Conflict and the Stochastic-Dominance Principle of Decision Making

One of the key principles underlying rational models of decision making is the idea that the decision maker should never choose an action that is stochastically dominated by another action. In the study reported in this article, violations of stochastic dominance frequently occurred when the payoffs produced by two actions were negatively correlated (in conflict), but no violations occurred when the payoffs were positively correlated (no conflict). This finding is contrary to models which assume that choice probability depends on the utility of each action, and the utility for an action depends solely on its own payoffs and probabilities. This article also reports, for the first time ever, the distribution of response times observed in a risky decision task. Both the violations of stochastic dominance and the response time distributions are explained in terms of a dynamic theory of decision making called multiattribute decision field theory.     

Transfer of training following discrimination learning with two reinforced responses

Pigeons were given errorless discrimination training between chromatic stimuli with a specific reinforced response associated with each discriminative stimulus. These Ss subsequently acquired a successive go/no-go auditory discrimination (utilizing one response class) faster than Ss given single stimulus training. These results are more compatible with an explanation of transfer of training in successive operant discrimination learning based on general attention than one based on withholding responses.     

Conditioned adaptation to prismatic displacement

Adaptation to prismatic displacement was conditioned to the wearing of a pair of goggles in 240 min of training by employing Taylor’s alternation training technique. The alternation was between training exposures with both the prism and the goggles presented to S and with both absent. After the training, both the pointing to a visual target test and the pointing straight ahead test measured more adaptation and more aftereffects of adaptation when the goggles were     

Conditioned adaptation to prismatic displacement with a tone as the conditional stimulus

Adaptation to prismatic displacement was conditioned to a tone in 72 min of training by employing Taylor’s alternation training technique. The alternation consisted of two training conditions. In one, S was exposed to the prism and tone; in the other, S was exposed to neither. After training, the pointing to a visual target test measured more aftereffects of adaptation when the tone was present than when it was absent. Conditioning was obtained in two testing situations: (1) with the training goggles still worn by S, and (2) with the goggles removed.     

Scoring difficulty of the WPPSI geometric design subtest

The study investigated the level of agreement among graduate students (N = 14) and school psychologists (N = 18) in scoring drawings for the 10 designs on the WPPSI Geometric Design subtest. Considerable scoring disagreement occurred within each group. Unanimous agreement was found for only 11 out of 50 drawing items among the graduate students and for only 7 out of 50 drawing items among the school psychologists. While the raters were generally confident of their ratings, there also was a significant positive relationship between level of scoring agreement and confidence ratings (rho = .76, p < .05). Scoring disagreement was greater for the drawings on designs 6 through 9 than on other designs. The results suggest that careful study of the WPPSI scoring criteria is needed in order to achieve scoring proficiency.     

Risk status of adolescent children of problem-drinking parents

These studies assessed the risk status of children of untreated alcoholics. In Study 1, a cross-sectional survey of 208 high school students identified 18% as having serious concern about their parents' drinking. In Study 2, 32 children of problem-drinking parents and 39 others who participated in self-help groups were surveyed. Children of problem-drinking parents were more at risk of depression, low self-esteem, and heavy drinking than their peers in the general high school population. Within self-help groups, however, children's symptomatology was not related to their parents' drinking status. The results support the need for preventive intervention for children of problem-drinking parents and for developing strategies for improving the participation rate of such children in the intervention programs that are available.     

Tone production deficits in nonfluent aphasic Chinese speech

Previous studies demonstrating a right hemisphere lateralization of musical, tonal, and intonational stimuli had suggested that in aphasic tone language speakers, the tonal phonemes might be subject to a lesser degree of deficit than consonantal phonemes. Using a word repetition task, this research demonstrates that left-damaged nonfluent aphasic speakers of Chinese experience a tonal production deficit which is both quantitatively and qualitatively equivalent to the deficit experienced by these speakers in the production of consonants. It is suggested that in tone languages, lexical specification of tone contour information results in left hemisphere lateralization of that information, thus making the tonal phonemes vulnerable to left hemisphere damage.