A word’s meaning affects the decision in lexical decision

The influence of an isolated word’s meaning on lexical decision reaction time (RT) was demonstrated through four experiments. Subjects in two experiments made lexical decision judgments, those in a third experiment pronounced the words used in the lexical decision task, and those in a fourth experiment quickly pronounced their first associative response to the words. Differences in lexical access time for the words were measured with the pronunciation task, and differences in meaning were assessed with the association task. Multiple regression analyses of lexical decision RT were conducted using associative RT, pronunciation RT, and other target word properties (printed frequency, length, instance dominance, and number of dictionary meanings) as predictor variables. These analyses revealed a relationship between lexical decision RT and associative RT after the effects of other variables had been partialed out. In addition, word frequency continued to have a significant relationship to lexical decision RT beyond that shared with pronunciation RT and the other variables. The results of these experiments indicate that at least some of the effect of word meaning and word frequency in lexical decision is attributable to a decision stage following lexical access.     

Is the go/no-go lexical decision task an alternative to the yes/no lexical decision task?

In the go/no-go lexical decision task (LDT), participants are instructed to respond as quickly as they can when a word is presented and not to respond if a nonword is presented. By minimizing part of the response selection process in the experimental task, the impact of response decision time on the obtained lexical decision time is probably reduced relative to the standard yes/no LDT (Gordon, 1983). Experiments 1 and 2 show that the go/no-go LDT is sensitive to the effects of word frequency and associative priming--the magnitude of these effects is similar with the two tasks. More important, the go/no-go LDT has a number of advantages with respect to the "standard" yes/no LDT: It offers faster response times, more accurate responding, and fewer processing demands than does the yes/no task. Accordingly, the go/no-go task appears to be an excellent alternative to the standard yes/no task.     

Is the conflict model of decision making applicable to the decision to be screened for cervical cancer? A field study

The present study examined aspects of the conflict model of decision making (Janis and Mann, 1977) in the context of attending for a screening test for cervical cancer. In addition, the ability of decision coping styles as measured by Mann's (1982) Decision Making Questionnaire II (DMQ II) to predict screening status was examined. Three hundred and two women answered a questionnaire operationalizing the constructs in the conflict model about their beliefs and knowledge of cervical cancer and the Pap smear test. Four screening categories were identified: never screened, not screened in the last two years (overdue), screened in last two years and initiated the test, and screened in last two years and recruited to have the test. Differences in the decision processes of these groups were examined. Women who were overdue for their Pap test showed greater decisional conflict and were more likely to adopt a defensive avoidance coping pattern than those who had been screened in the last two years. Regression analyses exploring predictors of decisional stress and defensive avoidance for each group, except the never screen, showed that the model's suggested pathways were evidenced among the Overdue Group. Results failed to find any association between coping styles as measured by the DMQ II and screening status. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Structuring decision problems and the ‘bias heuristic’

This paper examines our understanding of the decomposition of immediate acts when structuring decision problems. Seven different types of uncertainties are identified, and four of these are shown to be taken explicitly into account in models within the province of decision theory, described in terms of four interlocking systems interfaced with semantic memory (a core act-event system, and systems buffering utilities, probabilities and events, respectively). Requisite decision modeling is shown to require that the remaining three types of uncertainty (procedural uncertainty; how the decision maker will feel about subsequent acts; agency for changing subsequent states of the world) are also resolved. Methods for ‘fixing’ structure are discussed in terms of aiming at a common understanding about the ‘small world’ in which a decision problem is located. Difficulties in resolving uncertainties in doing this are described. An alternative approach, common in studies invoking ‘behavioural decision theory’ is contrasted: imposing structure, assuming common understanding. The latter approach is shown to involve (i) the ‘naturalisation’ of the small world in which the decision problem is located, and (ii) the utilisation of normative models as ‘ideal types’, leading to the use of the ‘bias’ argument in discussing subjects' performance in decision tasks. Using this argument reflexively, the operation of the ‘bias heuristic’ is identified in a survey of published papers referencing this approach to the study of decision making. Effects identified are: availability of tasks, subjects and explanations; representativeness of findings; and anchoring and adjustment of explanations. Implications for practice are discussed throughout the paper.     

Can redescriptions of outcomes salvage the axioms of decision theory?

Philosophical Studies - The basic axioms or formal conditions of decision theory, especially the ordering condition put on preferences and the axioms underlying the expected utility (EU) formula,...     

Take the best or look at the rest? Factors influencing "one-reason" decision making

Aspects of an experimental environment were manipulated in 3 experiments to examine the parameters under which the "take-the-best" (TTB) heuristic (e.g., G. Gigerenzer & D. G. Goldstein, 1996) operates. Results indicated TTB use to be more prevalent when the cost of information was high, when validities of the cues were known, and when a deterministic environment was used. However, large individual variability in strategy use was observed as well as a significant proportion of behavior inconsistent with TTB, expecially its stopping rule. The results demarcate some of the heuristic's boundary conditions and also question the validity of TTB as a psychologically plausible and pervasive model of behavior.     

