Self-limited and unlimited word usage during problem solving in two telecommunication modes

Subjects using oral modes of communication generate far more verbiage than do subjects using handwittenn or typewritten modes to solve the same problems. This study tested two alternative hypotheses to account for this disparity: (1) written modes produce a hard copy of interchanges, thereby compensating for the limitations of short-term memory and reducing the need to repeat information, and (2) talking is so easy that there is no incentive to be concise in oral modes. Two-person teams solved problems either by voice or by teletypewriter. Half the teams were given a monetary incentive to use as few words as possible. No such request was made of the control teams. Subjects in the brevity condition, regardless of the communication mode, greatly reduced verbiage with no increase in time or decrease in accuracy. Moreover, subjects in the brevity-voice condition used even fewer words than did subjects in the control-teletypewriter condition. These results, then, lend weight to the second hypothesis.     

The development and analysis of tutorial dialogues in AutoTutor Lite

The goal of intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) that interact in natural language is to emulate the benefits that a well-trained human tutor provides to students, by interpreting student answers and appropriately responding in order to encourage elaboration. BRCA Gist is an ITS developed using AutoTutor Lite, a Web-based version of AutoTutor. Fuzzy-trace theory theoretically motivated the development of BRCA Gist, which engages people in tutorial dialogues to teach them about genetic breast cancer risk. We describe an empirical method to create tutorial dialogues and fine-tune the calibration of BRCA Gist’s semantic processing engine without a team of computer scientists. We created five interactive dialogues centered on pedagogic questions such as “What should someone do if she receives a positive result for genetic risk of breast cancer?” This method involved an iterative refinement process of repeated testing with different texts and successively making adjustments to the tutor’s expectations and settings in order to improve performance. The goal of this method was to enable BRCA Gist to interpret and respond to answers in a manner that best facilitated learning. We developed a method to analyze the efficacy of the tutor’s dialogues. We found that BRCA Gist’s assessment of participants’ answers was highly correlated with the quality of the answers found by trained human judges using a reliable rubric. The dialogue quality between users and BRCA Gist predicted performance on a breast cancer risk knowledge test completed after exposure to the tutor. The appropriateness of BRCA Gist’s feedback also predicted the quality of answers and breast cancer risk knowledge test scores.     

The vertical-horizontal illusion in a visually-rich environment

In the vertical-horizontal illusion the vertical dimension of a figure typically appears longer than the horizontal. Although there is a large body of research literature on this illusion, all of it refers to simple figures with well-drawn lines, exhibited against plain backgrounds. Our experiment has investigated the illusion using real-world objects in a visually-rich environment. Ten male and 10 female Ss were asked to judge the heights of 10 objects of various sizes and shapes. They made their estimates by having the experimenter mark off a horizontal distance that corresponded to the judged height of the object. Each S estimated the height of each object once a day for three consecutive days. The results show that, by and large, the illusion can be demonstrated for real objects in a visually-rich environment. There was, however,considerable variation among the objects. It appears that estimates of this kind may be influenced by size, size constancy, anchor effects, and angle of regard, along with other, as yet, unidentified factors.     

One role or two? The function of psychological separation in role conflict

Student athletes vary in how much they view their academic and athletic role identities as separate from and interfering with each other. The authors investigated the relation of these perceptions to psychological well-being in 200 intercollegiate athletes. Measures included role separation, interference, identity, and well-being. Correlations indicated that interference related negatively to well-being, whereas viewing the roles as distinct related positively to well-being. Regression analyses of demographic and role identity variables also showed a positive association between role separation and well-being, and a significant Separation x Interference interaction. Specifically, role interference was negatively related to well-being for those who viewed the two roles as distinct but unrelated for those who did not. The buffering effects of role separation are discussed.     

A note on stove and adding machine arrangement preferences as a function of sex and handedness

Some stove and adding machine arrangements chosen by our subjects were influenced by both their sex and handedness.     

The Effect of Self-Imposed Brevity on the Structure of Dyadic Communication

Differences between concise and natural communications in problem solving were investigated by comparing the communications generated by pairs of S s asked to use as few words as possible with the communications by pairs of S s of whom no such request was made. Sixteen male pairs and 16 female pairs, all undergraduate students, were tested. Two modes of communication were used: voice and teletypewriter. An analysis of message function revealed that when S s tried to be brief, they used a larger percentage of messages concerned with the exchange of information and lower percentages of messages that dealt with the rate of communication, judgments, and feedback than under the natural condition. An analysis of parts of speech revealed that those S s who restricted their communications used higher percentages of nouns and adjectives and lower percentages of pronouns, verbs, prepositions, interjections, and articles than did S s who did not restrict their communications. Most of these findings held for both modes of communication.     

Absolute judgments of colors using natural color names

Twenty Ss, 10 male and 10 female, were required to select from a list of 36 common color names the correct name for each of 36 Munsell colored chips. On their first trial, with no prior training and without even having seen the set of stimuli in advance, our Ss gave results that were as good as, or better than, previous Es have reported at the conclusion of much longer experiments. On the last trial (Trial 10) our Ss transmitted about 5.07 bits of information, corresponding to the perfect discrimination of more than 33 colors. These figures approach the upper limit possible with 36 colors (5.17 bits). Reasons are given to suggest that the so-called human “channel capacity” to tasks of this kind could be even greater than we found here.