Isolation effects and the neglect of indirect effects of fiscal policies

People tend to focus on salient cues, ignoring others. We demonstrate such isolation effects in situations involving taxes and public finance, through experiments conducted on the World Wide Web. In general, subjects minimized or ignored the longer‐term or indirect effects of tax policies, such as price increases from business taxes. Subjects preferred “hidden” taxes to transparent ones, failing to think through who would ultimately pay. The preference for hidden taxes was greater when it was uncertain who would pay. When subjects were prompted to think about indirect effects, their preference for hidden taxes was reduced but not eliminated. These observations are symptoms of general tendencies not to think ahead about the effects of public policies. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Causal graphical views of fixed effects and random effects models

Despite the long-standing discussion on fixed effects (FE) and random effects (RE) models, how and under what conditions both methods can eliminate unmeasured confounding bias has not yet been widely understood in practice. Using a simple pretest–posttest design in a linear setting, this paper translates the conventional algebraic formalization of FE and RE models into causal graphs and provides intuitively accessible graphical explanations about their data-generating and bias-removing processes. The proposed causal graphs highlight that FE and RE models consider different data-generating models. RE models presume a data-generating model that is identical to a randomized controlled trial, while FE models allow for unobserved time-invariant treatment–outcome confounding. Augmenting regular causal graphs that describe data-generating processes by adding the computational structures of FE and RE estimators, the paper visualizes how FE estimators (gain score and deviation score estimators) and RE estimators (quasi-deviation score estimators) offset unmeasured confounding bias. In contrast to standard regression or matching estimators that reduce confounding bias by blocking non-causal paths via conditioning, FE and RE estimators offset confounding bias by deliberately creating new non-causal paths and associations of opposite sign. Though FE and RE estimators are similar in their bias-offsetting mechanisms, the augmented graphs reveal their subtle differences that can result in different biases in observational studies.     

Gradual proportion congruent effects in the absence of sequential congruent effects

In perceptual filtering tasks, congruency effects vary as a function of proportion congruent (PC), with smaller congruency effects when congruent trials are rare than when they are frequent. This effect is typically larger with extreme differences between high and low proportion congruent conditions (e.g., 80% congruent–20% incongruent) than with intermediate differences (e.g., 60% congruent–40% incongruent; Logan & Zbofroff, 1979; Blais & Bunge, 2010). Some authors have claimed that both PC effects can be explained in terms of the same reactive cognitive control mechanism that is responsible for sequential congruency (SC) effects (e.g., Botvinick, Braver, Barch, Carter, & Cohen, 2001). In fact, in most previous studies there was a systematic confounding between proportion congruent and the proportion of transitions involving an incongruent trial followed by another incongruent trial. In the present study we eliminated this confound and tested directly whether PC effects can still be measured in the absence of SC effects. Once confirmed, we studied the properties of this pure form of PC effect, in particular whether it is conflict-type specific or general, and whether it decreases gradually as a function of changes in proportion congruency (80% vs. 70% vs. 60%). Our results showed significant PC effects in the absence of SC effects, which replicates our previous findings (Torres-Quesada, Milliken, Lupiáñez, & Funes, 2014), and PC effects that can be conflict-type general or specific, depending on the nature of conflict type where they were produced. Importantly, the congruency effect was modulated by the level of proportion congruent, decreasing systematically as the absolute percentage of incongruent trials decreases.     

Encoding effects of remindings

Understanding requires prior knowledge. Most theories and empirical work on understanding have focused on the use of general prior knowledge. In the experiments presented here, we examined the role of specific prior episodes in understanding. Subjects read ambiguous stories that had some superficial cue to make them think back to an earlier story. Experiment 1 shows that a superficial cue to an earlier story affects how the new story is interpreted. Experiment 2, in which a reading-time measure was used, provides evidence that this effect of the earlier story occurs during the initial understanding of the new story. We discuss the implications of these results for theories of understanding and the use of remindings in analogy.     

Inhibiting effects of recall

Evidence is reviewed indicating that output interference—the deleterious effects of recall of some information on information recalled later—occurs both in primary and secondary memory. It appears that output interference provides at least a partial account for the disparity between information available in memory and its accessibility at recall. It is argued that consideration of output interference may provide a helpful perspective in resolving problems in the study of episodic and semantic memory, including the negative effects of part-list cueing and the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon.     

Context effects in repetition priming are sense effects

This articlereports three experiments that investigate the role ofcontext in repetition priming using a lexical decision task. The experiments show that repetition priming is either eliminated or significantly reduced if a change in context also alters the perceived sense of a nonhomographic target word. If perceived sense is not altered, a change in context is inconsequential. This points to the important role played by perceived sense in repetition priming. An explanation within a sense-specific activation framework is proposed in preference to a modified processing view.     

