现实预期和意愿预期在文本阅读中的激活强度

文本阅读中,读者往往对事件的后续发展进行预期推理。预期推理有两种倾向,要么是倾向于根据客观现实条件进行的现实预期,要么是倾向于根据主观个人意愿进行的意愿预期。两个实验探讨了文本阅读中读者产生的现实预期和意愿预期的激活强度。结果发现,现实预期和意愿预期都可以在阅读中即时产生,意愿预期强于现实预期;把读者分为"情感导向型"和"非情感导向型",发现"情感导向型"的读者,阅读过程中产生的意愿预期强于现实预期,而"非情感导向型"的读者则不是。     

Smart and easy: Co-occurring activation of spontaneous trait inferences and spontaneous situational inferences

Social perceivers have been shown to draw spontaneous trait inferences (STI’s) about the behavior of an actor as well as spontaneous situational inferences (SSI’s) about the situation the actor is in. In two studies, we examined inferences about behaviors that allow for both an STI and an SSI. In Experiment 1, using a probe recognition paradigm, we found activation of both STI’s and SSI’s. In Experiment 2, using a relearning paradigm, we again found activation of both STI’s and SSI’s, regardless of temporarily activated processing goals. Results are discussed in light of three-stage models of the process of social inference.     

Elaborative inferences during reading: do they occur on-line?

Four experiments were conducted to examine the extent to which readers construct elaborative inferences on-line during reading. In Experiment 1, gaze durations were measured while subjects read anaphors to target antecedents that referenced a particular category member either explicitly or implicitly. When the context strongly suggested a particular category member, gaze durations on an anaphor were the same following either an implicit or an explicit antecedent. When the context did not suggest any particular category member, gaze durations were significantly longer following an implicit antecedent. The results confirmed that, with sufficient context, readers will generate a simple elaborative inference on-line. These results were replicated in Experiment 2 in which the materials did not strongly signal the inference but a sentence designed to encourage subjects to infer was included. In Experiment 3, this "demand sentence" was not included, and readers did not appear to construct the targeted inference. The results of Experiment 4 confirmed that once generated, elaborative inferences are stored as part of the long-term-memory representation of a passage.     

内、外归因个体自发特质推理与自发情境推理的比较

通过探测词再认范式的变式,考察了个体的自发特质推理与自发情境推理。实验1发现,当给个体呈现既隐含特质又隐含情境的行为句子时,个体既进行自发特质推理又进行自发情境推理。实验2表明,内、外归因的个体均能够进行自发特质推理和自发情境推理,但内归因个体的自发特质推理与自发情境推理无显著差异,而外归因个体的自发情境推理强于自发特质推理。     

The automatic and co-occurring activation of multiple social inferences

People make a variety of automatic inferences when observing others' actions. These include inferences about stable dispositions as well as transitory goal states and social situations. However, models of social inference have rarely considered whether different types of automatic inferences can co-occur. We present three experiments in which participants were incidentally exposed to texts depicting behaviors that afforded inferences about actors' traits and the social situations these actors were experiencing. Results from lexical decision and probe-recognition tasks revealed heightened activation of both trait and situational inferences; furthermore, this co-occurring activation was spontaneous, unconscious, and independent of processing resources or specific impression-formation goals. A fourth experiment extended these findings by showing that when participants were asked to make deliberate attributional judgments of the same set of behaviors, typical goal-directed biases reflecting the selection of either trait or situational interpretations emerged. Implications for social inference processes are discussed.     

The interplay of controlled and automatic processing in the expression of spontaneously inferred traits: A PDP analysis

Inferences made about actors influence subsequent processing about those actors. Three experiments conducted in the context of spontaneous trait inference (STI) making demonstrate that such influences occur can either occur via automatic processes or via controlled processes. Results from Experiment 1 demonstrated that processing goals manipulated prior to encoding actor behavior affected the extent to which STIs automatically influenced subsequent responses but did not alter the extent to which STIs influenced those responses via controlled processes. Results from Experiment 2 showed that the extent to which STIs affected subsequent responding via the action of controlled processes were more affected by a delay between exposure to an actor behavior and the response task than the extent to which STIs affected task performance via the action of automatic processes. Finally, results from Experiment 3 showed that participants' subjective experience of awareness of their trait inferences is related to estimates of the extent to which controlled processing is involved in the production of their future responses but not to estimates of the extent to which those responses are affected by automatic processing.     

