Response mode and choice consistency: A test of unfolding theory

Coombs, Donnell, and Kirk (1978. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 4, 497–512), in a study of risk preferences, collected data using both pick $\text{1}\text{3}$ and reject $\text{1}\text{3}$ response modes. Although the preference orders derived from the two response modes were identical, the pick data contained a greater number of inconsistencies than the reject data. In the present study, predictions were derived from unfolding theory (Coombs, 1964. A theory of data. New York: Wiley) regarding the relative consistency of pick and reject response modes. An experiment performed as a test of these predictions supported the unfolding model suggesting that differences in inconsistency between response modes could be attributed to the fineness of the grid of working midpoints imposed upon the choice process by the response mode.     

Measurement foundations for multiattribute psychophysical theories based on first order polynomials

The class of first order polynomial measurement representations is defined, and a method for proving the existence of such representations is described. The method is used to prove the existence of first order polynomial generalizations of expected utility theory, difference measurement, and additive conjoint measurement. It is then argued that first order polynomial representations provide a deep and far reaching characterization of psychological invariance for subjective magnitudes of multiattributed stimuli. To substantiate this point, two applications of first order polynomial representation theory to the foundations of psychophysics are described. First, Relation theory, a theory of subjective magnitude proposed by Shepard (Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 1981, 24, 21–57) and Krantz (Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 1972, 9, 168–199), is generalized to a theory of magnitude for multiattributed stimuli. The generalization is based on a postulate of context invariance for the constituent uniattribute magnitudes of a multiattribute magnitude. Second, the power law for subjective magnitude is generalized to a multiattribute version of the power law. Finally, it is argued that a common logical pattern underlies multiattribute generalizations of psychological theories to first order polynomial representations. This abstract pattern suggests a strategy for theory construction in multiattribute psychophysics.     

Perceptual supports for one-to-one correspondence in the conservation of number

This study compared provoked and spontaneous one-to-one correspondence along with two tasks having more perceptual support for correspondence. These four levels of correspondence appeared in a conservation of number condition and two conservation-related conditions (a partially static array or a static array). There were two sets of stimuli (toy animals or corks) in each condition. In opposition to Piaget's predictions, the four levels of correspondence did not differ in difficulty for kindergarteners. There was a strong order effect (p<.001) in the direction of increasing conservation over the eight trials. There was some evidence that the standard conservation condition was easier than the other two conditions. Implications for Piaget's theory are discussed.     

Building theories of reading ability: On the relation between individual differences in cognitive skills and reading comprehension

To date most theories of reading ability have emphasized a single factor as the major source of individual differences in performance. However there has been little agreement on what that factor is. However, candidates have included visual discrimination, phonological and semantic recoding, short-term memory, and utilization of linguistic knowledge and context. The single- factor theories are summarized. Literature is then reviewed to show that no single-factor theory is likely to be right, because a very wide range of component skills and abilities has in fact been shown to correlate with reading success. Among them are discrimination of letter location and letter order during perceptual recognition, use of orthographic regularity as an aid to visual code formation, use of spelling-to-sound regularity in phonological recoding, memory for word order, spontaneous identification of syntactic relations, flexibility in prediction from syntactic and semantic context, and context-specificity in semantic encoding. It is concluded that more complex, multifactor models of reading ability are required, and some recent attempts to collect data conducive to such a model are described. In the process, three different approaches to identifying factors relevant to reading success are delineated. These are general abilities assessment, learning potential assessment, and component skills analysis. Two methods of conducting component skills analysis are presented, and it is recommended that they be used as converging operations. Finally, the results of a component skills analysis are used to construct a tentative example of a class of hierarchical models of reading ability that can be pursued developmentally.     

Pressures from work,self, and home in the life stages of married women

Following Lopata's (1966) model of the life cycle of the married woman's role, it was predicted and found that a woman's life stage would be related to her role pressures (work, home, self, and time), conflict, and satisfaction. Age and number of roles were not as strongly related to these variables as was life stage. Work activities and pressures declined through the peak child-rearing stage and then increased for women with older children, while pressures from home generally rose throughout the life cycle. The differential impact of various sources of conflict in different life stages was reported, and forms of organizational career support oriented toward particular life stages were suggested.     

