Testing alternative explanations of phantom decoy effects

Phantom decoys are alternatives that asymmetrically dominate a targeted alternative and yet lead to increased selection of the target when the decoy is declared to be unavailable. This effect is difficult to explain within most standard theoretical accounts of decoy effects. The current experiments tested between three explanations of this effect: (1) the relative advantage model based on loss aversion, (2) similarity substitution, and (3) range weighting. In Experiment 1, participants were presented trinary choice sets, with half of the sets containing a phantom decoy in one of five possible locations within the attribute space. Phantom decoy effects were robust across all decoy locations but one, and the pattern of effects most closely corresponded to predictions of the relative advantage model. Experiment 2 used a within‐subjects manipulation of the five phantom decoy locations. The overall pattern of effects most closely corresponded to predictions from the relative advantage model, as did the pattern for the group of participants who exhibited the strongest phantom decoy effects. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

亲社会情境中小学儿童道德情绪判断及其归因研究

该文运用临床访谈法研究了小学儿童在亲社会情境中道德情绪判断及归因状况。结果表明:在亲社会情境中,儿童的道德情绪判断经由消极到积极的发展趋势,年幼儿童倾向于判断助人者会体验到消极的情绪,年长儿童则认为助人者会体验到高兴等积极情绪,并且随着儿童年龄的增长,儿童的情绪体验愈加复杂。在道德情绪归因中,年幼儿童倾向于结果定向的归因,一年级儿童中大部分以道德定向为主,随着儿童年龄的增长,儿童的归因定向逐渐多样化。     

Multi‐group acculturation orientations in a changing context: Palestinian Christian Arab adolescents in Israel after the lost decade

Grounded in a contextual approach to acculturation of minorities, this study examines changes in acculturation orientations among Palestinian Christian Arab adolescents in Israel following the “lost decade of Arab–Jewish coexistence.” Multi‐group acculturation orientations among 237 respondents were assessed vis‐à‐vis two majorities—Muslim Arabs and Israeli Jews—and compared to 1998 data. Separation was the strongest endorsed orientation towards both majority groups. Comparisons with the 1998 data also show a weakening of the Integration attitude towards Israeli Jews, and also distancing from Muslim Arabs. For the examination of the “Westernisation” hypothesis, multi‐dimensional scaling (MDS) analyses of perceptions of Self and group values clearly showed that, after 10 years, Palestinian Christian Arabs perceive Israeli Jewish culture as less close to Western culture, and that Self and the Christian Arab group have become much closer, suggesting an increasing identification of Palestinian Christian Arab adolescents with their ethnoreligious culture. We discuss the value of a multi‐group, multi‐method, and multi‐wave approach to the examination of the role of the political context in acculturation processes.     

Beside the point: Mothers’ head nodding and shaking gestures during parent–child play

Understanding the context for children's social learning and language acquisition requires consideration of caregivers’ multi-modal (speech, gesture) messages. Though young children can interpret both manual and head gestures, little research has examined the communicative input that children receive via parents’ head gestures. We longitudinally examined the frequency and communicative functions of mothers’ head nodding and head shaking gestures during laboratory play sessions for 32 mother–child dyads, when the children were 14, 20, and 30 months of age. The majority of mothers produced head nods more frequently than head shakes. Both gestures contributed to mothers’ verbal attempts at behavior regulation and dialog. Mothers’ head nods primarily conveyed agreement with, and attentiveness to, children's utterances, and accompanied affirmative statements and yes/no questions. Mothers’ head shakes primarily conveyed prohibitions and statements with negations. Changes over time appeared to reflect corresponding developmental changes in social and communicative dimensions of caregiver–child interaction. Directions for future research are discussed regarding the role of head gesture input in socialization and in supporting language development.     

Investigating the cost to ongoing tasks not associated with prospective memory task requirements

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the relationship between prospective memory (PM) and consciousness by examining cost to ongoing activities, with cost assumed to reflect a direction of conscious resources away from the ongoing task in service of the PM task. Ongoing task blocks in which the PM task was relevant or irrelevant were alternated to achieve three aims: determine if cost would persist in irrelevant blocks when relevant and irrelevant blocks were clearly demarcated and irrelevant stimuli were incompatible with the PM task; investigate if costs would be greatest at the start of irrelevant blocks; and determine whether costs would occur when the irrelevant block preceded any relevant blocks. Costs were found in irrelevant blocks and greater cost at the start of the irrelevant blocks suggest the cost may be due in part to participants making decisions about the engagement of conscious resources at transition points.     

Exploring career decision-making styles across three European countries

Career decisions are amongst the most important we make. Unsurprisingly, much published research exists on this particular aspect of career behaviour. However, the overwhelming majority of studies have been carried out on young people making initial career decisions. This paper extends our understanding by examining how mid-career adults in three European countries (Denmark, France and Italy) actually make career decisions. Characteristic patterns of behaviour recur when individuals approach points of transition or of crisis; each of these transitioning styles is illustrated by an iconic case. Emergent findings support the growing body of evidence that challenges the dominant policy and practice orthodoxy, which places rationality at the centre of the process, by recognising the importance of emotion and context.     

Year-one children thinking about and writing ‘large’ quantities / Niños de primer grado pensando en y anotando cantidades ‘grandes’

Abstract

We studied how year-one children in primary school think about and with numbers when they use verbal expressions and numerical notations to suggest ‘very large’ quantities in different contexts of meaning (tokens, an elderly person’s age, stars). We individually interviewed 63 children from schools in Río Negro, Argentina. The analysis identified the different ways children approached the tension that exists between stability and innovation. Context seems to influence the answers given by many of the children who were interviewed. The results showed five cognitive trajectories: in the first two, children did not demonstrate any innovation in their notations. Children in the remaining trajectories (84% of respondents) conducted a kind of numerical ‘take off’ in at least one of the tasks. Knowledge of the number series does not guarantee an easy approach to writing ‘large’ quantities but it does seem to favour a strategy of greater cognitive flexibility.     

An Optimized Design of Choice Experiments: A New Approach for Studying Decision Behavior in Choice Task Experiments

In this paper, we present a new approach for the optimal experimental design problem of generating diagnostic choice tasks, where the respondent's decision strategy can be unambiguously deduced from the observed choice. In this new approach, we applied a genetic algorithm that creates a one‐to‐one correspondence between a set of predefined decision strategies and the alternatives of the choice task; it also manipulates the characteristics of the choice tasks. In addition, this new approach takes into account the measurement errors that can occur when the preferences of the decision makers are being measured. The proposed genetic algorithm is capable of generating diagnostic choice tasks even when the search space of possible choice tasks is very large. As proof‐of‐concept, we used this novel approach to generate respondent‐specific choice tasks with either low or high context‐based complexity that we operationalize by the similarity of alternatives and the conflict between alternatives. We find in an experiment that an increase in the similarity of the alternatives and an increase in the number of conflicts within the choice task lead to an increased use of non‐compensatory strategies and a decreased use of compensatory decision strategies. In contrast, the size of the choice tasks, measured by the number of attributes and alternatives, only weakly influences the strategy selection. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.