The Challenge of Being a Challenger: Social Dominance Orientation Shapes the Impact of “Challenger vs. Leader” Comparisons

The current research investigates when and how comparative advertising effectiveness is shaped by social dominance orientation (SDO), that is, the degree to which one desires to maintain the status quo in social hierarchies. We examine these issues with regard to “challenger vs. leader” comparisons that seek to change the relative standing of competitors in a product category by documenting the superiority of challenger brands over market leaders. Findings demonstrate that the resistance to change characterizing high (vs. low) SDO individuals makes them respond (1) less favorably to “challenger vs. leader” comparisons that seek to alter the existing category hierarchy and (2) more favorably to “leader vs. challenger” comparisons that preserve this status quo in the category hierarchy. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed, as are avenues for future research.     

Developmental Changes in Strategies for Gathering Evidence About Biological Kinds

How do people gather samples of evidence to learn about the world? Adults often prefer to sample evidence from diverse sources—for example, choosing to test a robin and a turkey to find out if something is true of birds in general. Children below age 9, however, often do not consider sample diversity, instead treating non-diverse samples (e.g., two robins) and diverse samples as equivalently informative. The current study (N = 247) found that this discontinuity stems from developmental changes in standards for evaluating evidence—younger children chose to learn from samples that best approximate idealized views of what category members are supposed to be like (e.g., the fastest cheetahs), with a gradual shift across age toward samples that cover more within-category variation (e.g., cheetahs of varying speeds). These findings have implications for the relation between conceptual structure and inductive reasoning, and for the mechanisms underlying inductive reasoning more generally.     

Retrieval effort or intention: Which is more important for participants’ classification of involuntary and voluntary memories?

Theories of autobiographical memory distinguish between involuntary and voluntary memories. While involuntary memories are retrieved with no conscious intention and are therefore unexpected, voluntary memories are both intended and expected. Recent research has shown that participants sometimes classify their memories as either involuntary or voluntary based on retrieval effort instead of intention. These findings question whether intention really is the defining difference between these two types of retrieval or whether retrieval effort is also an important determinant. In two experimental studies, we investigated the extent to which participants rely on retrieval effort while classifying their memories as involuntary or voluntary. We created experimental conditions that maximize the probability of one type of retrieval while minimizing the probability of another type. Participants reported autobiographical memories in each condition while the programme registered their retrieval time. They then classified their memories as either voluntary or involuntary and rated all memories on perceived retrieval effort. This gave us four categories of memories: experimentally defined voluntary and involuntary memories with an objective measure of effort (retrieval time) and subjectively classified involuntary and voluntary memories with a subjective measure of effort. This allowed us to investigate the relative contribution of intention and effort to involuntary and voluntary memories. We replicated and extended previous findings by showing that the majority of memories were classified as involuntary independently of whether they were retrieved in the experimentally defined voluntary or involuntary condition. This could indicate that subjective effort is more important than intention for the involuntary–voluntary distinction in contrast with existing theories. We discuss theoretical and methodological implications of this finding.     

On the Conceptual Overlap between the Fluency Contamination Effect in Divergent Thinking Scores and the Chance View on Scientific Creativity

The equal odds baseline is a parsimonious model that describes the relationship between quantity and quality of output in scientific creativity. Specifically, it is posited that quality is a linear function of quantity, and therefore, strong positive correlations between these two variables are expected. Strong positive correlations also play a crucial role in a recurring issue in divergent thinking research: the fluency contamination effect. This effect refers to the problem that any other summative scoring of divergent thinking tests such as the number of original responses (i.e., quality of responses) is confounded by fluency (i.e., quantity of responses). The current work sheds further light into the conceptual overlap between the equal odds baseline, and the fluency contamination effect by demonstrating that a recent formalization of the fluency contamination effect can be used to derive the equal odds baseline. This result is then utilized within a structural equation modeling approach with simulated datasets to thoroughly examine the equal odds baseline. The findings of the structural equation modeling approach are discussed with respect to their potential to better understand the relationship between quantity and quality of productions in creativity research.     

