Knowledge of spatial relations: The specification of the information used in making inferences

On being shown the names of two towns geography students determined whether one of the towns was north (say) of the other. Reaction time decreased as the distance between the towns increased. This finding was explained by supposing that subjects attempt to make inferences (about whether one town is north of another) by first accessing stored information that specifies a town's location only crudely; when this is insufficient to make the relevant inference more finely discriminating information is accessed. The explanation was supported in a second experiment: when one town was Scottish and the other English, reaction times were shorter than when both were English. This result was predicted from the assumption that the information first accessed specifies which country a town lies in: when one town is Scottish and the other English, this information can be used to make the correct inference without further specification of location (since all Scottish towns are north of all English towns), whereas when both towns are English further information must be accessed. Control conditions showed the result was not due merely to a greater familiarity with Scottish towns. The explanation was discussed in relation to accounts of reaction times obtained when other characteristics (e.g. size) of named objects are compared.     

On the significance of “double encoding” for the superior recall of pictures to names

Ten-year-old children who were shown pictures of objects immediately preceded by the object's name recalled the material no better than those exposed to the names of the stimuli alone. Both conditions yielded significantly poorer retention than those in which pictures alone were presented or pictures followed by their names. A second study replicated this result. In addition this demonstrated, by a picture and name recognition task, that the effects could not be due to subjects in the “name prior to picture” condition ignoring the pictorial component. These results were interpreted as contradicting the “double encoding” explanation of the superiority of pictures to names in free recall. Parallel visual and verbal encoding of a pictured object does not facilitate retention unless the verbal cue is actively elicited from the subject by the stimulus. The implications of this result for other studies which have employed either simultaneous or sequential presentation of pictures and names are briefly discussed.     

Learning your way around town: how virtual taxicab drivers learn to use both layout and landmark information

By having subjects drive a virtual taxicab through a computer-rendered town, we examined how landmark and layout information interact during spatial navigation. Subject-drivers searched for passengers, and then attempted to take the most efficient route to the requested destinations (one of several target stores). Experiment 1 demonstrated that subjects rapidly learn to find direct paths from random pickup locations to target stores. Experiment 2 varied the degree to which landmark and layout cues were preserved across two successively learned towns. When spatial layout was preserved, transfer was low if only target stores were altered, and high if both target stores and surrounding buildings were altered, even though in the latter case all local views were changed. This suggests that subjects can rapidly acquire a survey representation based on the spatial layout of the town and independent of local views, but that subjects will rely on local views when present, and are harmed when associations between previously learned landmarks are disrupted. We propose that spatial navigation reflects a hierarchical system in which either layout or landmark information is sufficient for orienting and wayfinding; however, when these types of cues conflict, landmarks are preferentially used.     

Context, categorization, and recall: The “change-of-standard” effect

A psycholinguistically based conception of the relation among context, categorization, and memory is tested by examining what happens to people's memory of an object when the object is initially categorized in terms of the context in which it appears, but, when the object is later recalled, this context is no longer salient. Subjects read about the sentencing decisions of a target trial judge in the context of other trial judges who consistently gave either higher sentences or lower sentences than the target judge. As predicted, subjects tended to categorize the target judge as “lenient” in the former, harsh context condition, and as “harsh” in the latter, lenient context condition. A week later, subjects read about the sentencing decisions of some additional judges, and then recalled the sentencing decisions of the target judge they had read about the week before. Across the two sessions, either a harsh, moderate, or lenient category norm for judges' sentencing decisions was established by having subjects read about decisions that involved either high, medium, or low sentences, respectively. The results indicated that subjects recalled the target judge's decisions by interpreting their prior categorization of his behavior in terms of the category norm established across the two sessions rather than the original context. Thus, subjects who were exposed to the same target in the same circumstances, and initially categorized the target in the same way, nevertheless remembered his behavior differently if their category norm was different at the moment of recall. Other types of “change of standard” and their implications for human judgment and memory are discussed.     

