How persuasive messages can influence behavior without awareness

A persuasive message that favors one option in a binary choice can enhance the apparent value of its target by biasing the interpretation of subsequent information. The message installs its target as the initial leader in preference and lets the predecisional distortion of information defend that leadership position. An experiment that contrasts showing TV commercials before and after objective product information demonstrates this process. Ratings of the importance of the commercials to the choice indicate that people are aware of advertising's direct effect on their choice but not of its indirect effect through the biased evaluation of the product information.     

语音信息对中国英语学习者语义加工的影响及其脑机制

本研究采用经典的句尾畸义词诱发N400的ERP实验范式探讨了中国英语学习者在进行英文阅读时语音的影响及其相关脑机制。实验包括两类畸义语句:1.同音畸义:句尾词有畸义,但语音和相应正常语义句尾词相同;2.非同音畸义:句尾词有畸义,且语音和相应正常语义句尾词不同。行为数据显示:在错误率上同音畸义显著地高于非同音畸义。ERP显示:无论在早期(N100)还是晚期(N400)脑电成份上,同音畸义和非同音畸义的ERP振幅都有明显差异。本研究从行为和脑电两个方面一致揭示中国英语学习者阅读英文时受到了语音的影响。     

Seven-month-olds detect ordinal numerical relationships within temporal sequences

Previous evidence has shown that 11-month-olds represent ordinal relations between purely numerical values, whereas younger infants require a confluence of numerical and non-numerical cues. In this study, we show that when multiple featural cues (i.e., color and shape) are provided, 7-month-olds detect reversals in the ordinal direction of numerical sequences relying solely on number when non-numerical quantitative cues are controlled. These results provide evidence for the influence of featural information and multiple cue integration on infants’ proneness to detect ordinal numerical information.     

The development of infants’ use of property-poor sounds to individuate objects

There is evidence that infants as young as 4.5 months use property-rich but not property-poor sounds as the basis for individuating objects (Wilcox, Woods, Tuggy, & Napoli, 2006). The current research sought to identify the age at which infants demonstrate the capacity to use property-poor sounds. Using the task of Wilcox et al., infants aged 7 and 9 months were tested. The results revealed that 9- but not 7-month-olds demonstrated sensitivity to property-poor sounds (electronic tones) in an object individuation task. Additional results confirmed that the younger infants were sensitive to property-rich sounds (rattle sounds). These are the first positive results obtained with property-poor sounds in infants and lay the foundation for future research to identify the underlying basis for the developmental hierarchy favoring property-rich over property-poor sounds and possible mechanisms for change.     

Evaluating advisors: A policy‐capturing study under conditions of complete and missing information

Decision‐makers' relative preferences for various advisor characteristics were investigated in two multilevel policy‐capturing studies. The characteristics under consideration were: advisor expertise, advisor confidence, advisor intentions, and whether that advisor was the sole available source of advice. In Study 1, decision‐makers had access to all relevant information about the advisors. In contrast, some relevant information about the advisors was systematically made unavailable in Study 2, which allowed an investigation of the effect of missing information on decision‐makers' evaluations of advisors. Results from both studies indicated that advisor expertise and intentions were most important in promoting decision‐makers' positive evaluations of advisors, that this effect was even more pronounced under conditions of missing information, and that advisor expertise and intentions also interacted synergistically. Given that expertise and good intentions are determinants of an advisor's trustworthiness, the results highlight the interpersonal nature of advice giving and taking. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

When choices give in to temptations: Explaining the disagreement among importance measures