Self-inhibiting effects of reinforcement

The reinforcers produced by one response reduce the rate of other, concurrently reinforced responses. An analysis of the logical and empirical implications of the relation indicates that one reinforcer must have this effect on responses maintained by other reinforcers even when all reinforcers are produced by the same class of responses. A quantitative expression of the relation leads to a formulation, mathematically equivalent to Herrnstein's (1970), in which the rate of a reinforced response is a joint function of (1) an excitatory effect of the reinforcers produced by that class of responses, and (2) an inhibitory effect of the total reinforcers produced both by that class and by other classes of responses.     

Sleeper effects

Early experience preserves and refines many capabilities that emerge prenatally. Here we describe another role that it plays -- establishing the neural substrate for capabilities that emerge at a much later point in development. The evidence comes from sleeper effects: permanent deficits when early experience was absent in capabilities that normally emerge long after birth. We provide evidence of sleeper effects for three aspects of vision, based on our research with children who were deprived of early visual input by congenital cataracts: contrast sensitivity for mid and high spatial frequencies, holistic face processing, and the ability to recognize the identity of faces based on small differences in the spacing among facial features.     

Aging effects in sequential modulations of poorer-strategy effects during execution of memory strategies

In this study, we asked young adults and older adults to encode pairs of words. For each item, they were told which strategy to use, interactive imagery or rote repetition. Data revealed poorer-strategy effects in both young adults and older adults: Participants obtained better performance when executing better strategies (i.e., interactive-imagery strategy to encode pairs of concrete words; rote-repetition strategy on pairs of abstract words) than with poorer strategies (i.e., interactive-imagery strategy on pairs of abstract words; rote-repetition strategy on pairs of concrete words). Crucially, we showed that sequential modulations of poorer-strategy effects (i.e., poorer-strategy effects being larger when previous items were encoded with better relative to poorer strategies), previously demonstrated in arithmetic, generalise to memory strategies. We also found reduced sequential modulations of poorer-strategy effects in older adults relative to young adults. Finally, sequential modulations of poorer-strategy effects correlated with measures of cognitive control processes, suggesting that these processes underlie efficient trial-to-trial modulations during strategy execution. Differences in correlations with cognitive control processes were also found between older adults and young adults. These findings have important implications regarding mechanisms underlying memory strategy execution and age differences in memory performance.     

Dispositional inference from effects of actions: Effects chosen and effects forgone

One hundred and forty-six subjects made comparative judgments as to which of two hypothetical actors they were most confident possessed a choice-related trait, and which was most extreme on that trait dimension. Each actor was portrayed as making a choice from a set of actions; the choice sets varied independently in the number of effects eliminated by the choice and in the number of effects remaining after choice. Results confirmed Jones and Davis' (1965) hypothesis that correspondence would be inversely related to the number of effects remaining after choice. In addition, correspondence was directly related to number of effects eliminated by the choice when effects remaining did not differ. When given both sources of information, subjects preferred to use information from effects remaining.     

The motivational effects of thinking and worrying about the effects of smoking cigarettes

We tested a strategy to encourage cigarette smokers to think more frequently about the negative consequences of smoking, reasoning that increased thought might lead to greater worry and motivation to quit. College students who smoked daily were randomly assigned to one of three conditions in which they wore watches for one week that sounded an alarm randomly four times each day. When alerted, the students read one of eight cards that either had a written statement about studying (control condition), a statement about the negative effects of smoking behaviour (text condition), or a negative smoking statement accompanied by a picture (e.g., a blackened lung; image condition). Measures collected at week's end revealed that the smoking cards had no effects on perceived risk, but they increased worry and reports of intrusive thoughts, and had a small but reliable effect on plans to quit. Correlational data also supported the relationship between worry and motivation to quit, and we discuss the possible benefits of “normal” worrying and strategies for capitalising on the worry–motivation relationship to encourage smokers to abandon cigarettes.     

The effects of recoding and presentation format on recency and suffix effects

The primary linguistic theory of Shand and Klima (1981) hypothesizes that stimuli that cannot be directly processed without recoding are not in the primary linguistic mode of the subject and thus should lead to lesser recency and associated suffix effects. In three experiments, different normal hearing subjects learned to pair American Sign Language (ASL) stimuli, visual "quasivocables" (QVs), word-like letter strings, and auditory QVs with common English words. In the first experiment, the subjects were given sequences of ASL or QV stimuli and required to recall the associated words in strict serial order. In two other experiments involving auditory and visual presentation, respectively, subjects who had never been given paired associate training were required to recall the English words that had previously been associated with the ASL and QV stimuli, in a standard suffix paradigm. The results showed recency and suffix effects to be present only with auditorily presented QVs and words. Contrary to the predictions of the primary linguistic hypothesis, greater recency and larger suffix effects were present with the auditory QVs than with the auditory words, although the QVs were not primary linguistic and the task involved forced recoding. Previous results showing recency with ASL stimuli in normal subjects were not replicated. It is concluded that recency and suffix effects are not related either to the primary linguistic mode of the subject or to stimulus recoding, as we and Shand and Klima have defined them.     

