Inference-driven attention in symbolic and perceptual tasks: biases toward expected and unexpected inputs

The aims of this paper are (a) to gather support for the hypothesis that some basic mechanisms of attentional deployment (i.e., its high efficiency in dealing with expected and unexpected inputs) meet the requirements of the inferential system and have possibly evolved to support its functioning, and (b) to show that these orienting mechanisms function in very similar ways in two perceptual tasks and in a symbolic task. The general hypothesis and its predictions are sketched in the Introduction, after a discussion of current findings concerning visual attention and the generalities of the inferential system. In the empirical section, three experiments are presented where participants tracked visual trajectories (Experiments 1 and 3) or arithmetic series (Experiments 2 and 3), responding to the onset of a target event (e.g., to a specific number) and to the repetition of an event (e.g., to a number appearing twice consecutively). Target events could be anticipated when they were embedded in regular series/trajectories; they could be anticipated, with the anticipation later disconfirmed, when a regular series/trajectory was abruptly interrupted before the target event occurred; and they could not be anticipated when the series/trajectory was random. Repeated events could not be anticipated. Results show a very similar pattern of allocation in tracking visual trajectories and arithmetic series: Attention is focused on anticipated events; it is defocused and redistributed when an anticipation is not confirmed by ensuing events; however, performance decreases when dealing with random series/trajectory—that is, in the absence of anticipations. In our view, this is due to the fact that confirmed and disconfirmed anticipations are crucial events for “knowledge revision”—that is, the fine tuning of the inferential system to the environment; attentional mechanisms have developed so as to enhance detection of these events, possibly at all levels of inferential processing.     

Establishment of mands following tact training as a function of reinforcer strength

We examined some conditions under which a response acquired as a tact might facilitate the establishment of a mand. We taught 3 participants with developmental disabilities to tact the items ranked highest and lowest in a preference assessment and subsequently tested to see if the responses occurred as mands. All participants manded for the highly preferred item but rarely manded for the nonpreferred item. These results indicate that, although tact and mand functions are different, conditions can be created to facilitate transfer from the former to the latter. Implications for communication training are discussed.     

Culture and egocentric perceptions of fairness in conflict and negotiation

In this article, the authors advanced a cultural view of judgment biases in conflict and negotiation. The authors predicted that disputants' self-serving biases of fairness would be more prevalent in individualistic cultures, such as the United States, in which the self is served by focusing on one's positive attributes to "stand out" and be better than others, yet would be attenuated in collectivistic cultures, such as Japan, where the self is served by focusing on one's negative characteristics to "blend in" (S. J. Heine, D. R. Lehman, H. R. Markus, & S. Kitayama, 1999). Four studies that used different methodologies (free recall, scenarios, and a laboratory experiment) supported this notion. Implications for the science and practice of negotiation are discussed.     

The absence of a gender congruency effect in romance languages: a matter of stimulus onset asynchrony?

Using the picture-word interference paradigm, H. Schriefers and E. Teruel (2000) found that in German the grammatical gender of the distractor word affects the production of phrases composed of article+picture name: Latencies were longer for picture-word pairs of different genders. However, the effect was found only at positive stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs; i.e., when pictures were presented 75 or 150 ms earlier than word distractors). This gender congruency effect is not obtained in Romance languages. The present article examines whether in these languages, as in German, the effect appears at positive SOAs. No effect was observed in Italian and Spanish at positive SOAs. An account is proposed to explain why the gender congruency effect is obtained in Germanic (Dutch and German) but not in Romance languages.     

Assessment and treatment of elopement: a replication and extension

The current investigation replicated and extended the assessment and treatment methodology of elopement. The environmental variables that maintained elopement were identified in each case, and successful treatments were implemented for the 3 participants in settings that were similar to those in which elopement occurred.