The interference effect of men's handling of muscular action figures on a lexical decision task

It has been shown in previous work [Action figures and men. Sex Roles 53, 877–885] that male participants who handled extremely muscular action figures had lower body esteem than those who did not handle action figures or a Ken doll. However, the internal mechanisms that dictated this effect are unclear. Therefore, the current study extended this previous work by having male participants handle action figures of varying muscularity and completing a lexical decision task with target words that consisted of both positive and negative body words and feeling words in order to determine if males would be primed to think negatively about their bodies and self or if positive thoughts about their bodies and self would be interfered with. The results show that those participants who handled the extremely muscular action figures responded significantly more slowly to feeling positive words (e.g., content, confident) and marginally more slowly to body positive words (e.g., muscle, bicep) than those who did not handle any action figures. Overall, this suggests that the interference of positive words, not the priming of negative words, is the internal mechanism that produces the decreased body image satisfaction after exposure to muscular stimuli. Implications and future research are discussed.     

Multi-stage mental process for economic choice in capuchins

We studied economic choice behavior in capuchin monkeys by offering them to choose between two different foods available in variable amounts. When monkeys selected between familiar foods, their choice patterns were well-described in terms of relative value of the two foods. A leading view in economics and biology is that such behavior results from stimulus-response associations acquired through experience. According to this view, values are not psychologically real; they can only be defined a posteriori. One prediction of this associative model is that animals faced for the first time with a new pair of foods learn to choose between them gradually. We tested this prediction. Surprisingly, we find that monkeys choose as effectively between new pairs of foods as they choose between familiar pairs of foods. We therefore, propose a cognitive model in which economic choice results from a two-stage mental process of value-assignment and decision-making. In a follow-up experiment, we find that the relative value assigned to three foods in sessions in which we tested them against each other combine according to transitivity.     

Decision making and confidence given uncertain advice

We study human decision making in a simple forced-choice task that manipulates the frequency and accuracy of available information. Empirically, we find that people make decisions consistent with the advice provided, but that their subjective confidence in their decisions shows 2 interesting properties. First, people's confidence does not depend solely on the accuracy of the advice. Rather, confidence seems to be influenced by both the frequency and accuracy of the advice. Second, people are less confident in their guessed decisions when they have to make relatively more of them. Theoretically, we develop and evaluate a type of sequential sampling process model—known as a self-regulating accumulator—that accounts for both decision making and confidence. The model captures the regularities in people's behavior with interpretable parameter values, and we show its ability to fit the data is not due to excessive model complexity. Using the model, we draw conclusions about some properties of human reasoning under uncertainty.     

Episodic chasing in pathological gamblers using the Iowa gambling task

"Chasing ones losses" is a key symptom among pathological gamblers (PGs). This study focuses on quantitative differences in episodic chasing (i.e., sequences of disadvantageous decisions within a single gambling session) between PGs and non-pathological gamblers (NPGs). We compared 61 PGs and 39 NPGs on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and the Zuckerman Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS). The PGs showed significantly more chasing and had significantly poorer decision-making strategies than NPGs, particularly among males (F = 4.52, p < 0.05). Random players were significantly less sensation seeking than advantageous and disadvantageous (i.e., chasing) players, but there was no interaction with group or gender. The results suggest that quantifiable within-session gambling behavior holds important implications for detecting underlying vulnerabilities to gambling pathology.     

Optimism as modifier of escalation of commitment

To study whether optimism-pessimism modifies escalation of commitment, 52 undergraduates were told that they had made an unsuccessful investment, then they chose to continue or discontinue this investment. Optimism about future returns was induced in one group by varying the probability of a successful outcome from an initial low to medium, pessimism was induced in another group by varying this probability from an initial high to medium. Supporting the assumption of the manipulation, the results showed that optimistic participants preferred to continue investments whereas pessimistic participants preferred not to. As predicted, when the sunk cost increased, optimism led to escalation of commitment, whereas pessimism led to de-escalation of commitment. These effects were strengthened when probability of a successful outcome was ambiguous.     

