Note on lexicographic‐order preservation and stochastic dominance

This note concerns two issues left unresolved in our study of lexicographic‐order preservation and stochastic dominance in settings where preferences are represented by utility vectors, ordered lexicographically, and judgements emerge as matrices that premultiply utility vectors in expected utility sums. First, a generalization of the ‘Conjecture Σ’, which implied transitivity of a stochastic dominance relation under non‐vacuous resolution‐level information, is proved. Second, this paper comments on using resolution‐level information in higher as well as in first degree stochastic dominance analysis. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Attention allocation and habituation to anger-related stimuli during a visual search task

A substantial amount of data has accumulated demonstrating that emotionally disordered subjects are prone to bias their attention toward threatening, emotionally relevant stimuli. Little attention has been reserved for the study of cognitive processes involved in anger arousal. In the present study, we investigated whether mood-congruent attentional biases could be demonstrated in subjects of varying levels of trait anger using a visual search task. This task also assessed whether mood-congruent biases diminished with repeated exposure to specific emotion stimuli. To investigate state-trait interaction effects, a naturalistic, anger-inducing insult was administered to half the subjects. There was a positive relation between participants' level of trait anger and their degree of mood-congruent attentional bias toward anger-related cues only after an insult. As predicted, this effect diminished across blocks of trials. Aggr. Behav. 24:399–409, 1998. © 1998 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Compatibility and the use of information processing strategies

When a prominent attribute looms larger in one response procedure than in another, a violation of procedure invariance occurs. A hypothesis based on compatibility between the structure of the input information and the required output was tested as an explanation of this phenomenon. It was also compared with other existing hypotheses in the field. The study had two aims: (1) to illustrate the prominence effect in a selection of preference tasks (choice, acceptance decisions, and preference ratings); (2) to demonstrate the processing differences in a matching procedure versus the selected preference tasks. Hence, verbal protocols were collected in both a matching task and in subsequent preference tasks. Silent control conditions were also employed. The structure compatibility hypothesis was confirmed in that a prominence effect obtained in the preference tasks was accompanied by a lower degree of attention to the attribute levels in these tasks. Furthermore, as predicted from the structure compatibility hypothesis, it was found that fewer comparisons between attribute levels were performed in the preference tasks than in the matching task. It was therefore concluded that both these processing differences may explain the occurrence of the prominence effects. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Maternal responsiveness and search for hidden objects and contingency learning by infants

The relationship between maternal responsiveness and infant cognition was examined during two activities: the search for hidden objects and the learning of a contingency rule. Thirty-four mother–infant dyads were observed in a laboratory setting when the infants were 11 months old. The experimental session included three phases: a search for hidden objects (Piagetian tasks), the learning of a contingency rule on a touch screen, and a mother–infant play session using a standardised toy. The results indicated a link between performances in the search and contingency tasks. Moreover, infants who succeeded in both tasks had mothers who displayed higher responsiveness score. The findings are discussed in terms of the infant's detection of relevant stimulus information. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

离散还是连续?——语义信息加工性质的实验研究

通过两个行为实验,采用句子核证作业,将SAD技术和普通反应时实验有机地结合起来,对语义信息加工的性质进行了详细的考察。实验一采用普通反应时实验,探讨了语义信息加工机制的性质,结果表明,在熟悉度、语义距离和快慢反应时之间存在复杂的交互作用,说明在语义信息加工中存在两种不同性质的加工机制,熟悉性是影响这两种不同性质加工机制的因素。实验二采用SAD技术,研究熟悉性对语义信息加工性质的影响。结果表明,在高熟悉句中的部分信息积累具有离散的趋势;而低熟悉句中的部分信息积累则是连续的,进一步证明了两种性质加工机制的存在。结论认为：语义信息加工中存在着两种性质的加工：离散性加工机制和连续性加工机制,熟悉性是影响二者关系的一个重要因素。     

篇章阅读理解中背景信息的通达

该研究采用实时窗口阅读技术探讨篇章阅读理解中背景信息的通达机制。在该研究所用的阅读材料中,主人公特征与目标句行为分别形成一致、冲突与冲突限制三种关系,其中,冲突限制条件下既描述了主人公与目标行为有所冲突的特征,但这些特征要么是主人公过去具有的、要么是虚假的,在此基础上,阅读材料又提供了主人公当前的、与目标句行为一致的特征描述。结果发现,不论把冲突限制条件下的冲突信息限制在过去发生,还是作为一种虚假的情况来加以描述,都不能完全消除冲突的效应,冲突限制条件下目标句阅读时间总是长于一致条件下的阅读时间,这支持了记忆基础文本加工观,说明在篇章阅读中背景信息通达不是一个更新追随的过程,过去的或虚假的背景信息也会被重新激活并影响当前信息的加工。     

A Calculus of Substitutions for DPL

We consider substitutions in order sensitive situations, having in the back of our minds the case of dynamic predicate logic (DPL) with a stack semantics. We start from the semantic intuition that substitutions are move instructions on stacks: the syntactic operation [y/x] is matched by the instruction to move the value of the y-stack to the x-stack. We can describe these actions in the positive fragment of DPLE. Hence this fragment counts as a logic for DPL-substitutions. We give a calculus for the fragment and prove soundness and completeness.     

Motivations, Goals, Information Search, and Memory about Political Candidates

This study investigated the ways in which motivations and goals affect patterns of political information-seeking and the consequent structure of memory about candidates. Undergraduate participants used a computerized system that displayed different layers of information about fictional political candidates; the system recorded the strategies they used to search through this information. Results showed that motivations to engage in effortful processing produced tendencies to engage in within-candidate searches, better recall, and memory structures clustered by candidate. The goal of forming impressions of the candidates, which was expected to lead to within-candidate searching, was in fact modestly associated with weaker tendencies to do so, once effort was taken into account. Impression-formation goals, however, were associated with less attribute-based memory structures. The findings confirm that the manner in which people acquire candidate information has important consequences for the way they store that information in memory, and that these processes vary according to individual motivations and goals.     

Mental rotation of random lined figures

The present study investigated the possible occurrence of mental rotation in judgments of whether pairs of line figures were identical. The feasibility of two discrete cognitive explanations based on holistic transformation and on feature computation was examined with varied levels of complexity controlled by the numbers of lines in a figure. In the experiment, participants were required to judge whether simultaneously presented pairs of figures were the same or different. When the participants' data were collapsed for regression analyses, evidence for mental rotation was not detected at any level of complexity, but reanalysis of the data revealed that some participants employed mental rotation in the cognition of complex figures. A monotonous increase in reaction times as a function of the number of lines was evident in identical pairs of figures but not in nonidentical pairs. It is argued that the feature computation explanation would better account for these results than would the holistic transformation explanation.     

A Review on Consumer External Search: Amount and Determinants

Consumer external search continues to be a fruitful research area. The bivariate relationships between a number of variables and the central construct, amount of information search, have been proposed, theorized, and empirically tested in the literature. This paper extensively examines the current status and importance of consumer information search with close attention on empirical findings on the subject. While some research findings converge on the bivariate relationship between some variables and amount of information search, e.g., a positive relationship between perceived risk and search effort, some studies found conflicting results on the relationship between other variables and the central construct. There are also some non-linear relationships found between a few variables such as experience and the degree of search. Some hypotheses are also proposed and discussed.