Value and uncertainty as weighting factors in impression formation

An experiment was conducted to compare mathematical models describing how people combine information to form an impression of another person. Subjects rated how much they would like stimulus persons described by one or two adjectives. Subjects also reported their level of uncertainty about each evaluation. Models using the uncertainty measures to predict integration weights were no more successful than the equal weight averaging model. There was no evidence that extreme adjectives were given high weight. Information integration was best described by a model in which the more negative adjective in a pair is given more weight than the other adjective.     

The center and range of the probability interval as factors affecting ambiguity preferences

Ambiguous decision situations are characterized as having probabilities that are uncertain. The uncertainty is due to the common, real-world deficiency of information about the process by which the outcomes are determined. Thirty lotteries having uncertain probabilities were constructed by varying the centers and the ranges of the intervals within which the imprecise probabilities of winning could lie. Pairs of the lotteries were presented as choice alternatives to subjects, with each pair having lotteries with the same interval center but differing interval ranges. Ambiguity avoidance, the selection of the less ambiguous option, was found to increase with the interval center C, with ambiguity indifference occurring for values of C ? 0.40. No evidence of ambiguity seeking as the prevalent behavior was obtained. Ambiguity avoidance did not significantly increase with the interval range R, but an interaction effect between C and the ranges R₁ and R₂ of the choice pair was obtained. This effect of the ranges could not be described simply by knowledge of the difference R₁ ? R₂; knowledge of both individual values was necessary. The theoretical implications of these results are discussed.     

Eliminating selective stimulus control: a comparison of two procedures for teaching mentally retarded children to respond to compound stimuli

Selective stimulus control occurs when behavior fails to come under control of all characteristics of a compound stimulus after discrimination training. Two different assessment procedures, one used in prior research and the other incorporating incorrect stimuli (S - 's) which differed minimally from the correct stimulus (S+), were used to detect stimulus control deficits characteristic of selective stimulus control. The efficacy of two training procedures in eliminating selective stimulus control observed with three trainable mentally retarded children was evaluated in Experiment 1. A training procedure using S - 's that were minimally different from the S+ was designed to reduce the probability that stimulus discriminations could be based on stimulus characteristics other than experimenter-specified characteristics defining the S+. This procedure proved more effective in preventing and eliminating selective stimulus control as measured by both assessment procedures than an alternate discrimination training procedure that failed to impact the more stringent measures of selective stimulus control. Experiment 2 indicated that these improvements in stimulus control were not a function of varying degrees of difficulty between stimulus sets or of a prior history of discrimination training with the less effective training procedure. The need for better assessment procedures to detect selective stimulus control and suggestions for further improvements in discrimination training procedures are discussed.     

Learning the functional significance of mnemonic actions: A microgenetic study of strategy acquisition

How children learn to use memory strategies in a microgenetic investigation of learning and metacognition is examined. Seven- and eight-year-olds were given two memory trials with 24 pictures on each of 5 consecutive days. Days 1 and 2 were baseline, practice trials; Day 3 included strategy training; and Days 4 and 5 were unprompted tests of strategy maintenance. All children were taught how to label, rehearse, and group the pictures as well as to self-test their own memories and use blocked recall. Half of the children were shown the actions and told to do them; the other half received elaborated feedback on the usefulness and appropriateness of the techniques for remembering. The elaborated instructional group exhibited significantly greater recall, clustering, strategic study behavior, and metamemory regarding the mnemonic techniques than the other group. Path analysis provided evidence of a causal role of training and metacognitive awareness that mediated the use of sorting and higher recall. The study illustrates how learning the significance and utility of mnemonic techniques can influence children's acquisition of the tactics as self-controlled strategies. In addition, the microgenetic method affords patterns of data across time and experience that permit richer interpretations of strategy learning and memory development.     

Belief discrepant behavior and the bogus pipeline: Impression management or arousal attribution

Based on recent studies impression management theorists conclude that following belief discrepant behavior, persons will feign attitude change on paper measures, but report their “true” beliefs when attached to a lie detector (the bogus pipeline). A dissonance arousal explanation of these bogus pipeline results suggests that subjects may attribute their arousal to the bogus pipeline equipment instead of to dissonance and therefore may not be motivated to change their attitudes. The present study examined these competing interpretations and yielded results which support the dissonance arousal attribution explanation. Subjects who were attached to a (bogus pipeline) lie detector exhibited attitude change if given the opportunity to get accustomed to the equipment (which made attribution of arousal to the equipment less plausible), but showed no attitude change if no habituation experience was provided.     

The influence of incentive-aroused ambivalence on overjustification effects in attitude change

Rewarding people to advocate a position with which they already agree can undermine their attitudinal positivity. This research tests a novel explanation of this example of the overjustification phenomenon. The hypothesis holds that the provision of an unnecessary incentive gives rise to an ambivalent response: the positive reaction to the reinforcement is accompanied by a sense of uneasiness, or apprehension, regarding the legitimacy of the induced behaviors. Attitude change is expected only in circumstances that confirm the apprehension. Results consistent with this expectation were discovered. In Study 1, respondents asked to play the role of a subject in an overjustification experiment reported greater levels of ambivalence regarding their (role-played) proattitudinal action as a function of payment. Contrary to alternative interpretations of the phenomenon, no incentive-related differences were found in subjects' ratings of the reprehensibility of the requested action, or in their beliefs that future activities of the type requested be undertaken only for payment. In Study 2, subjects paid to read a proattitudinal speech were found subsequently to be less in favor of their original positions only if they also had been given a counterattitudinal communication. The presence or absence of the countercommunication had no influence on the attitudes of unpaid respondents. Subjects for whom the payment was made to appear incidental to the experiment did not demonstrate the usual overjustification effect. These results supported the incentive-aroused ambivalence hypothesis. Psychological mechanisms that might underlie the effect were discussed.     

The effect of orthographic structure on word recognition in a visual search task

The effect of the orthographic structure of the stimulus field on the visual search performance of third graders (8-8 years), sixth graders (11-7 years) and adults was investigated in three experiments. In Experiment 1, where the predesignated target was one word, subjects of all ages searched equally fast through fields consisting of words, pseudowords, and nonwords. In contrast, subjects of all ages displayed effects of orthographic structure when searching for instances of a semantic category (Experiment 2) or for three words (Experiment 3). Subjects searched faster through nonwords than through pseudowords and faster through pseudowords than through words. The use of orthographic structure to facilitate search did not increase with age, suggesting that children of the youngest age group were already making maximal use of intraword redundancy.