Exposure effects and associative learning

The contributions of initial stimulus affect and of associative learning to the effects of repeated stimulus exposures were examined in two experiments. Stimuli that were initially positive and stimuli that were initially negative were presented for different number of times, and subjects rated these stimuli afterward on a number of affective dimensions. In all cases, except when negative affect was associatively paired with every stimulus exposure, affective responses became increasingly more positive with increasing exposures. The results were taken to indicate that the exposure effect can overcome an initially negative stimulus affect when the conditions of the mere exposure hypothesis are satisfied. Initial stimulus affect and associative learning of affect were shown to be independent factors, the first influencing the intercept of the exposure function, the second its slope.     

The confluence model: Parameter estimation for six divergent data sets on family factors and intelligence

Theoretical predictions, based on the confluence model, were made for data from six national surveys of intellectual performance. All six surveys relate intellectual performance scores to family configuration variables. Widely divergent patterns of relationships between the major family factors, such as birth order and family size, and intellectual performance scores characterize the six data sets. Nevertheless, the confluence model was capable of accurate prediction in all cases when all three parameters were estimated. Little accuracy was lost using only two parameters. Variations in the estimated parameter values that reflected the variations in patterns of effects could be meaningfully interpreted for their psychological significance.     

Effects of fear of success, fear of failure, type of opponent, and feedback on female achievement performance

Female undergraduates (N = 240) assessed for fear of success (FS) and fear of failure (FF) competed against a male, female, or no opponent (norms) on an alpha-numeric substitution task. After completing one set of trials, subjects arbitrarily received success or failure feedback, then performed again. While there were no significant effects when subject's FS classification was based on total scores from the entire set of four cues used, performance effects were found for Horner's original cue: FS-absent females performed better against a male than a female opponent, whereas the reverse was true for the FS-present subjects. Two of the other FS cues interacted with FF: at low levels of FF, FS-absent subjects performed better than FS-present subjects; for high levels of FF, there were no differences between FS groups. A number of postperformance affect ratings were consistent with theoretical expectations that FS-present females would experience more negative effect over success in achievement contexts than would FS-absent females.     

Facilitation of discriminated lever-press avoidance by noncontingent shocks

Two experiments investigated the effect of presenting a brief noncontingent, unsignaled shock prior to warning-signal onset on discriminated lever-press avoidance behavior in rats. The main finding was that noncontingent shock delivered 2 sec but not 16 sec prior to warning-signal onset facilitated avoidance performance and learning. These results were predicted on the basis of shock-elicited response bursting which was expected to increase the operant level of the lever-press response at short shock-warning signal intervals. It was suggested that species-specific limitations on rats' lever-press avoidance are not unconditional, but rather can be overcome with environmental manipulations.     

Kindergarten children's use of category membership

Kindergarten children (N = 70) learned to order 12 photographically presented objects. The objects were well known and either unrelated or categorizable into two, three, four, or six well-known categories. Free recall was assessed. Results indicated that the children used category membership both to learn and to recall the items. However, they processed the list composed of six pairs of items at least as efficiently as lists composed of fewer but larger groups of items (including a list indexed as easiest through previous adult performance).     

Disagreements and self-esteem: Support for the competence-reinforcement model of attraction

The competence-reinforcement model of attraction (Byrne & Clore, 1967) theorizes that interpersonal disagreements produce negative affect and decrements in personal competence. Subject dislike for disagreeing strangers has been a frequent and reliable finding, but the theoretical issue of whether disagreements elicit negative affect because they threaten one's sense of personal competence has been less thoroughly investigated. The present study examines the relationship between attitude disagreements and self-esteem. On the basis of the competence-reinforcement model of attraction it was hypothesized that disagreements would produce decrements in selfesteem, and that the decrements would be most pronounced among subjects expressing the greatest dislike for the disagreeing stranger. Both hypotheses were supported, and it was concluded that the competence-reinforcement model provides an adequate account of both attraction and self-esteem loss.     

Interpersonal needs and functional area of management

This study examines a sample of first-semester MBA students to determine the relationship between their interpersonal needs and their preferences for a functional area of management. The students were categorized according to their preference for one of the following eight functional areas: accounting, systems analysis, finance, small business management, engineering, marketing, manufacturing management, and personnel management. Interpersonal needs were measured by the Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation (FIRO-B) instrument developed by W. C. Schutz. Significant differences in interpersonal needs were found among students preferring different functional specialities. Implications of the results are discussed in terms of occupational choice processes.     