场景对面孔情绪探测的影响：特质性焦虑的调节作用

本研究采用面孔情绪探测任务, 通过状态-特质焦虑问卷筛选出高、低特质性焦虑被试, 考察场景对不同情绪效价以及不同情绪强度的面部表情加工的影响, 并探讨特质性焦虑在其中所发挥的作用。结果发现：(1)对于不同情绪效价的面部表情, 场景对其情绪探测的影响存在差异：对于快乐面部表情, 在100%、80%和20%三个情绪层级上, 在场景与面孔情绪性一致情况下, 被试对面孔情绪探测的正确率显著高于不一致情况; 对于恐惧面部表情, 在80%、60%、40%和20%四个情绪层级上, 均发现一致条件比不一致条件有着更高的情绪探测正确率。(2)对于高特质性焦虑组, 一致条件和不一致条件中的面孔情绪探测正确率并没有显著差异, 即高特质性焦虑组并未表现出显著的场景效应; 而低特质性焦虑组则差异显著, 即出现显著的场景效应。该研究结果表明：(1)对于情绪强度较低的面部表情, 快乐与恐惧面孔情绪探测都更容易受到场景的影响。(2)相比于中等强度快乐面孔, 场景更容易影响中等强度恐惧面孔情绪的探测。(3)特质性焦虑的个体因素在场景对面孔情绪探测的影响中发挥调节作用, 高特质性焦虑者在情绪识别中较少受到场景信息的影响。     

Safety effects of parking maneuvers

Parking maneuvers, particularly a vehicle’s maneuver for entering and leaving a parking space, have varying rates of use and safety impacts. In this effort, crash data were collected for parking lots in the vicinity of a university campus and compared to observational parking position data. The campus was selected for this study because a change in the parking enforcement process was expected to (and did) change parking maneuver choices. When entering and leaving a parking space, three maneuver options exist for drivers: (1) forward, (2) reverse, and (3) pulling through an adjacent parking space. When specifically entering a parking space, the maneuver options become: (1) pull-in, (2) back-in, and (3) pull-through. When leaving the parking space, the maneuver options become: (1) pull-out, (2) back-out, and (3) pull-through. This study found that the pull-in/back-out vehicle maneuver’s percentage of total crashes was greater than the percentage of vehicles that were actually observed to use the same maneuver. The analysis from this study implies that the pull-in/back-out parking maneuver is more likely to result in a collision and therefore, is associated with a higher crash risk. Further analysis of North Carolina’s parking related fatal and serious injury crashes found that vehicles backing out of parking spaces was overwhelmingly the main cause for these serious injuries. 90% of North Carolina’s parking related fatal and serious injuries occurred during a back-out maneuver. Overall, this study concludes that the back-in/pull-out parking maneuver is safer than the pull-in/back-out maneuver and is the recommended approach to 90° parking.     

Polarizing effects of social comparison

Does exposure to others' judgments merely elicit conformity to what is observed? Two experiments are reported in which people who were merely exposed to others' responses tended not to conform to the average observed response but to exceed it in the socially preferred direction. These experiments complement social psychology's historic emphasis on conformity by suggesting that not only do people avoid being markedly deviant from others; they also act to differentiate themselves from others toward the extreme that reflects the group ideal.     

Local effects of delayed food

Five pigeons were trained on a procedure in which seven concurrent variable-interval schedules arranged seven different food-rate ratios in random sequence in each session. Each of these components lasted for 10 response-produced food deliveries, and components were separated by 10-s blackouts. We varied delays to food (signaled by blackout) between the two response alternatives in an experiment with three phases: In Phase 1, the delay on one alternative was 0 s, and the other was varied between 0 and 8 s; in Phase 2, both delays were equal and were varied from 0 to 4 s; in Phase 3, the two delays summed to 8 s, and each was varied from 1 to 7 s. The results showed that increasing delay affected local choice, measured by a pulse in preference, in the same way as decreasing magnitude, but we found also that increasing the delay at the other alternative increased local preference. This result casts doubt on the traditional view that a reinforcer strengthens a response depending only on the reinforcer's value discounted by any response-reinforcer delay. The results suggest that food guides, rather than strengthens, behavior.