Contrast effects or loss aversion? Comment on Usher and McClelland (2004)

M. Usher and J. L. McClelland (2004) recently proposed a new connectionist type of model to explain context effects on preferential choice including the similarity, attraction, and compromise effects. They compared their model with an earlier connectionist type model for these same effects proposed by R. Roe, J. R. Busemeyer, and J. T. Townsend (2001) and raised several new issues. The authors address these issues and point out the main theoretical differences between the 2 explanations for context effects.     

Using cognitive models to map relations between neuropsychological disorders and human decision-making deficits

Findings from a complex decision-making task (the Iowa gambling task) show that individuals with neuropsychological disorders are characterized by decision-making deficits that lead to maladaptive risk-taking behavior. This article describes a cognitive model that distills performance in this task into three different underlying psychological components: the relative impact of rewards and punishments on evaluations of options, the rate that the contingent payoffs are learned, and the consistency between learning and responding. Findings from 10 studies are organized by distilling the observed decision deficits into the three basic components and locating the neuropsychological disorders in this component space. The results reveal a cluster of populations characterized by making risky choices despite high attention to losses, perhaps because of difficulties in creating emotive representations. These findings demonstrate the potential contribution of cognitive models in building bridges between neuroscience and behavior.     

Cognitive modeling analysis of decision-making processes in cocaine abusers

This article examines the theoretical basis of decision-making deficits exhibited by cocaine abusers in a laboratory decision-making task first described by Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, and Anderson (1994). A total of 12 male cocaine abusers and 14 comparison subjects performed the task, and the cocaine group performed significantly worse than the comparison group. A cognitive modeling analysis (Busemeyer & Stout, 2002) was used to estimate three parameters that measure importance of the cognitive, motivational, and response processes for determining the observed performance deficit. The results of this analysis indicated, for the first time, that motivational and choice consistency factors, but not learning/ memory were mainly responsible for the decision-making deficit of the cocaine abusers in this task.     

Dysfunction as a factual component of disorder

The harmful dysfunction (HD) analysis holds that disorder, mental or physical, requires harm, a value criterion, and dysfunction, a factual criterion referring to failure of a mechanism to perform a naturally selected function. Houts' arguments that the HD analysis does not offer an adequate factual account of dysfunction are examined and shown to be invalid. For example, his claim that the HD analysis confuses function with purpose, a value concept, ignores the analysis'account of function in terms of the value-free notion of effect-explanation; and his argument that functions imply norms (e.g., what mechanisms are 'supposed to' do) falsely assumes that such norms are evaluative. The HD analysis of function is analogous in logical structure to the functional analyst's factual behavioral notion of function. Houts' value account of disorder is inconsistent with people's classificatory judgments, as his own examples demonstrate.     

A quantum theoretical explanation for probability judgment errors

A quantum probability model is introduced and used to explain human probability judgment errors including the conjunction and disjunction fallacies, averaging effects, unpacking effects, and order effects on inference. On the one hand, quantum theory is similar to other categorization and memory models of cognition in that it relies on vector spaces defined by features and similarities between vectors to determine probability judgments. On the other hand, quantum probability theory is a generalization of Bayesian probability theory because it is based on a set of (von Neumann) axioms that relax some of the classic (Kolmogorov) axioms. The quantum model is compared and contrasted with other competing explanations for these judgment errors, including the anchoring and adjustment model for probability judgments. In the quantum model, a new fundamental concept in cognition is advanced--the compatibility versus incompatibility of questions and the effect this can have on the sequential order of judgments. We conclude that quantum information-processing principles provide a viable and promising new way to understand human judgment and reasoning.     

Sometimes it does hurt to ask: The constructive role of articulating impressions

Decisions can sometimes have a constructive role, so that the act of, for example, choosing one option over another creates a preference for that option (e.g., , ,  and ). In this work we explore the constructive role of just articulating an impression, for a presented visual stimulus, as opposed to making a choice (specifically, the judgments we employ are affective evaluations). Using quantum probability theory, we outline a cognitive model formalizing such a constructive process. We predict a simple interaction, in relation to how a second image is evaluated, following the presentation of a first image, depending on whether there is a rating for the first image or not. The interaction predicted by the quantum model was confirmed across three experiments and a variety of control manipulations. The advantages of using quantum probability theory to model the present results, compared with existing models of sequence order effects in judgment (e.g., Hogarth & Einhorn, 1992) or other theories of constructive processes when a choice is made (e.g.,  and ) are discussed.     

Different Realities: What Is Reality and What Difference Does It Make?

Consciousness does not exist apart from psyche; it reflects it. Different realities are not interchangeable with other manifestations of psychic reality. “Borderland consciousness” is the term I have conceived for people who, in one way or another, have a living dynamic connection to and relationship with nature. Given this understanding, the oral traditional and Native American cultures manifest a reciprocity psyche, and are today the closest manifestation of the psychic reality in Genesis, pre-expulsion from Eden. Navajo language contains no words for religion, guilt, human, inanimate, psyche, or ego. The Western psyche manifests a dominion psyche; that is, a binary consciousness borne as a result of the expulsion in Genesis, and wedded to logic as an uncompromising characteristic of sanity and health. This kind of consciousness too often crushes the spirit dimension, which is transrational. An awareness of borderland consciousness is entering into the Western cultural collective. This is the telos of the Garden of Eden expulsion, and itself represents the dominion psyche and the reciprocity psyche in dialogue. This dialogue offers a critical counterbalance to the rogue behavior of the overspecialized Western ego of the dominion psyche. This article urges Jungians to develop new methods of connecting with borderland consciousness since the dominion psyche and its technology alone cannot save our species in the face of the threat of a global climate change disaster.     

Correlates of tattoos and reference groups

520 college students from a public university in the southwest were questioned to examine correlations between having a tattoo and the presence of tattoos among their family and friends. Tattoos among both friends and family were positively correlated with respondents' having a tattoo. The magnitude of friends' influence was about double the influence of family.     

In My Era: Evidence for the Perception of a Special Period of the Past

Do individuals perceive a time of their lives that is special with regard to their identity as part of a generation or era? In an interview study, 89 subjects were asked to list favourite films (and the ages at which they saw them) and to list films that defined their era (and the ages at which they saw them). Subjects also stated the years that they felt began and ended their eras. Additional age-information questions about ages of schooling and co-workers and friends were asked. Results suggest that subjects perceive their era to be between ages 14 and 24; the mean age at which subjects viewed era films was 21.85 (inside the era), whereas the mean age at which subjects viewed favourite films was 27.59 (outside the era). Although most subjects perceived their eras to begin at approximately the same age (14), those subjects who attended college perceived extended era periods (by 2.5 years). Relationships between an era and social identity are discussed, as well as the relationship between the era and the autobiographical memory phenomenon of the reminiscence peak.