A strong test of exposure effects

A strong test of exposure effects was made by eliminating confounding demand characteristics through the use of a between-subject design. Each subject viewed novel stimuli at a single frequency level, and then rated them on several affective scales. Frequency of stimulus exposure was systematically varied across subjects. Stimuli were rated more positively with increasing exposure, despite the fact that subjects were unaware of any differences in exposure frequencies, and clearly unable to identify the experimental hypothesis. An awareness of the relationship between repeated exposure and affect was thus shown to be an unnecessary condition for the occurrence of exposure effects.     

Developmental inter-relationships among concrete operational tasks: An investigation of Piaget's stage concept

One hundred and one primary school children were tested on eight concrete operational tasks. Each child's performance on each task was classified as either preoperational, transitional, or fully operational. Cross-classification tables were constructed showing the joint classification of children's performance on all possible pairs of the eight tasks. Two models of intertask relations, Wohlwill's (The study of behavioral development. New York: Academic Press, 1973) divergent-decalage and reciprocal-interaction patterns, were evaluated for their fit to the cross-classification data using χ² goodness-of-fit procedures. Instances of both these patterns were identified in the data. The findings give some support to Flavell and Wohlwill's modification of Piaget's stage concept, in which individual groupings (e.g., seriation) are the structural basis of the interrelationships among concrete operational tasks. Tasks based on the same rule showed a degree of developmental interdependence (reciprocal-interaction patterns), while tasks based on different rules appeared to develop independently (divergent-decalage patterns). However, only one-half of the cross-classification tables were adequately described by either the divergent-decalage or the reciprocal-interaction patterns.     

Comparative judgments with numerical reference points

A model of subjective magnitude comparisons is explored, which assumes that subjects compare symbolic stimulus magnitudes with respect to a reference point. The reference point may be established implicitly by the question (e.g., “Which is larger?” vs “Which is smaller?”) or be presented explicitly (e.g., “Choose the stimulus closer to X.”). The model was tested in five experiments in which subjects judged which of two comparison digits was closer to (or further from) a reference digit. Regression analyses in three experiments revealed that reaction time depended on the ratio of the distances from the comparison items to the reference point. The other two experiments provided evidence that subjects can strategically vary the processes by which they compare stimuli to a reference point. The results indicated that subjects can perform various types of “analog arithmetic” using either the linear number scale or a nonlinear scale of subjective digit magnitude.     

Folded additive structures: A nonpolynomial model of some factorial interactions

A nonpolynomial measurement model for representing nonadditive compositions of stimulus dimensions is presented. This representation, which is referred to as a folded additive structure, permits the decomposition of a behavioral ordering into independent factors in some of the cases where the behavior itself does not directly reflect this independence. Psychologically, this representation corresponds to a model of behavior which assumes that (1) the effect stimulus attributes have on behavior is mediated by a single relevent psychological dimension, (2) the behavioral ordering is single-peaked over this mediating dimension and (3) the mediating dimension has a conjoint additive ordering over a set of relevent stimulus dimensions. Necessary and sufficient tests for folded additive structures are given. In addition, five psychological theories which make these assumptions are discussed.     

Cognitive reference points in judgments of symbolic magnitude

Research on speeded symbolic magnitude comparisons indicates that decisions are made more quickly when the magnitudes of the stimuli being compared are relatively close to an explicit or implicit reference point. Alternative explanations of this phenomenon are tested by seeking similar effects in nonspeeded rating tasks. In accord with the predictions of discriminability models, rated magnitude differences between stimuli in the vicinity of a reference point are expanded relative to differences between stimuli far from it. The inferred locations of cities along a west-east axis varies systematically depending on which coast, Pacific or Atlantic, is specified as the reference point. Scales derived from the rating data are correlated with the pattern of reaction times obtained in a comparable speeded comparison task. In addition, the distance between the cities nearest the locale of our subjects is subjectively stretched. Reference point effects are also observed when the form of the comparative specifies an implicit reference point at either end of a continuum of subjective size; however, these effects are very small and do not clearly support a discriminability interpretation. Stronger evidence for discriminability effects is obtained when an explicit reference point is established at an arbitrary size value. An implicit scaling model, related to range-frequency theory, is proposed to account for the influence of reference points on relative discriminability of stimulus magnitudes. The implicit scaling model is used to develop an account of how symbolic magnitudes may be learned and of how habitual reference points can produce asymmetries in distance judgments.