Biases in long-term location memory in the real world

The category adjustment (CA) approach to distortions in location memory has been largely documented in simplified lab-created spaces but minimally in navigable real-world environments. In the current paper, we extend the approach to a navigable real-world environment and specifically evaluate the assumption that long-term location memory may be retrievable despite errors in recall. Memory for the location of a fountain in a heavily navigated square on a university campus was tested by reproduction on a photograph of the square and then by a forced-choice recognition test. While the recall data showed the standard bias, the recognition data revealed chance-level performance. The pattern of results suggests a possible difference between accessibility of working memories for locations within laboratory-created spaces and long-term memories for locations within complex navigable spaces. The results are discussed in terms of the CA model.     

Parental Influences on Memories of Parents and Friends

The authors evaluated the role parent–child relationship quality has on two types of memories, those of parents and those of friends. Participants were 198 Italian university students who recalled memories during 4 separate timed memory-fluency tasks about their preschool, elementary school, middle school, high school and university years. Half were instructed to recall memories involving parents and the remainder memories involving friends. Moreover, parent–child relationships were assessed by the Network of Relationships Inventory (NRI; W. Furman & D. Buhrmester, 1985) and Adolescents’ Report of Parental Monitoring (D. M. Capaldi & G. R. Patterson, 1989). Results showed that men with positive parent–son relationships had more memories of parents and more affectively positive memories of friends, supporting a consistency model positing similarity between parent–child relationships and memories of friends. Women with positive parental relationship quality had more affectively positive memories of parents but for friends, positive relationship quality only predicted positive memories when young. At older ages, especially middle school-aged children, negative parent–daughter relationships predicted more positive memories of friends, supporting a compensatory model. The gender of parent also mattered, with fathers having a more influential role on affect for memories of friends.     

Scale of reading fluency in Spanish: measuring the components of fluency / Escala de fluidez lectora en español: midiendo los componentes de la fluidez

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to design and validate a rating scale to measure reading fluency. As well as speed and accuracy, different dimensions of prosody were taken into account (volume, intonation, pauses and phrasing), aspects hardly considered in reading assessment. In addition, a measure of reading quality was included. 122 Spanish primary-school children (74 in Year 2 and 48 in Year 4) read aloud a narrative text. Using inter-rater criteria, children’s reading was assessed with this new rating scale (Scale of Reading Fluency in Spanish, SRFS) (Escala de Fluidez Lectora en Español, EFLE) and with the Multidimensional Fluency Scale (Rasinski, 2004). Standardized reading comprehension and prosodic reading tests were used as criterion measures. Results show acceptable reliability and validity coefficients. We conclude that SRFS appears to be a useful instrument for using in education and research contexts.     

Situated embodied cognition: Monitoring orientation cues affects product evaluation and choice

Consumers generally prefer products that are easy to interact with. In three studies, we show that this preference arises from the fit between product orientation and monitored situational constraints. Flexible right-handers, who monitor situational constraints, recall product orientations better and prefer products for which the handle is oriented in the direction of the hand used for grasping. When their ability to monitor situational constraints is impaired, the preference for easy-to-grasp products is attenuated. The findings highlight that motor fluency is a relevant cue for decision making when consumers assess how to interact with a product. The implications of these results for embodiment and fluency research are discussed.     

On the binary quality of recognition and the inconsequentiality of further knowledge: two critical tests of the recognition heuristic

The recognition heuristic is claimed to be distinguished from notions of availability and fluency through its categorical or “binary” treatment of information and the “inconsequentiality” of further knowledge to inferences based on recognition. Using the city‐size task of Goldstein and Gigerenzer ( 2002 ) we demonstrate that: (1) increasing the validity of other information in the environment decreases the reliance on recognition; (2) cities that are both recognized and have other information known about them (e.g. they have a soccer team) are chosen more often than those which are simply recognized; and (3) there is a negative correlation between the time taken to identify a city and the proportion of times it is selected as the larger of a pair. None of these results is predicted by the process model of the recognition heuristic. The implication of the results for the distinction between the recognition, availability and fluency heuristics is discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.