Certainty and Uncertainty: The Two Faces of the Hindsight Bias

“Hindsight Bias” is a person's tendency, after learning about the actual outcome of a situation or the correct answer to a question, to distort a previous judgment in the direction of this new information. In the literature, hindsight bias has been mostly discussed as an inevitable result of a “judgment under uncertainty.” We think that the hindsight bias is due to memorial as well as inferential processes: Whereas certainty about the recollection is memorial and concerns the recollective experience, certainty at the time of the judgment is inferential and concerns the individual's metaknowledge (“I know that I knew that”). In two experiments participants' feelings of certainty were measured indirectly (Koriat & Goldsmith, 1996) by giving participants the option of leaving those questions unanswered about which they felt uncertain. This free-report option was offered to half of the participants in the first estimate phase (concerning time of judgment) and to the second half in the memory phase (concerning the recollective experience). At the end of the session, participants were presented again with the questions they had skipped and were now required to answer them. This procedure allowed us to compare the amount of hindsight bias for the skipped, uncertain items to the spontaneously answered, certain ones. Both experiments demonstrated that the hindsight bias is a result of the interaction of both uncertainty and certainty.     

Novelty Categorization Theory

Novelty Categorization Theory (NCT) attempts to predict when people perceive events as novel and how they process novel events across different domains. It is predicted that broad mental categories reduce the perception of an event being novel via inclusion processes, whereas narrow categories increase it via exclusion processes. Furthermore, based on a ‘motive to know’, when preparing for novel events, people broaden both perception and mental categories, because to understand novel information, it is essential to integrate it into pre-existing knowledge structures that are sufficiently broad. Over time, a ‘when-novel-then-process-globally’ routine develops that is automatically elicited when novelty is encountered. Self-protective motives can, however, counteract such processing styles so that threatening novelty leads to local processing. Relations to construal level theory and action identification theory and implications for future research are discussed.     

Psychoneuroendocrine effects of resource-activating stress management training.

OBJECTIVE: The stress-induced release of cortisol has been linked to detrimental health outcomes. Therefore, strategies to attenuate cortisol stress responses are of interest for prevention and treatment of stress-related symptoms and problems. Previous studies have found protective effects of cognitive-behavioral stress management training--which focuses on the modification of stress-inducing cognitions--on cortisol stress responses; however, the effects of resource-oriented interventions on cortisol stress responses are unknown. DESIGN: The longitudinal effects of resource-oriented stress management training (Zurich resource model training) on cortisol stress responses and cognitive appraisal of a standardized psychosocial stress test were evaluated in 54 healthy male participants assigned randomly to treatment and control groups. The Trier Social Stress Test (TSST; C. Kirschbaum, Wust, & Strasburger, 1992) was administered to all participants 3 months after the treatment group underwent stress management training. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Saliva cortisol samples were taken before, during, and after the TSST, and cognitive stress appraisal was assessed before the test. RESULTS: The treatment group had significantly attenuated cortisol responses and stress appraisals in comparison to the control group. The endocrine differences were mediated by differences in cognitive appraisals. DISCUSSION: These results indicate that resource-oriented stress management training effectively reduces endocrine stress responses to stress in healthy adults.     

Perceived rotary motion from changes in a straight line

The problem dealth with was how perception of a three-dimensional space is related to the corresponding two-dimensional retinal image. The stimulation used was a straight line changing length and direction. For this stimulation a geometrical model was developed. The basic decoding principle in this model is that the changes in the two-dimensional figure will be perceived as three-dimensional motions of an object with constant shape and size. This principle was approximately verified for the majority of the data. The main deviation from the model was that there was generally less perceived depth than predicted. Also a second decoding principle was generally verified: rotary, but not translator motion is perceived from this kind of stimulation. A third unexpected decoding principle was found in the data: the line is perceived in a frontal-parallel direction when it has its maximal extention.     

Effects of encoding strategy,presentation modality,and scoring method on STM performance with the Peterson and Peterson technique

The Peterson and Peterson (1959) STM experiment was replicated with variation of presentation modality and encoding strategy. The effect of various scoring criteria was also analyzed. The recall data showed that a Peterson and Peterson type forgetting curve was obtained using auditory presentation and instructions to rehearse vocally the trigrams when scoring only completely correct recall within the first 3 sec of the recall interval. With visual presentation and instructions to find meaningful trigram interpretations, the forgetting curve was higher and much more flat, especially when scoring position correct recall within the total 0-10-sec recall interval. In a buildup of PI experiment, no buildup of PI could be detected when visual presentation was used together with instructions to find meaningful trigram interpretations. The importance of the different encoding activities for recall performance was discussed.     

RECOVERY TIME AFTER GLARE: An experimental investigation of glare after-effect under night driving conditions

Preliminary experiments suggest that the changes in adaptation level due to glaring light in a night traffic meeting situation give no practically important deterioration of visibility. To obtain a more complete answer, one experiment was done in a 'real' night driving situation, and two experiments were carried out using a glare simulator, aimed at quantifying the change in the level of adaptation in terms of redetection time of a target made invisible due to glare. The effect of three factors were studied: duration of glare, maximum illuminance of glare, and contrast ratio between background and target. The preliminary suggestions were fully confirmed.     

Effects of facial expression on working memory

In long‐term memory (LTM) emotional content may both enhance and impair memory, however, disagreement remains whether emotional content exerts different effects on the ability to maintain and manipulate information over short intervals. Using a working‐memory (WM) recognition task requiring the monitoring of faces displaying facial expressions of emotion, participants judged each face as identical (target) or not (non‐target) to that presented 2 trials back (2‐back). Negative expression was better and faster recognised, illustrated by higher target discriminability and target detection. Positive and negative expressions also induced a more liberal detection bias compared with neutral. Taking the preceding item into account, additional accuracy impairment (negative preceding negative target) and enhancement effects (negative or positive preceding neutral target) appeared. This illustrates a differential modulation of WM based on the affective tone of the target (mirroring LTM enhancement‐ and recognition bias effects), and of the preceding item (enhanced and impaired target detection).