Propagation of innovations in networked groups

A novel paradigm was developed to study the behavior of groups of networked people searching a problem space. The authors examined how different network structures affect the propagation of information in laboratory-created groups. Participants made numerical guesses and received scores that were also made available to their neighbors in the network. The networks were compared on speed of discovery and convergence on the optimal solution. One experiment showed that individuals within a group tend to converge on similar solutions even when there is an equally valid alternative solution. Two additional studies demonstrated that the optimal network structure depends on the problem space being explored, with networks that incorporate spatially based cliques having an advantage for problems that benefit from broad exploration, and networks with greater long-range connectivity having an advantage for problems requiring less exploration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved).     

Measuring Hong Kong Undergraduate Students’ Attitudes Towards Transpeople

Hill and Willoughby’s (Sex Roles, 53:531–544, 2005) Genderism and Transphobia Scale (GTS), originally developed in Canada, was examined with a Hong Kong sample. Undergraduate students, 82 female and 121 male (total n?=?203), completed a Chinese version of the instrument. Overall scores and factor structure of the Hong Kong sample were compared with Hill and Willoughby’s Canadian data. Gender differences in transphobia were investigated, both in terms of the participants’ gender as well as the gender of the gender variant persons to whom GTS items referred. Transphobia was higher in Hong Kong than in Canada. The factor structure for Hong Kong differed from Canada. Five factors were identified (with a gender effect on Factors II and V). They were: I, Anti Sissy Prejudice; II, Anti Trans Violence; III, Trans Unnaturalness; IV, Trans Immorality; and V, Background Genderism. Hong Kong men were more transphobic than women. Gender variance in men was viewed less favourably than in women.     

The care-system for homeless youth in The Netherlands: perceptions of youngsters through a peer research approach

The aim of this study was to examine the perceptions of homeless youth of the care they receive. Since we wanted to involve homeless youth as participants in this project, we adopted the approach of peer-research. This form of collaborative research has a major role for homeless youth in making an inventory of the problems. A parallel is drawn between the parent-adolescent relationship and the relationship between social worker and homeless adolescent.     

Visuotactile apparent motion

This article compares the properties of apparent motion between a light and a touch with apparent motion between either two lights or two touches. Visual and tactile stimulators were attached to the tips of the two index fingers that were held apart at different distances. Subjects rated the quality of apparent motion between each stimulus combination for a range of stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs). Subjects reported perceiving apparent motion between all three stimulus combinations. For light—light visual apparent motion, the preferred SOA and the direction threshold SOAs increased as the distance between the stimuli increased (consistent with Korte’s third law of apparent motion). Touch—touch apparent motion also obeyed Korte’s third law, but over a smaller range of distances, showing that proprioceptive information concerning the position of the fingers is integrated into the tactile motion system. The threshold and preferred SOAs for visuotactile apparent motion did not vary with distance, suggesting a different mechanism for multimodal apparent motion.     

Consideration of preference shifts due to relative attribute variability

This study examined whether, and if so by what mechanism, changes in relative attribute variability can elicit a decoy effect. We argue and demonstrate that when only the relative variability of the attribute values in the choice set are manipulated (i.e., a frequency-only manipulation), decoy effects are observed consistent with predictions made by the Context-Dependent Weighting hypothesis as formulated by Huber et al. [Huber, J., Payne, J.W., & Puto, C. (1982). Adding asymmetrically dominated alternatives: Violations of regularity and the similarity hypothesis. Journal of Consumer Research, 10, 31–44.]. On the surface, our results appear to contravene earlier refutations of the Context-Dependent Weighting model. However, additional results from explicit tests of the purported casual mechanism (i.e., context-dependent attribute weight changes) suggest that decision-makers’ perceived importance of dimensions did not shift in response to our manipulation, making the Loss Aversion model a more viable explanation. Finally, results from a written protocol analysis suggest that many decision-makers were unaware, or at least unable to accurately verbalize, the influence of the context. Most decision-makers purported that they had made choices on the basis of their a priori beliefs about the relative importance of attributes despite the fact that there was clear evidence of context effects. Overall, our results underscore the importance of gathering multiple types of evidence for preference shifts in order to fully understand the mechanisms underlying decision-making.