Spontaneous trait inferences as self-generated primes: implications for conscious social judgment.

The priming literature has documented the influence of trait terms held outside of conscious awareness on later judgment relevant to the primed trait dimension. The present research demonstrated that spontaneous trait inferences can serve as self-generated primes. In Experiment 1, Ss instructed to memorize trait-implying sentences (thus spontaneously inferring traits outside of consciousness) showed assimilation effects in judgment. Ss instructed to form inferences from these sentences (thus consciously inferring traits) showed contrast effects. Experiment 2 demonstrated that these findings were due to semantic activation rather than to a general evaluative response. When evaluatively inconsistent trait constructs were primed, similar patterns of assimilation and contrast were found. Implications for the ubiquitous occurrence of priming through the process of social categorization are discussed.     

Instantiation of general terms in young and older adults

Instantiation of general terms in discourse requires inference from general world knowledge and use of linguistic context to particularize meaning. According to the semantic deficit hypothesis, older adults should be less likely than young adults to generate or to store such inferences. In Experiments 1 and 2 an indirect measure, relatedness judgment, was used to assess immediate comprehension and memory for inferences. In Experiment 3 a direct measure, cued recall, was used to tap memory for inferences. No age differences in immediate or delayed memory were observed in Experiments 1 or 2. In Experiment 3 older adults recalled fewer sentences, but there was no evidence for a specific decrement in storage of inferential material. Older adults are not impaired in ability to draw inferences based on general world knowledge, nor are they more likely than young adults to encode linguistic information in a general, stereotypic fashion.     

Mental simulation and argument

When a quantified premise such as: Everyone loves anyone who loves someone, occurs with a premise such as: Anne loves Beth, it follows immediately that everyone loves Anne. It also follows that Carol loves Diane, where these two individuals are in the domain of discourse. According to the theory of mental models, this inference requires the quantified premise to be used again to update a model of specific individuals. The paper reports four experiments examining such iterative inferences. Experiment 1 confirmed that they are harder than immediate inferences. Experiment 2 extended the finding to negative inferences, i.e., granted that Anne does not love Beth, it follows from the quantified premise that Carol does not love Diane. Experiment 3 established that intermediate steps referring to specific individuals are accepted more readily than intermediate steps referring to quantified variables. Experiment 4 showed that the participants' written justifications corroborated the model theory.     

Why are negative behaviours likely to be immediately invoked traits? The effects of valence and frequency on spontaneous trait inferences

People make trait inferences immediately when observing others’ behaviours. Previous studies reported that this spontaneous trait inference (STI) occurs more strongly from negative behaviours than from positive behaviours. However, what is responsible for this negativity bias in STI is unclear. In this study, two experiments investigated the effects of valence (an event's affective positivity or negativity) and frequency (how frequently the behaviour is observed in everyday life) on the occurrence of STI using an adapted version of a savings‐in‐relearning paradigm. Experiment 1 revealed that only valence affected the frequent occurrence of STI. In addition, the instructions to suppress impression formation or to focus attention on an actor's face made no difference to the results. In Experiment 2, the negativity bias in STIs was shown a week after exposure to the behavioural stimuli. These results suggest that the negativity bias in STIs occurs robustly, and the negative valence of observed behaviour is mostly responsible for the negativity bias in STI. The importance of immediate categorization of negative stimuli is discussed in terms of ecological priority.     

基于语境的因果性预期推理的构建的实验研究

实验一探讨对因果性预期推理的支持程度不同的语境对因果性预期推理的即时构建的影响。结果表明,如果文本信息有支持预期结果的语境,读者会即时进行因果性预期推理。实验二探讨当文本描述了两个不能整合的情境模型时因果性预期推理的即时构建情况。结果表明,在这种条件下,因果性预期推理不会即时产生。本研究结果表明,文本的语境对因果性结果的支持程度对因果性预期推理的即时构建有决定性的影响作用。     

儿童特质推理与情绪和效价线索理解的关系

本研究从情绪、效价两个角度探讨儿童特质理解与线索理解的关系。372名4、5、7岁儿童完成了贴标签和行为预测两类特质推理任务。实验一显示,所有年龄段儿童都能完成对情绪性特质害羞和胆小的推理,且特质和行为评定与情绪评定呈显著正相关;实验二显示,所有年龄段均能完成双重性质特质助人为乐和自私的推理,特质和行为评定与效价、情绪评定均呈显著正相关,回归分析则只有效价评定进入方程。结果说明,儿童完成情绪性特质推理任务时与情绪理解能力关系密切,而对双重性质特质推理时更多的与效价理解能力有关。     

