Preference for information about intensity of signaled tailshock

Three experiments are reported which were designed to demonstrate preference for signaled shock and to delineate the roles of the preparatory-response, information-seeking, and signaled-safety hypotheses of this phenomenon. Experiment 1 demonstrated a preference for a signal-tailshock condition over a tailshock-signal condition in a shuttlebox. In Experiment 3, rats were exposed to signaled tailshock of two intensities in both compartments of the shuttlebox, but in one compartment the signals provided information about the intensity of the impending tailshock, whereas in the other compartment the signals did not. The tailshock intensities were .6 and 1.3 mA for one group and .6 and 1.8 mA for a second group. Experiment 2 assured that even the smaller intensity difference was readily discriminable. For Group .6-1.8 a significant preference for the condition in which the signals predicted the intensity of the impending tailshocks was obtained, but no preference for either condition was found for Group .6-1.3. As signaled safety was equated in the two compartments of Experiment 3, the observed preference cannot be accounted for by the signaled-safety hypothesis. Information seeking cannot explain the lack of preference in Group .6-1.3 as the difference between those two intensities was proven discriminable in Experiment 2. Assuming that sufficient differences in shock intensity yield different preparatory responses, the present results are compatible with the preparatory-response hypothesis and suggest that preparatory responding plays a role in producing the preference for signaled shock.     

The clinician-investigator: unavoidable but manageable tension

The "difference position" holds that clinical research and therapeutic medical practice are sufficiently distinct activities to require different ethical rules and principles. The "similarity position" holds instead that clinical investigators ought to be bound by the same fundamental principles that govern therapeutic medicine--specifically, a duty to provide the optimal therapeutic benefit to each patient or subject. Some defenders of the similarity position defend it because of the overlap between the role of attending physician and the role of investigator in a research trial. This overlap is maximal when the same physician occupies both roles with respect to a particular patient-subject. We address the ethical tensions inherent in that role conflict and argue that the tensions are real but manageable. The difference position provides a sound ethical framework within which to manage those tensions, while the similarity position is unsatisfactory because it seeks to deny the existence of the tensions.     

Causal judgement from information about outcome magnitude

Information was presented in which a candidate cause was either present or absent, and the outcome variable (number of spots on a patient's skin) could take any of four nonzero values. It was found that cause-absent information carried greater weight than cause-present information. This is contrary to the usual finding for contingency information about binary outcome variables. Judgement was influenced more by extreme values of the outcome variable, and larger outcome values tended to have more effect on judgements than smaller outcome values. The hypothesis that participants compute linear correlation is disconfirmed by these results. Instead, the results show that participants focus disproportionate attention on some kinds of events and neglect others.     

Preference for numerical information among Arab students

To investigate the preferences for numerical information of 157 tenth grade students (M = 16.1 yr.) in the United Arab Emirates, an Arabic translation of a questionnaire of Viswanathan developed, validated, and moderately stable over time was administered. Analysis indicated the preferences of Arab students for numerical information was positive. Also, these Arab students scored higher than American students in contrast with those in the Viswanathan study but the difference was not statistically significant using an independent t test.     

Preference for numerical information and academic achievement of African-American students

Viswanathan's Preference for Numerical Information scale was used to investigate the attitudes of 236 African-American college students toward using numerical information in their thinking and problem solving. The results showed that the participants expressed a positive preference for numerical information, statistically similar in size to the preferences reported in prior research for other groups of students. Also, participants' scores correlated positively (r=.27) with their academic achievement (fraction answered correctly) on examination questions requiring the use of numerical information but were nonsignificantly related to their academic achievement on questions not requiring the use of numerical information. This pattern of correlations persisted, at reduced levels, when the effects of variations in SAT scores were partialled out. Moreover, for the men correlations between Preference for Numerical Information scores and achievement on examination questions involving numerical information significantly exceeded the correlations between the test scores and academic achievement on questions not involving numerical information. This contrasted with results obtained for women. For them, the correlations did not vary significantly by question type. Thus, for reasons yet to be uncovered, Preference for Numerical Information scores of the African-American men appear to reflect an aspect of cognitive style related to proficiency in using and manipulating numerical information.     

Memory for information about individuals

A semantic network model is structured so that usually there is only one node in the network to represent each individual. A series of experiments were performed to determine under what circumstances subjects would show unitary memory for individuals. The experiments were principally concerned with the speed with which subjects could retrieve the facts and make inferences from them. Subjects learned facts about individuals which could be referred to by two labels. The semantic network model predicted that subjects would integrate facts learned to one label with facts learned to the other. Evidence for such integration was found, but only when considerable effort was taken to encourage the subjects to develop a unitary impression of the individual. The situation was also investigated in which the subjects did not learn of the identity between the two labels until after the facts were learned to each label individually. There was evidence that subjects set up two nodes to represent the. individual, one for each label. There was also evidence that, upon learning of the identity, subjects chose to abandon one of the two nodes and to start a process of copying information from the to-be-abandoned node to the preserved node.     

Preference for fixed-interval schedules: an alternative model

Pigeons were trained under concurrent chain schedules in which the initial links were equal aperiodic schedules and the terminal links were fixed-interval schedules. Choice proportions in the initial links were measured in 26 experimental conditions. The data showed the inadequacy of previous models of concurrent chain performance. A new model was suggested in which choice is a joint function of terminal-link times, overall reinforcement rates, and terminal-link entries. This model accounted for 94% of the variance in the present data and for substantial percentages of the variance in previously reported data. The model simplifies to matching between response ratios and obtained reinforcement rate ratios for simple concurrent schedule performance.     