Do Investment Risk Tolerance Attitudes Predict Portfolio Risk?

We investigated a new instrument designed to assess investment risk tolerance, the Risk Tolerance Questionnaire (RTQ). RTQ scores were positively correlated with scores on two other investment risk measures, but were not correlated with a measure of sensation-seeking (Zuckerman, 1994), suggesting that investment risk tolerance is not explainable by a general cross-domain appetite for risk. Importantly, RTQ scores were positively correlated with the riskiness of respondents’ actual investment portfolios, meaning that investors with high risk-tolerance score tend to have higher-risk portfolios. Finally, respondents with relatively more investment experience had more risk-tolerant responses and higher-risk portfolios than less experienced investors.

Out of nothingness: rhythm and the making of words

Abstract: This contribution describes some aspects of the work with a four‐year‐old autistic child who was treated for many years with four times weekly sessions of psychotherapy. The fluctuations between the symbolic and non‐symbolic use of external objects are described, as well as the ever changing quality of the child's object relations. The rhythmical element in the analysand‐analyst interplay is of great importance: the construction of the temporal shapes (Alvarez) and the modulation of presence and absence are relevant as regards the progressive capacity to name aspects of external reality and subjective experience. From a theoretical point of view, the contributions of both the post‐Jungian, including Michael Fordham, and the post‐Kleinian traditions are outlined. The notions of pre‐conception (Bion) and of archetype (Jung) are immensely helpful in working with autistic children as they actually help the analyst in assuming that some proto‐trace of representational potential is always present in the individual.     

A Bayesian-optimal principle for learner-friendly adaptation in learning games

Adaptive learning games should provide opportunities for the student to learn as well as motivate playing until goals have been reached. In this paper, we give a mathematically rigorous treatment of the problem in the framework of Bayesian decision theory. To quantify the opportunities for learning, we assume that the learning tasks that yield the most information about the current skills of the student, while being desirable for measurement in their own right, would also be among those that are efficient for learning. Indeed, optimization of the expected information gain appears to naturally avoid tasks that are exceedingly demanding or exceedingly easy as their results are predictable and thus uninformative. Still, tasks that are efficient for learning may be experienced as too challenging, and the resulting failures can lower motivation. Therefore, in addition to quantifying the expected informational benefit for learning of any prospective task to be presented next, we also model the expected motivational cost of its presentation, measured simply as the estimated probability of failure in our example model. We propose a “learner-friendly” adaptation algorithm that chooses the learning tasks by optimizing the expected benefit divided by the expected cost. We apply this algorithm to a Rasch-like student model implemented within a real-world application and present initial results of a pilot experiment.     

首词和尾词频率对高熟悉度成语识别的影响

采用词汇判定法,考察首词频率和尾词频率对高熟悉度四字成语识别的影响。实验结果表明:(1)对高熟悉度成语的识别规律与多层聚类表征模型的观点比较吻合;(2)构成成语的成份词对成语表征有竞争和干扰作用,高频率成份词相对于低频率成份词,对成语表征的竞争和干扰作用较大。     

Experience Influences Affordance Perception for Low Crawling Under Barriers With Altered Body Dimensions

Abstract

We examined the role of experience in affordance perception for low crawling with altered body dimensions under barriers of different heights. Adults decided which of five backpacks (10–30?cm thick) they would be able to wear while low crawling under barriers. Participants were assigned to one of three experience conditions. Participants in the Pre/Post-choice experience condition crawled under the barrier before and after picking a backpack, participants in the Feedback condition crawled under the barrier after picking a backpack, but participants in the No Experience condition received no low-crawling experience. Past research suggests that pre-choice experience with low crawling under the barrier would lead to more accurate responses. Overall, participants in all three conditions scaled the height of the backpack to the barrier height. Pre-choice low-crawling experience strongly influenced backpack choices such that participants in the Pre/Post condition picked significantly smaller backpacks and produced fewer failures than participants in the other conditions. The results provide evidence that brief practice, in an unfamiliar posture, can lead to improvements in affordance perception.