Complex decision making: A longitudinal study of process and performance

Two studies using a computer-simulated, strategy-formulation game and business students were conducted using simultaneous verbal protocols. It was found that a number of information-processing and information-evaluation thought processes were significantly related to game performance. Consistent with what is known about individual decision making, the present results suggest that, for the task used in this study, individuals who engage in causal analysis perform better than those who do not. But those who focus on negative emotions, blindly repeat previously successful decisions, and engage in illogical through processes perform more poorly than those who do not. Causal replication using real managers within organizational settings, however, is needed before firm conclusions can be drawn from this research.     

Imagery, encoding specificity, and prose recall in 6-year-old children

Partial pictures depict only selected portions of prose passages. Partial pictures hypothetically aid retention by inducing young children to generate imagery for nonpictured prose. Results from two hundred eighty-eight 6-year-old children indicated that (a) partial pictures at study facilitate recall, (b) identical study and retrieval prompts facilitate recall, and (c) imagery instructions and training do not affect retention. Partial pictures apparently help children to encode information more efficiently at study, but there is no evidence that young children generate images with the aid of the partial picture cues, nor that they have a retrieval deficit for these images as suggested by M. Ruch and J. Levin.     

Critical levels and magnitude of effects

Researchers sometimes report an effect of an experimental manipulation on a dependent variable in terms of the difference between levels of a certain nuisance variable required in the different experimental conditions to reach a given criterion of behavior. This method, however, may yield illusory impressions about magnitude of effects.     

Intergroup contact: The typical member and the exception to the rule

Three studies examined the role of the perceived typicalness of an out-group member on her effectiveness in improving evaluations of her group. Subjects were students at two adjacent colleges. In the first study they interacted with a member of the out-group college. The interaction was either pleasant or unpleasant, and the contact person either confirmed or disconfirmed several stereotypes of the out-group (typicalness manipulation). Subjects evaluated the out-group most favorably when they interacted with the typical-pleasant member of the out-group. The second study demonstrated that contact with a highly typical member is not beneficial if her typicalness is based on stereotypes that reflect negatively on the subject's in-group. Several explanations of the typicalness findings were considered in a third study. Support was found for the hypothesis that the more typical member is perceived to be more predictive of the personality and actions of other out-group members.     

RELATING THE PHYSICS AND RELIGION OF DAVID BOHM

Abstract. David Bohm's thinking has become widely publicized since the 1982 performance of a form of the Einstein-Podolsky- Rosen (EPR) experiment. Bohm's holomovement theory, in particular, tries to explain the nonlocality that the experiment supports. Moreover, his theories are close to his metaphysical and religious thinking. Fritjof Capra's writings try something similar: supporting a theory (the bootstrap theory) because it is close to his religious beliefs. Both Bohm and Capra appear to use their religious ideas in their physics. Religion, their source for physical hypotheses, provides the motivation to develop and uphold them.     

Prediction as a means of inducing tolerance

Female subjects were exposed individually to the attitude item responses of a similar or dissimilar stranger. They were asked either to copy down the stranger's attitudes or to predict (with accurate feedback) how the stranger answered each item. Predict subjects were found to be more tolerant of the dissimilar stranger than were Copy subjects, while both groups were equally attracted to the similar stranger. It was suggested that training people to anticipate disagreements may be a useful way of fostering tolerance.     

Formal assessment of problem-solving and planning processes in preschool children

While much is known about adult problem-solving, the materials, analyses, and theoretical issues from the adult literature rarely make contact with the tasks typically used to investigate children's thinking. This paper examines the behavior of 4-, 5-, and 6-year-old children attempting to solve a novel variant of the Tower of Hanoi task. Problems varied in difficulty (one to seven moves for the minimum path solution) and in goal type: tower (all objects on one peg) or flat (all pegs occupied). For each problem, children gave verbal statements of their complete solution plan. The Plan Analysis examined performance as a function of goal type and age. Better performance was observed for tower ending problems, and among older children. The Error Analysis revealed that specific error propensities were related to both age and goal type. The Strategic Analysis compared the first move profiles of 6-year-olds to those of several plausible move selection models, and a high degree of correspondence was obtained between specific models and individual children. Young children appear to have rudimentary forms of many of the problem-solving processes previously identified in adults, but they may differ in encoding and representational processes.     

The air gap phenomenon in children's landscape drawings

The “air gap” phenomenon was found to be very common in the free landscape drawings of middle and later childhood. Three experiments are reported in which the contextual cues for such drawings were systematically manipulated. When subjects were supplied with drawing sheets constructed to imply the absence of the air gap, the phenomenon was eliminated in most of their drawings. When supplied with sheets constructed to imply its presence, most subjects produced air gap drawings using contextually provided reference lines. There were no consistent transfer effects across different cuing orders. The susceptibility of the air gap phenomenon to modification by task manipulation suggests that it results from problems of production rather than from defects in the child's internal representation of the world.