Hoping for more: The influence of outcome desirability on information seeking and predictions about relative quantities

People must often engage in sequential sampling in order to make predictions about the relative quantities of two options. We investigated how directional motives influence sampling selections and resulting predictions in such cases. We used a paradigm in which participants had limited time to sample items and make predictions about which side of the screen contained more of a critical item. Sampling selections were biased by monetary desirability manipulations, and participants exhibited a desirability bias for both dichotomous and continuous predictions.     

Effects of Information on Preference for an Occupation

Thirty-two undergraduate female volunteers were randomly assigned to one of four treatment groups in which occupational information was presented in these ways: glamorous-reinforced, glamorous-nonreinforced, objective-reinforced, and objective—nonreinforced. They were given the Holland Vocational Preference Inventory (VPI) and shown a 5 minute slide/tape presentation about an occupation with the appropriate glamour and model reinforcement variation. Posttesting used a modified semantic differential scale and a ranking questionnaire. The results of an analysis of variance (ANOVA) suggest that the glamorous groups rated the occupation as more professional and more rewarding than the nonglamorous groups. While there were no effects for reinforcement and no significant differences on the ranking test, they were in the expected direction, as were the results on 13 of 14 semantic differential scales. Within limitations, the results are discussed with respect to the impact of information on career preference.     

Memory for information about sex differences

To test the selective recall hypothesis, male and female adolescents listened to a tape recording of 30 “findings” about sex differences. Fifteen of the findings were pro-female and 15 were anti-female. After being given free recall and then cued recall tests, the subjects completed the British version of the attitudes towards women scale. Multiple regression analysis supported the prediction that males, and those with more negative attitudes to wards women, recalled less pro- and more anti-female items, and vice versa. The importance of selective recall to studies of social cognition is discussed.     

Preference for distribution by equal outcome in 5- and 6-year-old children

This study investigated preferences for types of fairness applied in resource distribution. We consider two types of equal distribution: according to the equal-allocation principle (new resources are distributed evenly without considering currently possessed resources) or the equal-outcome principle (equal outcome amounts result after distribution because current resources are considered). Children aged 5–6 and adults participated. The participant initially had two sets of two marbles (participant condition) or each of two puppets initially had two marbles (puppet condition). Then one puppet distributed new marbles between itself and the participant by equal-outcome. Next, the other puppet distributed new marbles by equal-allocation. The results showed that the majority of children and adults selected the distribution by equal-outcome for both conditions. This suggests that people prefer distribution by equal-outcome to distribution by equal-allocation. However, some children aged 5–6 thought that distribution by equal-allocation was better only when they already had resources.     

Primacy of information about means selection over outcome selection in goal attribution by infants

It has been shown that, when observing an action, infants can rely on either outcome selection information (i.e., actions that express a choice between potential outcomes) or means selection information (i.e., actions that are causally efficient toward the outcome) in their goal attribution. However, no research has investigated the relationship between these two types of information when they are present simultaneously. In an experiment that addressed this question directly, we found that when outcome selection information could disambiguate the goal of the action (e.g., the action is directed toward one of two potential targets), but means selection information could not (i.e., the action is not efficiently adjusted to the situational constraints), 7- and 9-month-old infants did not attribute a goal to an observed action. This finding suggests that means selection information takes primacy over outcome selection information. The early presence of this bias sheds light on the nature of the notion of goal in action understanding.     

Creating an organizational awareness of ethical responsibility about information technology

In a time of rapid technological and social change, business organizations must help their employees develop a new appreciation of how social and ethical values are being shaped and challenged by evolving information technologies. Many ethical and social conflicts have arisen around the advanced information technology used today. The emerging technologies continue to create situations not previously encountered. There are numerous risks facing corporations involved in the use of computing technology. Leaders of organizations looking ahead to assess the impact of technological changes can try to prepare their employees for the future. This paper addresses the urgent need for individuals in corporations to become more knowledgeable about computing technologies and their impact.     

Causal judgments about empirical information in an interrupted time series design

Empirical information available for causal judgment in everyday life tends to take the form of quasi-experimental designs, lacking control groups, more than the form of contingency information that is usually presented in experiments. Stimuli were presented in which values of an outcome variable for a single individual were recorded over six time periods, and an intervention was introduced between the fifth and sixth time periods. Participants judged whether and how much the intervention affected the outcome. With numerical stimulus information, judgments were higher for a pre-intervention profile in which all values were the same than for pre-intervention profiles with any other kind of trend. With graphical stimulus information, judgments were more sensitive to trends, tending to be higher when an increase after the intervention was preceded by a decreasing series than when it was preceded by an increasing series ending on the same value at the fifth time period. It is suggested that a feature-analytic model, in which the salience of different features of information varies between presentation formats, may provide the best prospect of explaining the results.     

The effects of unavoidable shocks on a multiple schedule having an avoidance component

Two dogs were maintained on a multiple schedule having both a food reinforced and an avoidance component (Mult VI 1′ S^Δ Avoid_{SS20 RS20} S^Δ). The effects of superimposing an Estes-Skinner procedure for delivering unavoidable shocks on all components of the multiple schedule were observed. The buzzer-shock pairing of the Estes-Skinner procedure produced an increased rate of responding on the avoidance component of the schedule and also on the S^Δ components. No persistent change in rate was observed on the food component during the pre-shock stimulus. Control performances on all components could be regained by either extinguishing or eliminating the buzzer-shock pairing. Extinction of the avoidance responding had little effect on the increased rates of responding produced by the Estes-Skinner procedure on the S^Δ and avoidance extinction components and did not lead to a conditioned suppression of the food reinforced responding. Rate of responding during the pre-shock stimulus was observed to be relatively independent of changes in the maintaining schedules. Responding during the pre-shock stimulus could be conditioned and maintained after an extensive history of avoidance extinction.