Reward and number of choices in children's probability learning: An attempt to reconcile conflicting findings

Five event schedules (75:0, 75:25, 75:0:0, 72:25:0, 75:12.5:12.5) were examined in a size discrimination task with penny rewards and plastic token markers. The subjects were 100 fourth graders (mean age = 9.4 years) and 100 undergraduates of both sexes. Whether or not the event probabilities summed to unity proved to be a more important determiner of terminal performance than the number of response alternatives in the task (p < .01). Females maximized more than males (p < .001) and college students more than fourth graders (p < .001). Greater maximization was exhibited by fourth graders in the reward condition (p < .01). These reward effects appeared to be more consistent with a detrimental-effects-of-reward interpretation than either utility or expectancy interpretations.     

Same-sex imitation of and reported agreement with parents and unfamiliar adults

Children aged 7, 10, and 14 were shown sets of photographs of human figures for each of which they made judgments of age or attractiveness. Randomly determined responses appeared under each set of photographs. Half the children were told the responses represented choices of parents and the other half that they represented choices of unfamiliar adults. After the opportunity to imitate, children were asked whom they thought they agreed with the most. Findings indicated only a small, borderline-significant effect for same-sex imitation, but a large, highly significant effect for reported agreement, particularly in the unfamiliar adult condition (p < .001). Discussion centered on two issues: (1) Same-sex effects appear strongest when the act of choosing between adults and the adults' gender are accentuated; and (2) differences between present and previous findings regarding same-sex effects for parents vs unfamiliar adults may relate to the ages of the children investigated.     

Evaluation of infant vocal conditioning.

The use of the operant conditioning paradigm, as it has been applied to infant social, vocal behavior, reflects a failure to take into account the social nature of human infants over and above the rigid theoretical rationale of the paradigm. It is argued that: (1) the baseline procedure used in operant conditioning studies is methodologically and conceptually invalid; (2) the reinforcing stimulus used in social conditioning studies elicits the very response that it is assigned to reinforce; and (3) the effect of the response-reinforcer relationship is not the reinforcement (strengthening) of vocal response rate.     

Discriminative infant smiling to orientations of talking faces of mother and stranger.

Thirty-two infants aged 14 and 20 weeks were presented with a live face in each of eight conditions, which consisted of all combinations of (a) a 0° or 90° orientation; (b) familiar face (the infant's mother) or distinctively unfamiliar face; and (c) talking or silent context. The previous findings that younger infants smile longer at 0° than at 90° faces and that this differential responsiveness to orientation wanes with increasing age were replicated; the hypothesis that older infants would smile longest at their mothers' talking faces in the 0° orientation was confirmed. In addition, infants of both ages smiled more at their mothers than at the stranger, although this effect interacted with orientation and sex of the infant.     

Dissonance theory revised again: Comment on the paper by Fazio,Zanna, and Cooper

Fazio, Zanna, and Cooper (Dissonance and self-perception: An integrative view on each theory's proper domain of application. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1977, 13, 464–479) specified mutually exclusive domains of application for dissonance and self-perception theory and used a misattribution-of-arousal procedure to distinguish between dissonance reduction and self-perception processes. Because their proposed limitations of the domains of the two theories and their use of the misattribution procedure are not directly derivable from earlier statements of either theory, it may be best to regard their analysis as a new theory, rather than as a conciliation of the parent theories. New analyses based on the Fazio et al. results indicate that their data provide an insufficient basis for preferring their theory to earlier versions of dissonance and self-perception theories. Dissonance and self-perception: An integrative view of each theory's proper domain of application. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1977, 13, 464–479.     