Reaction time to letter name or letter case

Subjects were shown two letters from the set BDGbdg. In one condition, subjects were required to decide whether or not the letters had the same name. In the other condition, subjects decided whether or not the two letters were presented in the same case. Reaction times were always faster when the two letters on a given trial were physically identical. However, there was no difference in the speed of a name match or a case match when the two letters were not physically identical. Since subjects could have based a case match on the presence or absence of a single feature — a protruding vertical line — it was concluded that subjects are not able to selectively attend to a single visual feature in order to identify a letter. Rather, a subject analyzes several features in parallel in order to arrive at a simultaneous decision about a letter's name or case.     

Inference of one's attitude from behavior recalled under linguistically manipulated cognitive sets

To test Bem's (1972) hypothesis that individuals infer their attitudes from information about their behavior in a given context, subjects were asked their attitudes about a course after reporting their behaviors for the course and receiving a linguistic manipulation intended to produce an intrinsic or extrinsic cognitive context (set). Intrinsic set was manipulated by having subjects complete statements of the form “I generally do X because I …”. Extrinsic set was manipulated by having subjects complete statements of the form “I generally do X in order to …”. A pretest found that the intrinsic form resulted in a class perceived as more interesting than useful while the extrinsic form resulted in a class perceived as more useful than interesting. The present experiment found that subjects' attitudes are derived from information about different behaviors under the two cognitive sets. The attitudes of extrinsic set subjects were correlated with behaviors relevant to obtaining course out-comes like grades (contingent behaviors) and uncorrelated with behaviors relevant to personal interest (noncontingent behaviors); the opposite was found for intrinsic set subjects.     

Knowledge of spatial relations: Varying the precision with which locations must be specified

In previous studies, subjects have been asked whether one named town is north (say) of another. The results have shown that as the distance between the towns increases, reaction times decrease. Explanations have focused on a subject's disposition to derive an answer by using less precise information about location when the towns are far apart. In the present experiments, subjects who had memorized a map of Europe were asked whether an imaginary line connecting two named towns passes through a named country. The country was either large or small in area, and the distance between the towns was either long or short. It was expected that in the large country condition less precise information would be used when the distance was long than when it was short, as inferred in previous experiments. Accordingly, reaction times decreased as the distance increased. In the small country condition it was supposed that some degree of precision would be required to determine that the line ran through the country, regardless of the distance between the towns. Therefore, it was expected that the size of the country would limit the degree to which a decrease in precision could occur with an increase in distance. Consistent with this expectation, distance and size of country interacted, such that when the country was small an increase in distance did not cause a decrease in reaction time. Similar results were found in a second experiment.     

“Picturesque Incisiveness”: Explaining the Celebrity of James's Theory of Emotion

William James is the name that comes to mind when asked about scientific explanations of emotion in the nineteenth century. However, strictly speaking James's theory of emotion does not explain emotions and never did. Indeed, James contemporaries pointed this out already more than a hundred years ago. Why could “James’ theory” nevertheless become a landmark that psychologists, neuroscientists, and historians alike refer to today? The strong focus on James and Anglo‐American sources in historiography has overshadowed all other answers given to the question of emotion at the time of James. For that reason, the article returns to the primary sources and places James's work back into the context of nineteenth century brain research in which it developed.     

Sources of Disagreement in Object Naming

Two experiments examined the processing of objects with low name agreement. Experiment I compared naming latencies for objects with three different types of name disagreement to those for matched control objects with very high name agreement. Objects with low name agreement due to abbreviations (e.g. phone) were named no more slowly than were control objects. Objects with multiple names (e.g. couch, sofa, settee) and objects often given incorrect names (e.g. spider for ant) took longer to name correctly than did matched controls. These results were confirmed in a second naming experiment using a revised set of high-name-agreement control stimuli. In Experiment 2, subjects carried out an object decision task using the revised stimulus set. Subjects could recognize objects with multiple names as quickly as those with high name agreement. Objects often given incorrect names were recognized by subjects more slowly than were high-agreement matched stimuli. The pattern of data suggests that the delay in naming latency due to the availability of more than one correct name arises after structural recognition. In contrast, the slowed naming of objects often misnamed would seem to originate from difficulties encountered at or before the structural stage of recognition.     

