Cognitive tools shape thought: diagrams in design

Thinking often entails interacting with cognitive tools. In many cases, notably design, the predominant tool is the page. The page allows externalizing, organizing, and reorganizing thought. Yet, the page has its own properties that by expressing thought affect it: path, proximity, place, and permanence. The effects of these properties were evident in designs of information systems created by students Paths were interpreted as routes through components. Proximity was used to group subsystems. Horizontal position on the page was used to express temporal sequence and vertical position to reflect real-world spatial position. The permanence of designs on the page guided but also constrained generation of alternative designs. Cognitive tools both reflect and affect thought.     

Visualizing space,time, and agents: production,performance, and preference

Visualizations of space, time, and agents (or objects) are ubiquitous in science, business, and everyday life, from weather maps to scheduling meetings. Effective communications, including visual ones, emerge from use in the field, but no conventional visualization form has yet emerged for this confluence of information. The real-world spiral of production, comprehension, and use that fine-tunes communications can be accelerated in the laboratory. Here, we do so in search of effective visualizations of space, time, and agents. Users’ production, preference, and performance aligned to favor matrix representations with time as rows or columns and space and agents as entries. Overall, performance and preference were greater for matrices with discrete dots representing cell entries than for matrices with lines, but lines connecting cells may provide an advantage when evaluating temporal sequence. Both the diagram type and the technique have broader applications.     

Biased retellings of events yield biased memories

When people retell events, they take different perspectives for different audiences and purposes. In four experiments, we examined the effects of this postevent reorganization of events on memory for the original events. In each experiment, participants read a story, wrote a biased letter about one of the story characters, and later remembered the original story. Participants' letters contained more story details and more elaborations relevant to the purpose of their retellings. More importantly, the letter perspective affected the amount of information recalled (Experiments 1, 3, and 4) and the direction of the errors in recall (Experiments 1 and 3) and recognition (Experiment 2). Selective rehearsal plays an important role in these bias effects: retelling involves selectively retrieving and using story information, with consequent differences in memory. However, biased memory occurred even when the biased letters contained little, if any, specific information (Experiment 4) or contained the same amount and kinds of story information as a neutral control condition (Experiment 3). Biased memory is a consequence of the reorganizing schema guiding the retelling perspective, in addition to the effects of rehearsing specific information in retelling.     

Structuring information interfaces for procedural learning

Interface design should be informed by the application of top-down cognitive principles derived from basic theory and research. Cognitive design principles from 2 domains, event cognition and media, were applied to the design of interfaces for teaching procedures. According to theories of event cognition, procedures should be presented hierarchically, organized by objects or large object parts and actions on objects. According to research on effects of media, adding appropriate graphics to text instructions can facilitate learning and memory. These principles were partially supported in 2 tasks: assembling a musical instrument and building a model. Although both top-down principles were effective in guiding interface design, they were not sufficient. They can be combined with iterative bottom-up methods to produce usable interfaces.     

Here Today,Gone Tomorrow? Assessing How Timing and Repetition of Scandal Information Affects Candidate Evaluations

Scholars and political consultants alike know that during a campaign even the hint of a scandal has the potential to distract from a candidate's policy messages—or even worse—can have dire consequences on Election Day. But does it matter whether the scandal breaks early as opposed to late in the campaign? And how do citizens respond when the scandal drags on for weeks? This study represents the first effort to shed light on these temporal dynamics. Results reveal that timing affects the immediate impact of scandal information, the rate at which those initial effects decay, and candidate evaluations offered at the campaign's conclusion. Additionally, I develop two competing hypotheses regarding how citizens may process scandal information when it is repeated throughout a campaign. Empirical tests suggest that voters eventually reach a saturation threshold after which additional repetition of scandal information has negligible effects on evaluations unless new details are a prominent feature of ongoing coverage, in which case repetition can extend the negative effects of scandal.     

Evaluation of Potential Kidney Donors with the Personality Assessment Inventory: Normative Data for a Unique Population

Many transplant centers require personality assessment and/or psychiatric clearance prior to allowing an individual to donate a kidney. This is a unique cohort for personality assessment, and there is no normative information available for this population on standardized self-report measures such as the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI). We evaluated a prospective sample of 434 kidney donor candidates with development of normative T-scores relevant to this specific comparison group. Compared to the original normative group from the PAI manual, potential kidney donors are 5–7 T-score points above the mean on PIM, RXR, DOM, and WRM and 4–6 points below the mean on the majority of the remaining scales. Raw score/T score conversion tables are provided. The normative data provided here is meant to supplement the original normative information and aid psychologists in evaluation of this unique medical population.