Combining two separate series into a single ordering: Testing the local and global distinctiveness theories with absolute and relative judgments

This study examined the differential effects of an absolute versus a relative judgment task on the retrieval of the border-position items after the combining of two separate serial lists. Under the absolute judgment condition (Experiment 1), the border-position items showed a local distinctiveness effect (faster judgment on these items than on the neighboring items), consistent with the prediction of the local distinctiveness theory of order memory, but not under the relative judgment condition (Experiment 2). The absence of the local distinctiveness effect under the relative judgment condition was consistent with the prediction of the global distinctiveness theory that a midseries item cannot be remembered better than its neighbors. The causes of the differential effects of the two judgment tasks were discussed.     

编码强度对字体大小效应的影响

本研究采用3个实验考察编码强度对字体大小效应的影响,探讨由于知觉特征而引发的元认知错觉的内在产生机制(实验1)与有效的矫正措施(实验2和实验3)。结果发现:(1)大字体词语的知觉流畅性显著优于小字体,并且贝叶斯多层中介分析结果表明,知觉流畅性对字体大小效应起部分中介作用(实验1);(2)随着编码强度的增加,由字体大小引起的学习判断错觉逐渐消失(实验2和实验3)。以上结果表明,刺激的知觉特征(字体大小)对个体学习判断的影响,随编码强度激活线索的增加而逐渐减弱。这一结果为真实教学情境中提高学习者的编码强度,进而削弱学习判断对知觉特征线索的依赖,并准确地监测自身的学习进程提供了科学依据。     

大学生对学习行为的责任归因

探讨大学生对日常不同学习行为的控制程度的认识、责任判断、情感反应和帮助行为的关系特点,以验证责任归因理论对我国学生的适用程度。与此同时,研讨归因理论的同类研究中很少涉及的学生思想、观念对责任归因的影响。     

Popper and Synthetic judgements A Priori

Summary  Popper uses the “Humean challenge” as a justification for his falsificationism. It is claimed that in his basic argument he confuses two different doubts: (a) the Humean doubt (Popper’s problem of induction), and (b) the “Popperean” doubt whether – presupposing that there are laws of nature – the laws we accept are in fact valid. Popper’s alleged solution of the problem of induction does not solve the problem in a straightforward way (as Levison and Salmon have remarked before). But if Popper’s solution of the Humean challenge is re-interpreted as being close to Kant’s it makes sense. Even though Popper explicitly rejects Kant’s synthetic judgements a priori, it is claimed here that this is so because he misinterprets Kant’s argument. If he had understood Kant correctly he should have been a modern “Kantianer”!     

Subjective Well-Being and Kahneman’s ‘Objective Happiness’

This paper is an attempt to clarify the relation between, on the one hand, the construct of ‘objective happiness’ recently proposed by Daniel Kahneman and, on the other hand, the principal focus of happiness studies, namely subjective well-being (SWB). I have two aims. The first, a critical one, is to give a theoretical explanation for why ‘objective happiness’ cannot be a general measure of SWB. Kahneman’s methodology precludes incorporation of relevant pieces of information that can become available to the subject only retrospectively. The second aim, a constructive one, is to clarify the exact connection between ‘objective happiness’ and the wider notion of SWB. Unlike Kahneman, who treats the notion as a useful first approximation, I propose that its applicability should be thought of as context-dependent: under some conditions it could be the right measure of SWB but what these conditions are involves both psychological and ethical considerations.     

Age differences in the effects of social influence on children's eyewitness performance and their metacognitive monitoring

The current work investigated the effects of social influence on children's recall accuracy and metacognitive monitoring. Two studies were conducted in which 8- and 10-year-olds were confronted with postevent information in an interview situation. An interviewer (Study 1) or a confederate (Study 2) provided postevent information with two levels of assertiveness, inducing (a) a variation of conformity pressure and (b) a variation of information credibility. Afterwards, children's confidence judgments were assessed. The results revealed significant age differences in children's ability to adequately cope with variations of social influence. Although conformity pressure was especially important for the 8-year-olds, effects of informative social influence were independent of age. However, 10-year-olds were also able to act appropriately on low credibility, thereby demonstrating a more sophisticated consideration of social influence sources. Moreover, varying assertiveness also affected the quality of children's confidence judgments by improving their metacognitive differentiation skills.     

Dispositional mindfulness and the wandering mind: Implications for attentional control in older adults

Age-related cognitive decline brings decreases in functional status. Dispositional mindfulness, the tendency towards present-moment attention, is hypothesized to correspond with enhanced attention, whereas mind-wandering may be detrimental to cognition. The relationships among mindfulness, task-related and task-unrelated thought, and attentional control performance on Go/No-Go and Continuous Performance tasks were examined in older adults. Dispositional mindfulness was negatively associated with task-unrelated thought and was positively associated with reactive control, but not proactive control or Go/No-Go performance. Although mind-wandering was not directly associated with performance, task-unrelated thought mediated the mindfulness-proactive control relation. Fewer task-unrelated thoughts were associated with lower proactive control. Interestingly, this effect was moderated by working memory such that it was present for those with low-average, but not high, working memory. This study highlights the importance of dispositional mindfulness and mind-wandering propensity in accounting for individual differences in attentional control in older adults, providing important targets for future cognitive remediation interventions.     

Judging the Probability of Hypotheses Versus the Impact of Evidence: Which Form of Inductive Inference Is More Accurate and Time‐Consistent?

Inductive reasoning requires exploiting links between evidence and hypotheses. This can be done focusing either on the posterior probability of the hypothesis when updated on the new evidence or on the impact of the new evidence on the credibility of the hypothesis. But are these two cognitive representations equally reliable? This study investigates this question by comparing probability and impact judgments on the same experimental materials. The results indicate that impact judgments are more consistent in time and more accurate than probability judgments. Impact judgments also predict the direction of errors in probability judgments. These findings suggest that human inductive reasoning relies more on estimating evidential impact than on posterior probability.     

The association between dispositional self-control and longitudinal changes in eating behaviors,diet quality,and BMI

In a random sample from the general population (N = 2781, 46% males), a longitudinal survey was conducted. The association between dispositional self-control and changes in eating behaviours and diet quality was analysed between the first wave (2010) and the last wave (2014). Results show that the higher the dispositional self-control, the lower the increase in overeating behaviours (emotional eating, external eating, ambivalence towards palatable food and overeating), and BMI and the larger the improvement in healthy diet over time. Self-control was not associated with changes in dietary restraint. This is one of the first studies suggesting that dispositional self-control is associated with changes in eating behaviours and healthy food intake over time.