The Impact of “Display‐Set” Options on Decision‐Making

The way a choice set is constructed can have a significant influence on how individuals perceive and evaluate their options, and make decisions between them. Here, I examine whether a “display set” of visible but unavailable options can exert these same types of influences on whether or not to choose a single (target) item. Across a series of experiments, purchase intent is increased when the display set and target are drawn from the same category, but decreased when the display and target items are mismatched. This effect is shown to depend on perceived similarity, such that increasing display‐target similarity increases purchase intent towards the target. Furthermore, contrary to the predictions made by previous neural and behavioral research on choice sets, the relative value and/or number of display‐only items have no significant impact on these decisions. These findings reveal a novel choice behavior in commonly encountered settings such as online marketplaces. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the difficulty of distinguishing “good” and “poor” perceivers: A social relations analysis of empathic accuracy data

Two studies were conducted to explore the reasons why replicable individual‐difference correlates of empathic accuracy have proved so difficult to find. In Study 1, we examined sources of variance in empathic accuracy data using the Social Relations Model (Kenny, 1988, 1994; Kenny & Albright, 1987; Malloy & Kenny, 1986). The results revealed substantial perceiver variance only in the type of research design in which a relatively large set of individual perceivers inferred the thoughts and feelings of the same set of target persons. In Study 2, we found evidence that even in this apparently optimal type of research design, the significant individual‐difference correlates of empathic accuracy were fewer and subject to more unexpected qualifications than the results of Davis and Kraus's (1997) meta‐analysis would suggest. So far, the “best candidate” predictor of empathic accuracy appears to be verbal intelligence, but it remains to be seen whether it and two other recently proposed predictors of interpersonal accuracy will survive the test of replicability.     

Information Consistency and Perceptual Set: Overcoming the Mental Retardation “Schema”1

Two factors that were thought to promote or inhibit schema-based or stereotypic responding in impression formation were examined in two experiments. Subjects were asked to provide evaluations of artwork supposedly painted by either mentally retarded or nonretarded children. Based on previous research, it was assumed that subjects would expect relatively poor quality artwork from retarded children, which would he consistent with a negative schema that they maintain for this group. It was also predicted that this negative schema would result in cursory examinations and unfavorable evaluations of the retarded artists' artwork, but only when the evaluative conditions were conducive to schematic responding. Specifically, the schema effect was predicted to occur when the artwork was of poor quality and subjects were instructed to provide an overall evaluation of the painting rather than an assessment of its specific characteristics. No derogation was expected when these factors were not present. Results supported these hypotheses. Additional analyses indicated that subjects were conducting a cursory search of the target stimuli when conditions favored schema-based responding.     

“One of us”: Outstanding willingness to help save a single identified compatriot

Willingness to help victims unrelated to oneself, in situations where reciprocity is irrelevant, is a common form of altruism. Prior research showed that people are more willing to extend such help when the victims are identified, particularly when the target of help is a single individual. However, in the present research we found that only when the perceivers regard the victims as belonging to their own in-group, willingness to help a single identified individual is greater than willingness to help a group of individuals: identifying tsunami victims by name increased actual contributions only when the specified target was a single compatriot. The role of perceived shared social group in promoting the victim singularity advantage in contributions was mirrored in ratings of emotions, thus supporting an affective account of helping behavior.     

