Antecedents of information-processing skills in infants: Habituation, novelty responsiveness, and cross-modal transfer

Three skills which characterize cognitive functioning in human infants in the middle of the first year of life—habituation, novelty responsiveness, and cross-modal transfer—predict mental ability in later childhood. Antecedents of each skill at 5 months postnatal were examined in a short-term prospective longitudinal study of infant ability and maternal intelligence and interaction style. Infant perceptuocognitive performance at 2 months, maternal intelligence, and maternal responsiveness at 5 months relate to the expression of the three infant cognitive skills, but in different ways. Variation in infant information-processing abilities can be explained by specific child and maternal factors that are evident soon after birth.     

Predicting Affective Responses to Unexpected Outcomes

In decisions under uncertainty, decision makers confront two uncertainties: the uncertain linkage between actions and outcomes and the uncertain linkage between these outcomes and his or her affective responses to them. The two studies reported here examine affective responses to expected and unexpected outcomes in various settings. In Study 1, a scenario-based laboratory experiment (N = 149), we examined subjects' predicted responses to a range of outcomes, as a function of how surprising the outcome was. Study 2, a field study (N = 127), involved the expectations of bowlers about their scores in an upcoming game and about their responses to various outcomes at, above, and below expectations. We also measured actual affective reactions after the bowlers had completed their games. Findings suggest that subjects both expect and experience a loss-averse, expectation-based value function broadly of the Prospect Theory type. They also anticipate, and experience, an amplifying effect of outcome surprise, though they underestimate its size. We argue that such underestimation, together with overtight prediction ranges, may expose subjects to much larger affective variation with outcome variability than they anticipate.     

Inconsistent-handed advantage in episodic memory extends to paragraph-level materials

Past research using handedness as a proxy for functional access to the right hemisphere demonstrates that individuals who are mixed/inconsistently handed outperform strong/consistently handed individuals when performing episodic recall tasks. However, research has generally been restricted to stimuli presented in a list format. In the present paper, we present two studies in which participants were presented with paragraph-level material and then asked to recall material from the passages. The first study was based on a classic study looking at retroactive interference with prose materials. The second was modelled on a classic experiment looking at perspective taking and the content of memory. In both studies, the classic effects were replicated and the general finding that mixed/inconsistent-handers outperform strong/consistent-handers was replicated. This suggests that considering degree of handedness may be an empirically useful means of reducing error variance in paradigms looking at memory for prose level material.     

Postdecision consolidation in a trend prediction task

To be able to learn from experience it is necessary to correctly apprehend experienced feedback and the situation in which it is provided. The results indicate how post-decision consolidation in complex domains may affect learning. The problem may be particularly pertinent in recurrent decision making where considerable risk is involved. The study explores the changes in aspect (signal) importance from pre- to postdiction as a function of outcome information. By postdiction we mean the remembering of an earlier prediction (cf. Hawkins & Hastie, 1990). Subjects were asked to decide on which of four alternative future price developments would follow a historical price trajectory for different commodities, and to rate the importance of each of the chosen alternative's corresponding aspects. The subjects revealed a bias in their support ratings of aspects--seeing support in aspects that traditionally (by themselves and in many contexts) would be seen as neutral or even counter-indicative of the alternative chosen. After an intermission, the subjects were also given information about what was indicated to be the actual development of the market. One group was told that their decisions were correct (irrespective of what the decisions were), another group that they were incorrect but close, a third group that they were incorrect by far, while a fourth group served as a control. Following this information the subjects were again asked to judge the importance of the aspects for their own prior decision on the most likely future development. The results indicated that outcome feed-back had an effect on post decision restructuring of facts. Subjects in the correct condition showed an average consolidation that increased the support, while the wrong conditions lead to negative consolidation (in retrospect indicating that they never found as much support for their decision in the past as they actually did). Thus, in a choice between consolidating their own initial prediction and the price trajectory they would have to live with, the decision makers consolidated the outcome. Therefore, the results of the study were related to the hindsight bias phenomenon (Fischhoff, 1975) and to Kahneman and Miller's (1986) mutability concept.     

The Natural Selection of Prediction Heuristics: Anchoring and Adjustment versus Representativeness

There are several heuristics which people use in making numerical predictions and these heuristics compete for the determination of prediction output. Some of them (e.g. representativeness) lead to excessively extreme predictions while others (e.g. anchoring and adjustment) lead to regressive (and even over-regressive) predictions. In this paper we study the competition between these two heuristics by varying the representation of predictor and outcome. The results indicate that factors which facilitate reliance on representativeness (e.g. compatibility between predictor and outcome) indeed lead to an increase in extremity, while factors that facilitate reliance on anchoring and adjustment (e.g. increased salience of a potential anchor) lead to a decrease in extremity.     

Overweight and cognition

There is a growing concern among health authorities that an increasing number of people in the Western world become overweight and even obese. It is well known that obesity is related to several diseases (e.g., diabetes, stroke, and high blood pressure) and that such diseases related to obesity lead to early death. It has also been discussed whether overweight and obesity in themselves or in relation to such diseases lead to cognitive decline. On the basis of data from a large, population‐based, prospective study we examined three cognitive domains: episodic memory, semantic memory, and spatial ability. Two body measures were used to define normal weight and overweight, body‐mass index and waist/hip ratio. Although these two body measures reveal quite different prevalence data of overweight, the associations between overweight and cognition are similar. For episodic memory, overweight interacts with age, but when controlling for hypertension, stroke and diabetes, this interaction disappears. For semantic memory, normal weight participants outperform overweight participants even after controlling for these diseases. For spatial ability, the well‐established advantage for men holds for young‐old and old‐old normal‐weight participants. For overweight participants, this advantage holds for middle‐age participants only. We conclude that there is a weight‐cognition relationship even after controlling for obesity‐related diseases. The results are discussed in terms of possible biological mechanisms.