Los procesos de atribución causal

RESUMEN

El interés por los procesos de atribución, por las explicaciones -razones- que las personas dan para su conducta y la de los demás, es una de las características más sobresalientes de los modelos recientes en la Psicología Social. Heider, hace veinticinco años, ya se había fijado en la gran significación de los procesos de atribución causal en las relaciones interpersonales, pero hasta hace bastantes años después no se recogieron los frutos de aquel interés señalado por Heider. En este trabajo se realiza una revisión de diversos modelos de atribución y se señala, desde una posición crítica, algunas de sus inconsistencias.     

双言舌尖现象的产生机制：来自粤语-普通话双言者的证据

舌尖现象(Tip-of-the-Tongue phenomenon, TOT)是言语产生中的一种常见现象。国外研究发现, 双语者和单语者的舌尖现象差异很大。双言和双语既相似, 又存在差异。以粤语–普通话双言者为被试, 比较了普通话熟练和不熟练的被试在使用不同语言命名时的TOT产生率。结果发现：(1)粤语–普通话双言者的TOT率受普通话熟练程度影响。普通话不熟练的粤语–普通话双言者用普通话命名时产生更高的TOT率。(2)语言启动能够调节粤语–普通话双言者的普通话熟练程度与TOT产生的关系。在语言启动条件下, 普通话熟练的粤语–普通话双言者的TOT率更高。(3)粤语–普通话双言者的TOT产生机制符合部分激活理论的预言。     

Barriers to Treatment in an Ethnically Diverse Sample of Families Enrolled in a Community-Based Domestic Violence Intervention

Using quantitative and qualitative data, we examined the association between barriers to treatment, motivating factors, treatment attendance, and outcome in a sample of 63 mothers (most of Asian or Pacific Islander descent) enrolled in a family-based domestic violence treatment program. A high number of perceived barriers was associated with lower attendance and lower scores on assessment of parenting practices at posttreatment. Mothers reported relying on their own motivation, observations of children's improvement, and the quality of their relationships with staff and group members to overcome barriers. A larger number of motivating factors was associated with positive parenting practices at posttreatment. Discussion includes the benefits of a mixed-method approach to measuring barriers and its clinical application to increase treatment participation.     

Laypeople do use sample variance: The effect of embedding data in a variance-implying story

When using sample data to decide whether two populations differ, laypeople attend to the difference between group means, but largely overlook within-group variability (Obrecht, Chapman, & Gelman, 2007 Obrecht, N. A., Chapman, G. B. and Gelman, R. 2007. Intuitive t-tests: Lay use of statistical information. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14: 1147–1152.  [Google Scholar]). We show, first, that laypeople know about and use story-implied variability when making pairwise comparisons. Then we demonstrate that participants’ sensitivity to variance in a dataset is boosted when presented in a context that implies consistent variance information. Statistical data were couched in stories about electrical conductivity measurements obtained from element samples (low-variability category) or body weight measurements from samples of peoples (high-variability category). We manipulated, between participants, whether the data variance matched or mismatched the story-implied variability. Participants who received data in a matching context showed high sensitivity to variance, while those in the mismatching condition did not. Laypeople use statistical data to make reasonable inferences when those data are provided in a context that makes sense.     

Pictorial superiority effects in oldest-old people

We examined memory for pictures and words in middle-age (45–59 years), young-old (60–74 years), old-old (75–89 years), and the oldest-old adults (90–97 years) in the Louisiana Healthy Aging Study. Stimulus items were presented and retention was tested in a blocked order where half of the participants studied 16 simple line drawings and the other half studied matching words during acquisition. Free recall and recognition followed. In the next acquisition/test block a new set of items was used where the stimulus format was changed relative to the first block. Results yielded pictorial superiority effects in both retention measures for all age groups. Follow-up analyses of clustering in free recall revealed that a greater number of categories were accessed (which reflects participants’ retrieval plan) and more items were recalled per category (which reflects participants’ encoding strategy) when pictures served as stimuli compared to words. Cognitive status and working memory span were correlated with picture and word recall. Regression analyses confirmed that these individual difference variables accounted for significant age-related variance in recall. These data strongly suggest that the oldest-old can utilise nonverbal memory codes to support long-term retention as effectively as do younger adults.     

The Enhanced Cognitive Interview: Testing Appropriateness Perception,Memory Capacity and Error Estimate Relation with Report Quality

The Enhanced Cognitive Interview (ECI) has been widely studied. However, research has overlooked witnesses' attitudes toward the interview and how error estimate and memory capacity relate to report quality. Participants watched a mock robbery video and were interviewed 48 hours later with either the Portuguese version of the ECI or a Structured Interview (SI). Participants interviewed with the ECI provided more information without compromising accuracy, particularly in free recall. Report accuracy was stable across interview phases and information categories. A higher perception of interview appropriateness (how witnesses evaluate the appropriateness of the interview procedure used) was linked with more detailed reports and more interest in being an interviewee. Participants over‐estimated their error rate, and their memory capacity was not related to witnesses' recall. It is essential to take into account their perception of interview appropriateness and use alternative methods to evaluate report quality. Major implications for real‐life investigations are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

认知冲突协调问题与心智的架构

心智架构或认知架构是指一个功能相对完整的认知系统的基本组织结构。经典认知科学的理论或模型大多采纳了某种类似于冯·诺依曼式计算机体系结构的心智架构,即认知系统由一些各司其职的心理模块与一个负责整合与协调的中枢部门所构成。进化心理学的众量模块性论题对经典认知科学的心智架构观提出了严厉挑战,并引发了许多争议。本文提出认知冲突协调问题是任何一个足够复杂的认知系统均需要处理的基本问题,并以此来审视关于心智架构的论战,指出此问题对众量模块性论题构成了严重的困难。     

Adult age differences in frontostriatal representation of prediction error but not reward outcome

Emerging evidence from decision neuroscience suggests that although younger and older adults show similar frontostriatal representations of reward magnitude, older adults often show deficits in feedback-driven reinforcement learning. In the present study, healthy adults completed reward-based tasks that did or did not depend on probabilistic learning, while undergoing functional neuroimaging. We observed reductions in the frontostriatal representation of prediction errors during probabilistic learning in older adults. In contrast, we found evidence for stability across adulthood in the representation of reward outcome in a task that did not require learning. Together, the results identify changes across adulthood in the dynamic coding of relational representations of feedback, in spite of preserved reward sensitivity in old age. Overall, the results suggest that the neural representation of prediction error, but not reward outcome, is reduced in old age. These findings reveal a potential dissociation between cognition and motivation with age and identify a potential mechanism for explaining changes in learning-dependent decision making in old adulthood.     

Peer acceptance among Chinese adolescents: The role of emotional empathy,cognitive empathy and gender

Previous studies have found mixed results on the relationship between empathy and peer acceptance. Emotional and cognitive components of empathy were hypothesised to play different roles in peer acceptance, and the relationship between empathy and peer acceptance differed across genders. In this study, 375 Chinese adolescents completed self‐report measures of emotional and cognitive empathy. They also provided peer nominations that allowed for the determination of social preference and social impact scores. The results showed that a boy's cognitive empathy positively correlated with the extent to which he was liked by his male classmates, whereas a girl's cognitive empathy positively correlated with her social impact among her female classmates. This study suggests that empathy does not affect peer acceptance among adolescents uniformly; instead, gender plays a determinative role in the dialectics between social acceptance and empathy.