Short-Term Retention of “Surprising” Events By Pigeons

Terry and Wagner (1975) have suggested that the short-term retention of information about an event is enhanced if the occurrence of the event is made unexpected or surprising. Three experiments tested this idea using delayed conditional position (Experiment I) and colour discriminations (Experiments II and III). The subjects were pigeons and the presentation of food was the target event to be remembered. Choice of one of two simultaneously presented stimuli was reinforced if the retention interval had been initiated by presentation of target food. Contrary to Terry and Wagner's claim, retention was superior on probe test trials in Experiments I and II if the presentation of the target food was preceded by a previously established signal for food (CS+) rather than by a stimulus which had not been paired with food (CS-). Experiment III systematically manipulated the signalling conditions used during initial discrimination training. Retention was better following a CS+ presentation if the target food had been signalled during initial discrimination training but worse if the food presentation had been unsignalled. These results do not favour the idea that retention of an event is directly affected by whether or not the target event is surprising.     

Effects of visual familiarity on “same” and “different” decision processes

An experiment was conducted in which subjects matched upper and lower case versions of well-known abbreviations, such as BBC and etc, and meaningless controls. “Same” RT showed a familiarity effect for upper case versions of abbreviations such as BBC and GPO, but not for the lower case versions bbc and gpo. The converse did not occur for abbreviations such as etc, which were thought to occur most frequently in lower case. The “different” RT was inhibited by familiarity, with pairs such as IBM GPO being classified less rapidly than their lower case versions or controls. These effects occurred for subjects instructed to report “No” for “same” displays and “Yes” for “different” displays as well as for subjects given a conventional decision-report assignment. Some implications of these results for an account of the manner in which familiarity affects graphemic comparison processes are considered.     

The dilution effect: Nondiagnostic information weakens the implications of diagnostic information

In a series of studies, subjects were asked to make predictions about target individuals. Some subjects were given information about the target which pretest subjects had judged to be “diagnostic”—that is, had judged to be usefully predictive of the outcome. Other subjects were given a mix of information judged to be diagnostic and information judged to be “nondiagnostic” by pretest subjects—that is, judged to be of little value for predicting the outcome. Subjects given mixed information made much less extreme predictions than did subjects given only diagnostic information. It was argued that this “dilution effect” occurs because people make predictions by making simple similarity judgments. That is, they compare the information they have about the target with their conception of outcome categories. The presence of individuating but nondiagnostic information about the target reduces the similarity between the target and those outcomes that are suggested by the diagnostic information. One of the major implications is that stereotypes and other “social knowledge structures” may be applied primarily to abstract, undifferentiated individuals and groups and may be largely set aside when judgments are made about concrete, individuated people.     

Interrelationships Among Name Desirability, Name Uniqueness, Emotion Characteristics Connoted by Names, and Temperament

The subjects in Study 1 (the target group) provided their names and data on their own temperaments. The subjects in Study 2 rated the target group's names on uniqueness and desirability. The subjects in Study 3 rated the temperament qualities connoted by the names given by the target group. The name uniqueness and desirability scales had high reliabilities and correlated -0.44, showing that more unique names were less desirable. The qualities of pleasantness and dominance, which were connoted by a person's name, were judged very reliably. Names that connoted psychological health versus maladjustment (pleasant/ unpleasant temperament) were indeed associated with pleasant/unpleasant temperament attributes. The pleasantness and dominance connoted by names enhanced the desirability of those names, whereas greater unpleasantness and submissiveness were connoted by more unique names.     

Interrelationships Among Name Desirability, Name Uniqueness, Emotion Characteristics Connoted by Names, and Temperament

The subjects in Study 1 (the target group) provided their names and data on their own temperaments. The subjects in Study 2 rated the target group's names on uniqueness and desirability. The subjects in Study 3 rated the temperament qualities connoted by the names given by the target group. The name uniqueness and desirability scales had high reliabilities and correlated -0.44, showing that more unique names were less desirable. The qualities of pleasantness and dominance, which were connoted by a person's name, were judged very reliably. Names that connoted psychological health versus maladjustment (pleasant/ unpleasant temperament) were indeed associated with pleasant/unpleasant temperament attributes. The pleasantness and dominance connoted by names enhanced the desirability of those names, whereas greater unpleasantness and submissiveness were connoted by more unique names.