Induction, Grue Emeralds and Lady Macbeth's Fallacy

This paper does not purport to offer yet another 'solution' to the much discussed 'new riddle' of induction. The focus, instead, is on the genesis of Goodman's paradox and its relation to the classic problem of induction. In the arguments which led Goodman from the dissolution of Hume's problem to the discovery of the new riddle, I reveal a fundamentally flawed assumption about the nature of inductive inference which undermines Goodman's contention that the genuine problem of induction consists in distinguishing between projectible and non-projectible regularities. I further show that if the same set of observations may indeed support an indefinitely large number of inductive predictions, then the rationale for dismissing the classic problem of induction disappears. Stripped of its erroneous assumptions, the new riddle becomes nothing more than a special case of Hume's problem.     

Averting the gaze disengages the environment and facilitates remembering

When people are asked moderately difficult questions, they often avert their gazes. We report five experiments in which we documented this phenomenon. They demonstrate that (1) the frequency of gaze aversion is related to the difficulty of cognitive processing, (2) this behavior cannot be due solely to demand characteristics or embarrassment, and (3) the behavior is functional: Averting the gaze improves performance. We speculate that averting the gaze helps people to disengage from environmental stimulation and thereby enhances the efficiency of cognitive processing directed by nonenvironmental stimulation.     

Perseveration of cardiac-rate effects in the rhesus monkey following pavlovian conditioning

The effects of Pavlovian conditioning on diurnal cardiac rate were studied in four rhesus monkeys. A three-hour conditioning period, consisting of 18 CS-UCS pairings with UCS an aversive tail-shock, produced cardiac-rate elevation which persisted for as long as 12 hours after the session.     

A multi-purpose logic module for behavioral experiments

A notational system has been developed that can be used to describe most reinforcement schedules or other sequential procedures by appropriately interconnecting the basic notational units. The notational language has been applied in the past to develop a user-oriented computer program for behavioral experiments. The present paper describes a digital logic module designed to be isomorphic with the basic unit of the notational language, thus permitting rapid programming of new experiments directly from the notational system. The major advantage of the new module is that it requires no electronic sophistication on the part of the user, since the one module serves as the basic unit of all experiments.     

The illusion of knowing: Failure in the self-assessment of comprehension

The illusion of knowing is the belief that comprehension has been attained when, in fact, comprehension has failed. In the present experiment, the illusion was defined operationally as having occurred when readers who failed to find a contradiction in a text rated their comprehension of the text as high. Texts containing contradictions between adjacent sentences were presented, and readers were explicitly asked to search for contradictions. The frequency of illusions was greater when the contradictory sentences came at the end of three-paragraph texts rather than at the end of one-paragraph texts and when the contradictory information was syntactically marked as new. These results are interpreted within a framework that emphasizes that the goal of reading expository text is to establish coherence within and among sentences. In addition, the results are apparently incompatible with the notion that readers engage in active and accurate on-line monitoring of the degree to which this goal is met.     

Toward an understanding of the fundamental attribution error: Essay diagnosticity in the attitude attribution paradigm

The observer error in attitude attribution was examined, focusing upon the perceiver's conception of the relationship between a writer's attitude and the quality of performance on an essay task. Subjects appear to have invested essays, written under assignment, with diagnostic value on the presumption of a correlation between the quality or strength of the essay and the writer's attitude. When subjects were given essays varying in direction, strength, and constraint, their attributions indicated a reversal of correspondent inference for weak essays produced under high constraint, replicating an earlier, conceptually important result (E. E. Jones, S. Worchel, G. R. Goethals, & J. Grumet, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1971, 7, 59–80). It was suggested that the attribution error need not reflect general misunderstandings about, or the low salience of, situational factors, but rather is based on the perceiver's inclination to adopt a diagnostic judgmental set in the attitude attribution paradigm.     

Improving reading and self-concept through communication and social skills training

A course of psychological education is described in which disruptive children were taught social and communication skills over two terms. The course was designed for 26 eight-year-olds in an EPA junior school. Ten of the children were from broken homes, six were itinerants, most had displayed undesirable behaviour, and their level of achievement had been below average. Tested at the end of the second term, they showed dramatic improvements in self-concept and reading ability.     

Regional cerebral blood flow patterns during verbal and nonverbal auditory activation

Current views of the relationship between audition and cerebral function suggest that increases in regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) would occur in the superior, mid, and posterior portions of the temporal lobes, and that these changes would be more lateralized to the left hemisphere for a verbal than a nonverbal auditory task. We measured rCBF using the xenon inhalation technique in a group of healthy subjects during three conditions: (1) resting baseline, (2) auditory verbal activation (listening for word meaning), and (3) auditory nonverbal activation (listening for reduction of intensity in a series of noise bursts). Both verbal and nonverbal conditions produced highly significant increases in rCBF over the left posterior Sylvian region with a trend for verbal activation to evoke a wider area of flow increase than the nonverbal task.