情境线索对社会认知内容推断的影响

本研究考察了情境线索对社会目标不同内容维度之间的推断的影响。研究一发现,缺乏情境线索时,两个基本维度热情和能力之间呈一种正向推断。研究二发现,当情境线索明确指向高能力时,高热情描述会导致低能力推断,同时也引发了消极的行为倾向。研究三进一步考察了热情的两个子维度社交性和道德性之间的推断,结果发现描述社交性职业的社交性信息或者描述道德性职业的道德性信息时,对目标对象的整体评价和行为意愿都更为积极。本研究表明,情境的预期性线索为社会认知内容的推断提供了基本的认知框架,当信息呈现与情境预期相匹配时,更容易产生积极推断。     

情境线索对社会认知内容推断的影响

本研究考察了情境线索对社会目标不同内容维度之间的推断的影响。研究一发现,缺乏情境线索时,两个基本维度热情和能力之间呈一种正向推断。研究二发现,当情境线索明确指向高能力时,高热情描述会导致低能力推断,同时也引发了消极的行为倾向。研究三进一步考察了热情的两个子维度社交性和道德性之间的推断,结果发现描述社交性职业的社交性信息或者描述道德性职业的道德性信息时,对目标对象的整体评价和行为意愿都更为积极。本研究表明,情境的预期性线索为社会认知内容的推断提供了基本的认知框架,当信息呈现与情境预期相匹配时,更容易产生积极推断。     

Trait memory and behavior memory: the effects of alternative pathways on impression judgment response times

Carlston (1980a) and Lingle (1983) argued that remembered behaviors, previous trait inferences, or both may be accessed and used in making new trait inferences, depending on a variety of factors. In this article we relate this argument to a spreading activation model of memory and suggest factors that should affect the relative accessibility of inferences and behaviors during trait judgment processes. In our study we varied several of these factors and assessed accessibility, using response-time methods. The results of this study strongly support the model's prediction that prompting inference formation facilitates subsequent trait judgment response times, but only when relevant behavior memories have not been recently primed. We theorize that the inference manipulations used in this study strengthened the direct pathway to a relevant trait concept, but that the strength of this pathway was immaterial to judgment response times when a "proximal prime" directed retrieval efforts along an alternative "behavioral" route to the trait information. The results also suggest that the proximal behavior prime facilitated trait responses among subjects who had not been induced to make trait inferences, but slowed trait responses among subjects who had previously been induced to make trait inferences.     

On the relation between spontaneous trait inferences and intentional inferences: An inference monitoring hypothesis

More than twenty five years after the beginning of research on spontaneous trait inferences (Winter & Uleman, 1984) an intriguing paradox in the impression formation literature remains: if traits are spontaneously inferred, why aren't they used to organize behavioral information and thereby facilitate recall under memory instructions (Hamilton, Katz, & Leirer, 1980)? We hypothesized that organization by traits is more evident under impression formation goals because only in that case then are inferences sufficiently monitored to permit their use in organizing impressions. As a consequence, such monitored traits can then be used strategically as retrieval cues. Merging the main features of the Winter and Uleman and the Hamilton et al. experimental paradigms, Experiment 1 simultaneously replicated the main results of both studies. Using a new recognition paradigm, Experiments 2 and 3 further tested this inference monitoring hypothesis by showing that monitoring of trait inferences only occurs under particular processing goals, and is dependent on the availability of cognitive resources.     

An examination of the relationship between visual capture and prism adaptation

The phenomena of prismatically induced “visual capture” and adaptation of the hand were compared. In Experiment 1, it was demonstrated that when the subject’s hand was transported for him by the experimenter (passive movement) immediately preceding the measure of visual capture, the magnitude of the immediate shift in felt limb position (visual capture) was enhanced relative to when the subject moved the hand himself (active movement). In Experiment 2, where the dependent measure was adaptation of the prism-exposed hand, the opposite effect was produced by the active/passive manipulation. It appears, then, that different processes operate to produce visual capture and adaptation. It was speculated that visual capture represents an immediate weighting of visual over proprioceptive input as a result of the greater precision of vision and/or the subject’s tendency to direct his attention more heavily to this modality. In contrast, prism adaptation is probably a recalibration of felt limb position in the direction of vision, induced by the presence of a registered discordance between visual and proprioceptive inputs.