Individual Differences in Susceptibility to Misinformation Effects and Hindsight Bias

The present study examined individual differences in susceptibility to two similar forms of memory distortion: the misinformation effect and hindsight bias. The misinformation effect occurs when individuals witness an event, are provided with misinformation, and recall the original event as containing elements of the misinformation. Hindsight bias occurs when individuals make judgments, are provided with feedback, and recall their original judgments as being more similar to the feedback than they actually were. Seventy-five participants completed a misinformation task, a hindsight bias task, and several individual difference measures related to memory distortions. Working memory capacity was negatively correlated with the misinformation effect and hindsight bias, and the misinformation effect and hindsight bias were negatively correlated with one another. Although the misinformation effect and hindsight bias are measured with similar designs, and both are predicted by working memory capacity, the negative correlation between them suggests these phenomena result from somewhat different processes.     

Task effects reveal cognitive flexibility responding to frequency and predictability: Evidence from eye movements in reading and proofreading

It is well-known that word frequency and predictability affect processing time. These effects change magnitude across tasks, but studies testing this use tasks with different response types (e.g., lexical decision, naming, and fixation time during reading; Schilling, Rayner, & Chumbley, 1998), preventing direct comparison. Recently, Kaakinen and Hyönä (2010) overcame this problem, comparing fixation times in reading for comprehension and proofreading, showing that the frequency effect was larger in proofreading than in reading. This result could be explained by readers exhibiting substantial cognitive flexibility, and qualitatively changing how they process words in the proofreading task in a way that magnifies effects of word frequency. Alternatively, readers may not change word processing so dramatically, and instead may perform more careful identification generally, increasing the magnitude of many word processing effects (e.g., both frequency and predictability). We tested these possibilities with two experiments: subjects read for comprehension and then proofread for spelling errors (letter transpositions) that produce nonwords (e.g., trcak for track as in Kaakinen & Hyönä) or that produce real but unintended words (e.g., trial for trail) to compare how the task changes these effects. Replicating Kaakinen and Hyönä, frequency effects increased during proofreading. However, predictability effects only increased when integration with the sentence context was necessary to detect errors (i.e., when spelling errors produced words that were inappropriate in the sentence; trial for trail). The results suggest that readers adopt sophisticated word processing strategies to accommodate task demands.     

Transfer effects between moral dilemmas: A causal model theory

Evaluations of analogous situations are an important source for our moral intuitions. A puzzling recent set of findings in experiments exploring transfer effects between intuitions about moral dilemmas has demonstrated a striking asymmetry. Transfer often occurred with a specific ordering of moral dilemmas, but not when the sequence was reversed. In this article we present a new theory of transfer between moral intuitions that focuses on two components of moral dilemmas, namely their causal structure and their default evaluations. According to this theory, transfer effects are expected when the causal models underlying the considered dilemmas allow for a mapping of the highlighted aspect of the first scenario onto the causal structure of the second dilemma, and when the default evaluations of the two dilemmas substantially differ. The theory’s key predictions for the occurrence and the direction of transfer effects between two moral dilemmas are tested in five experiments with various variants of moral dilemmas from different domains. A sixth experiment tests the predictions of the theory for how the target action in the moral dilemmas is represented.     

广西肝恶性肿瘤患者住院费用的研究

为探讨肝恶性肿瘤患者住院总费用情况,对广西2010年～2012年间肝恶性肿瘤患者的住院费用资料进行统计学分析,比较肝恶性肿瘤患者3年住院总费用的变化情况,并采用多重线性回归分析方法,分析肝恶性肿瘤患者住院总费用的影响因素.结果显示广西肝恶性肿瘤住院患者逐年增多,住院费用逐年增高;住院天数、有无手术、有无合并症、有无院内感染、性别、年龄6个因素是住院总费用的影响因素.我们应加大预防控制肝恶性肿瘤的力度,建立单病种诊疗规范和费用控制标准,推进临床路径管理,以减轻患者的经济负担.     