Gender and values: What is the impact on decision making?

In this study we investigated C. Gilligan's [(1982), In a different voice: Psychological theory and women's development, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press] suggestion that women and men, due to socialization, develop differently in terms of moral development [L. Kohlberg (1969), “Stage and Consequence: The Cognitive Development Approach to Socialization,” In D. G. Goslin (Ed.), Handbook of socialization: Theory and research, Chicago: Rand McNally]. We also considered whether men and women differ in terms of a related construct, values of equity and equality [K. A. Rasinski (1987), “What's Fair Is Fair or Is It? Value Differences Underlying Public Views About Social Justice,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 53, pp. 201–211]. It is our expectation that gender influences overall orientation in terms of the two sets of values, and that differences in values lead decision makers to weigh decision issues and to make final decisions differently. Results suggest that there are some gender-related differences in value systems, weights of decision issues, and final decisions.     

Do medical decision analyses' largest gains grow from the smallest trees?

Some decision analysts recommend reserving their models for careful, complete study of complex problems. Others believe simple problem analyses provide the greatest gains. To clarify these issues, I tested: (1) whether simple published analyses compared to complex ones, produced results as non-intuitive; and (2) whether non-intuitiveness represented analytic gain (or equivalently, intuitive loss). Very limited data also examined (3) the gain from adding model intricacy for a given problem vs. selecting more complex problems for analysis. To assess two non-intuitiveness measures, 75 subjects (33 physicians and 42) non-physicians stated their intuitive preferences in 40 (22 published and 18 unpublished) medical dilemmas. For both physicians and non-physicians, simpler models (those with lees than 30 terminal branches in the decision tree) had about one third the non-intuitiveness of more complex ones. Three tests also supported the premise that analyses outperform intuition, therefore that on average the formers' non-intuitiveness reflects less analytic gain. In addition, for different models of the same problem, tree complexity did not correlate with gain. Thus, simpler trees may not generally gain less because they inadequately describe problems. Instead, simpler analyses may represent simpler problems, with more similar intuitive and formal solutions. If so, these findings may help us avoid some costly but unnecessary simple analyses.     

Jury decision making research: Are researchers focusing on the mouse and not the elephant in the room?

The concerns of jury research have extensively focused on subject selection, yet larger issues loom. We argue that observed differences between students and non-students in mock juror studies are inconsistent at best, and that researchers are ignoring the more important issue of jury deliberation. We contend that the lack of information on deliberating jurors and/or juries is a much greater threat to ecological validity and that some of our basic findings and conclusions in the literature today might be different if we had used juries, not non-deliberating jurors, as the unit of measure. Finally, we come full circle in our review and explore whether the debate about college and community samples might be more relevant to deliberating versus non-deliberating jurors.     

What counts as a decision? Predictors of perceived decision making

We examined lay perceptions of what counts as a decision. Eighty-six subjects read 10 scenarios that described clear decisions (e.g., choosing a graduate school), clear “nondecisions” (e.g., an accidental wrong turn), or ambiguous actions (e.g., eating a donut when on a diet or allowing someone else to make the decision). The subjects rated each scenario as to whether the actor had made a decision and also rated six other attributes. The scenarios were rated as clearly illustrating a decision if the actor engaged in a lot of thought and did not act reflexively. Consideration of consequences and having alternatives were moderately related to decision ratings, whereas having self-control problems and the influence of physiological drives showed little relationship with decision ratings. Thus, lay concepts of decision making differ from decision theory in that thoughtful, intentional behavior is more important in defining a decision than are decision theoretic components, such as alternatives and consequences.     

Group decision making in the planning team process: Myth or reality?

Based upon theories from organizational psychology, this study assessed the relationships among school staff role, participation, and satisfaction during planning Team meetings which decide special education placements and programming. A strong positive relationship was found between staff role and participation. Regular education teachers were lowest in participation and satisfaction whereas school psychologists were ranked the highest on both variables. Other staff roles did not necessarily show a one-to-one relationship between participation and satisfaction levels, yet within roles, the level of satisfaction increased with higher levels of participation. These findings were discussed in the context of interdisciplinary decision making and implementation of the placement team decision.     

