceivable, and then in conclusion briefly describe how these results might suggest a positive and conservative physicalist account of phenomenal experience.     

Mood and alcohol consumption: an experience sampling test of the self-medication hypothesis

In this investigation the authors applied the experience sampling method to prospectively test the self-medication hypothesis. In vivo reports gathered in the context of daily life demonstrated that nervousness was the only negative mood state to predict increases in alcohol consumption later in the course of the day. Further examination of this within-person relationship demonstrated that men were more likely to consume alcohol when nervous than were women, but this association was unrelated to family history of alcoholism, problem drinking patterns, or trait anxiety and depression. Consistent with the self-medication hypothesis, cross-sectional analyses also confirmed that alcohol consumption was generally associated with lower levels of nervousness; this effect varied by several demographic and clinical variables. These findings are discussed in terms of the diversity of reasons for alcohol consumption and their potential for explaining problem drinking.     

Utilizing probabilities as decision weights in closed and open information boards: A comparison of children and adults

Decisions in preschoolers (6 years), elementary schoolers (9.7 years), and adults (21 years) were studied with an information board crossing three probabilistic cues (validities: .83, .67, .50) with two options. Experiment 1 (n = 215) applied a standard version of the information board (closed presentation format), in which information must be searched sequentially and kept in mind for the decision. Experiment 2 (n = 217) applied an open format (Glöckner & Betsch, 2008), in which all information was visible during decision making. Elementary schoolers but not preschoolers benefited from an open format — indicated by an increase in using probabilities as decision weights. In the open but not closed format, choices were biased by normatively irrelevant information (the lure). Variations in the prediction patterns of the cues influenced decisions in all age groups. Effects for presentation format, pattern, and lure jointly indicate that even children are capable of considering multiple information in their decisions.     

Nostalgic bonding: exploring the role of nostalgia in the consumption experience

The recently awakened awareness of the past has produced a flurry of research directed towards understanding the nostalgic aspects of the human condition, towards investigating the role of nostalgia in the lives of consumers, and towards the application of such knowledge to the design of marketing strategies. With rare exceptions, however, such research has pursued a quantitative survey‐based approach to establishing the chronology‐related and personality‐driven aspects of nostalgia. To explore the nature and types of nostalgic bonding in greater depth, the present study pursues an interpretive approach to understanding the role of nostalgia in the consumption experience. Specifically, it applies a collective approach to subjective personal introspection to draw inferences concerning the key types of nostalgic experience. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications.     

How to facilitate immersion in a consumption experience: appropriation operations and service elements

• An entire research current has taken on the mantle of analysing the growing quest on the part of contemporary consumers for immersion into varied experiences. But there has been little empirical analysis of this process of immersion and the experience it produces. This paper introduces and develops the subjective operations that consumers undertake in their efforts to be submerged in the consumption experience. It uses empirical research based on introspective reports filed by consumers who attended a series of classical music concerts. The results suggest that, rather than being an immediate process, immersion in a consumption experience is more progressive. To facilitate this progressive process, greater attention must be paid to the management of those service elements that will have an impact on the so‐called operations of appropriation.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Flow experience among information and communication technology users

The use of technologies is more common in daily life; working with technologies might be associated with positive experiences such as flow. However, there is little empirical research on flow experiences in technology settings. The main aim of this study was to confirm the three-dimensional construct of flow, i.e., absorption, enjoyment, and intrinsic interest, among 517 Information and Communication Technology users [234 students whose mean age was 23 yr. (SD = 3.8)] from different areas of study, mainly Law, Public Administration, Chemistry, and Psychology, and 283 employees [whose mean age was 33 yr. (SD = 7.8)] of 21 different companies from various sectors of production, namely, public administration, industrial production, and services. Analysis showed, as expected, flow is a three-dimensional psychological construct and invariant among samples of technology users. Practical and theoretical implications as well as further research are discussed.     

On symbolic temporal information: Beliefs about the experience of duration

Judgments on the subjective duration of simple and complex imagined situations are studied. Four facets, concerning the evaluation of the situation (pleasant/unpleasant) and the characteristics of its events (many/few, variable/monotonous, difficult/easy), are taken into account. These facets proved significant for duration judgments in previous studies in which subjects were exposed to situations varying with respect to one of them. In this paper, we study whether these time-perception facets have comparable effects on the symbolic temporal basis of duration judgments. that is, whether they allow one to account for differences in the beliefs about duration experience in imagined situations. Two approaches were chosen: (1) Three groups of subjects compared the durations of all possible pairs of situations characterized by facet elments x and y. The confusion probabilities could be scaled in one dimension for all groups. The facet elements defined intervals that were hierarchically nested. (2)The facets allowed us to distinguish 24 structuples. For each of them, a concrete situation was described in writing. Seventy-six subjects rated the subjective durations of the situations. The structuples led to a partial order that corresponded well to the duration ratings. Moreover, three of the facets showed significant main effects, and the fourth interacted significantly with two others. Finally, the facets were useful in explaining the similarity structure of the duration ratings.     

Interviewing young children with props: prior experience matters

This study investigated the effects of prior experience with props used during an interview on young children's recall of an event. In a one-way design, we interviewed 4-year-old children 1 to 2 days after they participated in a staged event. One group of children played with toy replicas of items from the event prior to an interview with the toy props. Another group matched toy replicas to real items from the event prior to an interview with the toy props. A third group coloured before an interview with the toy props, and a fourth coloured before an interview with the real items. Finally, a fifth group coloured before an interview with no props, only verbal cues about the items that had been present. Results indicated that the condition in which children played with toy props prior to the interview had the lowest verbal accuracy during the interview. Children who saw toys for the first time during the interview behaviourally enacted the highest volume of correct information about the event. Implications for interviewing children are discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Behaving as expected: Public information and fairness norms

What is considered to be fair depends on context‐dependent expectations. Using a modified version of the Ultimatum Game, we demonstrate that both fair behavior and perceptions of fairness depend upon beliefs about what one ought to do in a situation—that is, upon normative expectations. We manipulate such expectations by creating informational asymmetries about the offer choices available to the Proposer, and find that behavior varies accordingly. Proposers and Responders show a remarkable degree of agreement in their beliefs about which choices are considered fair. We discuss how these results fit into a theory of social norms. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Correction to: Questions as information types

Synthese - Unfortunately, the Acknowledgements section is missing from the original publication.