Imaging,empathy, and causal attribution

Three studies were conducted to test whether imagery accounts for the effects of empathy on attributions, that is, whether attributers construct and scan a mental image of social scenarios the same way that actual participants scan a real environment. According to this interpretation, attributers “see” the world as the participant does and make vicarious attributions. An alternative interpretation holds that subjects base vicarious attributions on recreating the motivations and affect of the actor, so that imaging is irrelevant to empathy and attributions. In the first study, subjects who imagined a story from the perspective of a particular character later showed differential recall of story details as a function of role, but not differential attributions. In Experiment 2, role-taking subjects showed clear effects of imaged perspective on recall for story details, but no effects on attributions of causality for an accident. Further, recall and attribution were uncorrelated. In the last study, empathy and imagery role-taking instructions produced independent effects: imagers showed pronounced perspective-relevant recall and empathizers did not. Neither showed unambiguous vicarious attributions. Recall and attribution were again uncorrelated. These studies suggest that the imagery explanation of empathy effects is untenable, and imply that the recall of perspective-relevant details is unlikely to mediate attributions of causality in imaginary scenarios.     

Facial and vocal cues of deception and honesty

Facial expressions and vocal cues (filtered speech) of honest and deceptive messages were examined in posed and spontaneous situations. The question of interest was the degree to which nonverbal cues transmit information about deception. Results indicated that (a) for both the facial and vocal channels, posing (as compared to spontaneous behavior) produced a higher level of communication accuracy; (b) facial expressions of deceptive (as compared to honest) messages were rated as less pleasant, while vocal expressions of deception were rated as less honest, less assertive, and less dominant, particularly in the posed condition; (c) the sender's ability to convey honesty was negatively correlated with his/her ability to convey deception, suggesting the existence of a demeanor bias—individual senders tend to appear and sound consistently honest (or dishonest) regardless of whether they deliver an honest or a deceptive message; (d) in the posing condition, the sender's abilities to convey honesty/deception via facial and vocal cues were positively and significantly correlated, whereas in the spontaneous condition they were not; and (e) senders whose full (unfiltered) speech indicated more involvement with their responses were judged as more honest from both their vocal (filtered speech) and facial cues, in both the honest and deceptive conditions.     

Selective perception of events

Two hundred and twelve subjects were given one of two interpretive sets prior to viewing an event. Following observation, the first interpretation was discredited, and subjects were asked to interpret the event they had seen under the contrasting set. Some subjects were only provided with the alternate interpretation, while others were also given an opportunity to view the event a second time. Both the perceptual segmentation and the subjects' impressions of the participants in the event were assessed. Results disclosed that (1) the two sets produced both differing perceptual organization and differing impressions of the participants; (2) reversing the sets produced a reversal of the impressions of the participants only when accompanied by a second viewing; and (3) the reversal of the impressions was accompanied by a shift in the perceptual organization of the event. It was concluded that observers may differ in their initial perception of an event as the result of differences in prior expectations, and that the resulting biased sample of information they acquire may limit their retrospective reinterpretation of the event.     

The dispositional shift in attribution over time

Two experiments examined the effect of time on causal attributions. In Experiment I, subjects who described themselves into a tape recorder assumed more personal responsibility for their behavior after 3 weeks' time than others who explained their behavior immediately after its occurrence. In Experiment II, actor-subjects took part in a getting acquainted conversation and explained their behavior more dispositionally and less situationally after 3 weeks' time than they had initially, while observer-subjects experienced no change over time. Results were interpreted in terms of an altered self-perspective in memory and the diminished salience of situational details over time.     

Alleys in visual space

Geometry of frameless visual space is dealt with. First, parallel and equidistant alleys, horopters in the horizontal plane of eyes' level are discussed within the framework of the Luneburg's model that the frameless visual space is a Riemannian space of constant curvature. That basic postulate and the specific mapping functions assumed by Luneburg between the euclidean map of visual space and the physical space are kept separate, and efforts are directed to make the model applicable to more natural conditions of our visual space. A possibility is pointed out to remove the constraint “frameless” in the sense that perceptual geometrical properties are primarily determined by the convergence of optic axes. So far, only alleys in the horizontal plane extending from us toward infinity have been studied, but more often we perceive parallel lines, horizontal or vertical, in front of us like shelves of a bookcase. Hence, equations are derived for horopter plane appearing fronto-parallel in the three-dimensional visual space and alleys running horizontally or vertically on the horopter plane. It is shown that parallel and equidistant alleys are not the same in the horopter plane as in the horizontal plane, if the visual space is not euclidean. A method to evaluate the discrepancy between the two alleys without using any mapping functions is stated with some numerical examples.