Respondents’ overt statements of relative importance rarely correspond to weights derived from a regression analysis of their decisions. This paper conjectures that differential effects of high-level goals on importance beliefs and choices can explain these discrepancies. It is argued that the goal to justify decisions influences importance beliefs more than choices whereas the goal to assess preferences accurately affects choices more than importance beliefs. It is also argued that differential effects of high-level goals on importance statements and choices vary as a function of whether decision-maker controls the information flow and the extent of prior knowledge and experiences with choice options. These predictions were tested within the context of a contraceptive decision-making task. Choices among contraceptives made the justification goal salient to subjects by requiring tradeoffs between attributes that are either considered rational or tempting in making such decisions (e.g., health risks vs. pleasure/convenience). As predicted, subjects assigned larger importance weights to rational attributes in their subjective evaluations than in their choices whereas the impact of tempting attributes was stronger for choices than for subjective importance evaluations. Moreover, these observed discrepancies between importance measures were reduced in favor of rational attributes when subjects controlled the information flow and could not access their prior experiences. Overall, the results suggest that, although tempting attributes affect choices, decision makers appear to be unwilling to acknowledge the impact of tempting attributes on their decisions in judging attribute importance.     

情境模型中的时间表征研究

阅读理解中情境模型的建构是当今阅读研究的热点 ,自Zwaan等人提出事件标记模型理论以来 ,很多研究者对影响情境模型建构的空间维度进行了深入的研究 ,尽管对情境模型中时间维度的研究相对缺乏 ,但仍得出了一些有价值的研究成果。本文对情境模型中时间表征的理论假设、实验研究、技术手段及主要研究结论作了介绍和评析 ,并对未来的研究方向进行了展望。     

多属性决策任务中焦虑型个体的信息加工特点研究

该研究以多属性职业选项为材料,采用计算机化的信息板技术初步考察了焦虑型个体在多属性决策过程中的信息加工特点,结果表明焦虑型个体与非焦虑个体的决策过程有所不同。主要表现在与非焦虑型的决策者相比,焦虑型的被试在决策过程中对职业属性的加工时间更长,加工的信息也更多;在决策前后他们对完成决策任务的信心水平评估都很低,但是在搜索模式上焦虑型的决策者与非焦虑型的决策者没有差别。在研究的讨论部分对焦虑型个体决策过程中信息加工特点的原因进行了分析。     

信息提供者数量对职务信息完整性的影响

本研究探讨3种不同实验情境下,信息提供者数量对职务分析信息完整性及击中完整性的影响。方差分析表明:a)4名任职者可提供足够完整的职务信息;b)职务分析员数量与信息完整性的关系在情境间不稳定;c)职务分析实践中,采用4名任职者提供信息最合理,如可排除动机因素影响,采用3名任职者提供信息最合理;d)采用4名分析员凭经验提供职务信息最合理;如可阅读职务说明书,采用3名分析员最合理。     

Maximum Likelihood Methods in Treating Outliers and Symmetrically Heavy-Tailed Distributions for Nonlinear Structural Equation Models with Missing Data

By means of more than a dozen user friendly packages, structural equation models (SEMs) are widely used in behavioral, education, social, and psychological research. As the underlying theory and methods in these packages are vulnerable to outliers and distributions with longer-than-normal tails, a fundamental problem in the field is the development of robust methods to reduce the influence of outliers and the distributional deviation in the analysis. In this paper we develop a maximum likelihood (ML) approach that is robust to outliers and symmetrically heavy-tailed distributions for analyzing nonlinear SEMs with ignorable missing data. The analytic strategy is to incorporate a general class of distributions into the latent variables and the error measurements in the measurement and structural equations. A Monte Carlo EM (MCEM) algorithm is constructed to obtain the ML estimates, and a path sampling procedure is implemented to compute the observed-data log-likelihood and then the Bayesian information criterion for model comparison. The proposed methodologies are illustrated with simulation studies and an example. The research described herein was fully supported by a grant (CUHK 4243/03H) from the Rearch Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administration Region. The authors are thankful to the Editor, the Associate Editor, and anonymous reviewers for valuable comments which improve the paper significantly, and are grateful to ICPSR and the relevant funding agency for allowing the use of their data. Requests for reprints should be sent to S. Y. Lee, Department of Statistics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N. T., Hong Kong.