Exposure-based models of human parsing: Evidence for the use of coarse-grained (nonlexical) statistical records

Several current models of human parsing maintain that initial structural decisions are influenced (or tuned) by the listener's or reader's prior contact with language. The precise workings of these models depend upon the grain, or level of detail, at which previous exposures to language are analyzed and used to influence parsing decisions. Some models are premised upon the use of fine-grained records (such as lexical cooccurrence statistics). Others use coarser measures. The present paper considers the viability of models based exclusively on the use of fine-grained lexical records. The results of several studies are reviewed and the evidence suggests that, if they are to account for the data, experience-based parsers must draw upon records or representations that capture statistical regularities beyond the lexical level. This poses problems for several parsing models in the literature.Aspects of this work were supported by ESRC grant No. R0023 4062 to Don Mitchell, by a Spanish Government grant DGICVT No. PB-92-0656-C04-02 to Fernando Cuetos, and by the Belgian National Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, of which Marc Brysbaert is a Research Associate. We are grateful to Chuck Clifton, Barbara Hemforth, Martin Pickering, Matt Traxler, and an anonymous reviewer-all of whom made helpful comments on an earlier draft of the paper.     

The availability heuristic in person identification: The sometimes misleading consequences of enhanced contextual information

Three field studies investigated the effects of post-exposure cognitions on person identification. Subjects' beliefs that they could identify someone were significantly increased by the presentation of new information and the rehearsal of old information about the person. Misidentification errors increased as the lengths of the initial exposure duration increased and when subjects received additional contextual information about the target. These frequent misidentifications may reflect the misattribution of familiarity from enhanced contextual knowledge to familiarity arising from perceptual knowledge. Further, performance was enhanced when the identification task capitalized on 'transfer-appropriate rehearsal' post-event strategies. Ancillary findings contradicted research on 'verbal overshadowing', and the relationship between identification accuracy and confidence. The results were generalized to real-world situations that encourage post-event cognitions by eyewitnesses.     

Client Cognitive Responses as a Function of Quality of Counselor Verbal Responses

This study examined the relationship between high and low quality counselor responses in four response modes and client cognitions. Twenty-one university students participated in two sessions of brief counseling that included high and low quality counselor responses in paraphrasing, questioning, reflection of feeling, and self-disclosure. After each counseling session, participants used Kagan's (1975) interpersonal process recall method to report their cognitions in response to these counselor responses. Results indicated that the participants had more favorable cognitions toward the counselor associated with high quality counselor paraphrasing and reflection of feeling responses. Participants' cognitions directed toward themselves did not differ in response to any of the four high and low quality counselor responses. Implications of the results are discussed.     

Disputing clients' irrational beliefs

This paper describes and illustrates a conceptual framework developed to assist novice REBT therapists with enlarging their disputational repertoire. First, four disputational strategies are described and illustrated. Then four disputational styles of presenting the strategies to the client are also described and illustrated. Then the disputational strategies and the disputational styles are combined within a conceptual framework to assist the developing REBT therapist in generating a variety of disputes for a single IB. Finally, the conceptual framework is applied to the IB of the case of Karen from Dryden and Digiuseppe'sPrimer on Rational Emotive Therapy to yield thirty-two separate disputes (sixteen disputes for the premise of the IB, and sixteen disputes for the derivative) of the IB.     

Detection of Fs in a single statement: The role of phonetic recoding

Most college-student readers have difficulty in detecting the letter F in instances of the word OF embedded in a single statement. Throughout a series of five experiments designed to clarify the basis of these detection failures, their unique and robust nature was demonstrated. The detection failures persisted in spite of repeated attempts to detect the letters by subjects who, in separate conditions and experiments, first memorized or copied the statement, or who, for purposes of comparison, also detected the O in OF, the N in ON, or the F in IF, or who read the statement in a number of physical formats, which included lower and upper letter cases, scrambled syntax, unsegmented letter strings, and vertical (list) presentation. Although many of these manipulations significantly improved performance, none produced perfect performance or performance comparable to the detection of F in IF. Several hypotheses, including those of redundancy, unitization, and phonetic recoding, were tested as explanations of the detection failures: The hypothesis that received the strongest support was that of phonetic recoding. This hypothesis focuses upon the atypical pronunciation of F as/v/(as in the word OF), rather than as the more typical/f/. In short, this reading illusion was concluded to be, in large part, a result of the subjects’ scanning their acoustic rather than their visual images of the printed word.     

Derivatives of the Self-Directed Search: Potential clinical and evaluative uses

Four derivatives of the Self-Directed Search (SDS), accuracy in estimating one's profile, differentiation of one's six SDS personality types, consistency of the types within one's summary code, and congruence of the summary code with the preferred occupational area, were computed and correlated with other indices of career maturity for 138 community college students. Accuracy in estimating one's SDS profile correlated significantly with five other career maturity indices, but the other derivatives tended not to relate to the other career maturity criteria. The discussion examines the implications of using the Accuracy derivative to identify clients in need of assistance with career development and to unobtrusively evaluate career development interventions, and it suggests ways of increasing the reliability of the derivatives and promising directions for further research.     

Human Aggressive and Escape Responding: Effects of Provocation Frequency

The Psychological Record - The effect of point loss frequency on aggressive and escape responding was investigated in two experiments. Subjects could respond on levers marked “A,”...     

Random error in additive decompositions of multiattribute utility

Decomposition is a common strategy for dealing with the complexity of multiattribute decision problems. A cognitively demanding task is broken down into tasks requiring simpler, perhaps easier, judgments which can then be aggregated. But individual judgments can be inconsistent in systematic or random fashion and when aggregated there is the possibility of propagation of this inconsistency. In this paper inconsistency in the form of random error is investigated in the context of additive decomposition of multiattribute utility. The process of aggregation of random error is studied and a comparison made with random error in holistic estimates of multiattribute utility. Conditions under which decomposition improves the consistency of the multiattribute utility estimate are presented and discussed.