“Piensa” twice: On the foreign language effect in decision making

In this article, we assess to what extent decision making is affected by the language in which a given problem is presented (native vs. foreign). In particular, we aim to ask whether the impact of various heuristic biases in decision making is diminished when the problems are presented in a foreign language. To this end, we report four main studies in which more than 700 participants were tested on different types of individual decision making problems. In the first study, we replicated Keysar et al.’s (2012) recent observation regarding the foreign language effect on framing effects related to loss aversion. In the second section, we assessed whether the foreign language effect is present in other types of framing problems that involve psychological accounting biases rather than gain/loss dichotomies. In the third section, we studied the foreign language effect in several key aspects of the theory of decision making under risk and uncertainty. In the fourth study, we assessed the presence of a foreign language effect in the cognitive reflection test, a test that includes logical problems that do not carry emotional connotations. The absence of such an effect in this test suggests that foreign language leads to a reduction of heuristic biases in decision making across a range of decision making situations and provide also some evidence about the boundaries of the phenomenon. We explore several potential factors that may underlie the foreign language effect in decision making.     

Are morally motivated decision makers insensitive to the consequences of their choices?

Is morally motivated decision making different from other kinds of decision making? There is evidence that when people have sacred or protected values (PVs), they reject trade-offs for secular values (e.g., "You can't put a price on a human life") and tend to employ deontological rather than consequentialist decision principles. People motivated by PVs appear to show quantity insensitivity. That is, in trade-off situations, they are less sensitive to the consequences of their choices than are people without PVs. The current study examined the relation between PVs and quantity insensitivity using two methods of preference assessment: In one design, previous results were replicated; in a second, PVs were related to increased quantity sensitivity. These and other findings call into question important presumed properties of PVs, suggesting that how PVs affect willingness to make trade-offs depends on where attention is focused, a factor that varies substantially across contexts.     

Family decision at the turn of the century: has the changing structure of households impacted the family decision‐making process?

Evaluation of husbands' and wives' influence in family decision making is heavily reliant on studies conducted in the 1970s and 1980s. Since that time, profound changes have occurred in the American family. These changes may have affected the nature of decision making in the household. To examine the degree to which earlier findings are still generalisable today, hypotheses are developed and tested with a contemporary sample of 458 men and women. Results suggest that there have been significant changes in the roles assumed in the family decision‐making process, with the wife gaining more influence in all decision areas. The results indicate that marketers must re‐examine their marketing strategies for some products and/or services. Possible theoretical explanations are suggested to explain why these changes may have occurred. Copyright © 2002 Henry Stewart Publications.     

Do self-reported decision styles relate with others’ impressions of decision quality?

Research has demonstrated the usefulness of decision styles for predicting various performance-related criteria. It is still unclear, however, which particular styles are associated with a general tendency to make high-quality decisions. Participants (n = 168) completed a common measure of five decision styles, along with a measure of the traits in the five-factor model of personality. Self and peer evaluations of general decision quality were obtained as performance criteria. Results showed that specific decision styles predicted variance in both measures of decision quality. And, there was clear evidence for incremental validity for specific decision styles when self-ratings were predicted. In the context of past research, this study supports a primary focus on rational or analytical styles for understanding and predicting decision success.     

Targeted training of the decision rule benefits rule-guided behavior in Parkinson’s disease

The impact of Parkinson’s disease (PD) on rule-guided behavior has received considerable attention in cognitive neuroscience. The majority of research has used PD as a model of dysfunction in frontostriatal networks, but very few attempts have been made to investigate the possibility of adapting common experimental techniques in an effort to identify the conditions that are most likely to facilitate successful performance. The present study investigated a targeted training paradigm designed to facilitate rule learning and application using rule-based categorization as a model task. Participants received targeted training in which there was no selective-attention demand (i.e., stimuli varied along a single, relevant dimension) or nontargeted training in which there was selective-attention demand (i.e., stimuli varied along a relevant dimension as well as an irrelevant dimension). Following training, all participants were tested on a rule-based task with selective-attention demand. During the test phase, PD patients who received targeted training performed similarly to control participants and outperformed patients who did not receive targeted training. As a preliminary test of the generalizability of the benefit of targeted training, a subset of the PD patients were tested on the Wisconsin card sorting task (WCST). PD patients who received targeted training outperformed PD patients who did not receive targeted training on several WCST performance measures. These data further characterize the contribution of frontostriatal circuitry to rule-guided behavior. Importantly, these data also suggest that PD patient impairment, on selective-attention-demanding tasks of rule-guided behavior, is not inevitable and highlight the potential benefit of targeted training.     

Should I go with my gut? Investigating the benefits of emotion-focused decision making

Deliberative decision strategies have historically been considered the surest path to sound decisions; however, recent evidence and theory suggest that affective strategies may be equally as effective. In four experiments we examined conditions under which affective versus deliberative decision strategies might result in higher decision quality. While consciously focusing on feelings versus details, participants made choices that varied in complexity, in extent of subsequent conscious deliberation allowed, and in domain. Results indicate that focusing on feelings versus details led to superior objective and subjective decision quality for complex decisions. However, when using a feeling-focused approach, subsequent deliberation after encoding resulted in reduced choice quality. These results suggest that affective decision strategies may be more effective relative to deliberative strategies for certain complex decisions.