Extreme Outcomes Sway Risky Decisions from Experience

Whether buying stocks or playing the slots, people making real‐world risky decisions often rely on their experiences with the risks and rewards. These decisions, however, do not occur in isolation but are embedded in a rich context of other decisions, outcomes, and experiences. In this paper, we systematically evaluate how the local context of other rewarding outcomes alters risk preferences. Through a series of four experiments on decisions from experience, we provide evidence for an extreme‐outcome rule, whereby people overweight the most extreme outcomes (highest and lowest) in a given context. As a result, people should be more risk seeking for gains than losses, even with equally likely outcomes. Across the experiments, the decision context was varied so that the same outcomes served as the high extreme, low extreme, or neither. As predicted, people were more risk seeking for relative gains, but only when the risky option potentially led to the high‐extreme outcome. Similarly, people were more risk averse for relative losses, but only when the risky option potentially led to the low‐extreme outcome. We conclude that in risky decisions from experience, the biggest wins and the biggest losses seem to matter more than they should. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

迎接心理学发展的第三波

心理学自冯特始便存在两种类型,自然科学的心理学和人文的心理学.本土心理学依据“一种心智,多种心态”的原则,建构了儒家关系主义理论和自我曼陀罗模型,这种含摄文化的理论解决了冯特以科学方法研究文化的难题.批判实在论和多重哲学典范的结合,奠定了华人本土心理学科学哲学基础,在此基础上,华人本土心理学将迎来心理学发展的第三波.     

Improvement of Thematic Classification in Offender Profiling: Classifying Serbian Homicides Using Multiple Correspondence,Cluster, and Discriminant Function Analyses

This paper investigates thematic classification of homicides for the purpose of behavioural investigative analysis (e.g. offender profiling). Previous research has predominantly used smallest space analysis (SSA) to conceptualise and classify offences into thematic groups based on crime scene behaviour data. This paper introduces a combined approach utilising multiple correspondence analysis (MCA), cluster analysis (CA), and discriminant function analysis (DFA) to define and differentiate crime scenes into expressive or instrumental and impersonal or personal crimes. MCA is used to derive the latent structural dimensions in the crime data and produce quantitative scores for each offence along these dimensions. Two‐step CA was then utilised to classify offences. Offence dimensional scores were then used to predict cluster membership under DFA, producing cluster centroids corresponding to MCA dimensions. Centroids were plotted on the MCA correspondence map to simultaneously conceptualise crime classification and the latent structure of the Serbian crime data. Classification of offences based on MCA dimensional scores were 91.5% accurate. This MCA–CA–DFA approach may reduce some of the more subjective aspects of SSA methodology used in classification, whilst producing a product more amenable to objective and cumulative review. Implications for offender profiling research utilising SSA and this approach are discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基于结构方程模型的多重中介效应分析

多重中介模型是指存在多个中介变量的模型。多重中介模型可以分析特定中介效应、总的中介效应和对比中介效应。指出了目前多重中介模型分析普遍存在的问题,包括分析不完整、使用Sobel检验带来的局限。建议通过增加辅助变量的方法进行完整的多重中介效应分析,使用偏差校正的Bootstrap方法进行中介检验。总结出一个多重中介SEM分析流程,并有示例和相应的MPLUS程序。随后展望了辅助变量和中介效应检验方法的发展方向。     

Multiple-choice testing as a desirable difficulty in the classroom

We examined whether the power of tests as learning events, frequently demonstrated in the laboratory, would also occur in a large undergraduate course. Our goals were to determine: if learning of information tested on multiple-choice quizzes administered across the course would be enhanced compared to non-tested control information; and what the effects of quizzing would be for the learning of information conceptually related to the tested information but not itself tested on the quizzes. Given that retrieval practice can have positive (testing effect) and negative consequences (retrieval-induced forgetting), our concern was that the learning and later retention of non-tested conceptually related information might be impaired by the multiple-choice quizzes. Importantly, learning benefits were found for both types of information on the final exam, indicating that quizzing within a course can enhance not only the learning of specifically tested information, but the learning of non-tested conceptually related information as well.