Retroactive interference in single-cue probability learning

Abstract.— When two single-cue probability learning tasks with different amounts of unpredictable variance were learned in succession. a low variance task interfered with the retention of a high variance task, but the opposite was not true. The effects were positive in that they enabled the subjects to reach a higher response consistency and, thus, a higher level of achievement. It was suggested that the subjects made use of the low variance task to reject incorrect hypotheses about the cue-criterion relation and that interference from an interpolated task occurs only when this task provides information which has functional value for the subject.     

Policy conflict and policy change as a function of task characteristics: IV. The effect of cue intercorrelations

Abstract.— The hypothesis that intercorrelations between the cues in the conflict task will inhibit the reduction of the systematic differences in policies in policy conflict as studied in Hammond's "lens model" interpersonal conflict paradigm was tested in two experiments. The results supported the hypothesis, and suggested that the effect was due to the fact that the subjects have greater freedom in developing different policies when the cues are intercorrelated. In addition, the results suggested that the process of policy change when the conflict task has a lower degree of predictability than the original policy learning task might differ from that when the conflict task has the same predictability as the original task.     

Learning complex rules in probabilistic inference tasks

Abstract.— A hypothesis-sampling theory for rule learning predicts that only those rules that are available for sampling can be learned. Earlier results show that subjects have a very limited set of hypotheses about rules relating scaled cue and criterion variables, consisting mainly of linear and symmetric quadratic functions, but not of complex functions, such as J-shaped rules. Tasks requiring the use of such rules should, therefore, not be learned. The results of the present experiment show, however, that subjects are able to find J-shaped relations. The results were interpreted to mean that subjects are able to construct hypotheses, and that they are not limited to sampling of hypotheses from a preestablished set of possible hypotheses.     

Policy conflict and policy change as a function of task characteristics 1. The effects of cue validity and function form

Brehmer, B. & Kostron, L. Policy conflict and policy change as a function of task characteristics. I. The effects of cue validity and function form. Scand. J. Psychol., 1973, 14, 44–55.-Policy conflict and policy change in the "lens model" interpersonal conflict paradigm were studied as a function of the distribution of cue validities in a two-cue task with one linear and one nonlinear cue. Agreement was higher in the conditions where the linear cue was more valid than the nonlinear cue than in the conditions where the nonlinear cue was more valid than the linear cue. This was primarily due to the fact that the subjects' policies were more consistent in predominantly linear conditions. The amount of policy change in the various conditions suggested that the subjects' behavior was the result of a compromise between conflict reduction and task adaptation.     

Policy conflict, policy consistency, and interpersonal understanding

Abstract.— A number of studies have shown that inconsistency in the subjects' policies is a major reason for disagreement in policy conflict. It has been hypothesized that the lack of consistency makes it hard for subjects to understand each other's policies. The present results provided evidence for this hypothesis by showing that subjects asked each other more questions about policy when their policies were less consistent in an experiment where policy consistency was manipulated by varying the predictability of the conflict task.     

Policy conflict and policy change as a function of task characteristics III. The effects of the distribution of the validities of the cues in the conflict task

Abstract.— The effects of the distribution of the validities of the cues in the conflict task on policy conflict, as studied in Hammond's "lens model" interpersonal conflict paradigm, was investigated in a 2 (levels of task predictability) by 2 (levels of cue validity distribution: only one cue valid vs. two equally valid cues) factorial experiment. The results showed that the level of agreement was higher when only one cue was valid than when both cues were valid, but this effect was obtained only when task predictability was high. In the low predictability condition, there were no differences between the two levels of cue validity distribution. In agreement with earlier findings, the results also showed that agreement was a positive function of the predictability of the task. These results show that, to understand policy conflict, it is not sufficient to analyse only the characteristics of the parties to the conflict; it is also necessary to analyse the characteristics of the task facing the parties.     

Learning to use functional rules in inference tasks

Abstract.— Earlier studies have established that subjects perform less well in inference tasks with nonlinear rules than in tasks with linear rules, and that one source of the lower level of performance in nonlinear tasks is that the subjects cannot utilize a nonlinear rule as well as they utilize a linear rule. The three experiments in this paper investigate whether utilization of a nonlinear rule can be improved by training. The results show that there is some improvement with training, but the improvement could not be attributed to feedback, or to the learning of specific cue and criterion values. Cognitive feedback did not produce higher performance than ordinary outcome feedback.     

Preliminaries to a psychology of inference

This paper presents a general pretheoretical framework for the study of inference. The framework is that of Social Judgment Theory which has been developed from Brunswik's probabilistic functionalism. The first section discusses the fundamental theoretical ideas and methodological principles. Important among these is the stress on the need to study the relation between the cognitive system and the inference task using parallel concepts for describing the cognitive system and the task, the theory of cognitive tasks, and the methodology of formal representative sampling. The second section describes a series of experimental paradigms developed from the basic ideas discussed in the first section. The third, and final section gives some examples of actual empirical research, mainly research concerned with the hypothesis testing process by means of which subjects learn inference tasks, studies on cognitive skills in using various rules for making inferences, new conceptions of feedback, research on the effects of feedforward, and interpersonal learning.     

Learning and hypothesis testing in probabilistic inference tasks

The relation between learning of probabilistic inference tasks and the availability of correct hypotheses for the tasks in individual subjects was investigated in two experiments. The results showed that having the correct hypotheses as measured before learning the tasks was neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for learning the task. It was concluded that the hypothesis measurements are not reliable enough to allow predictions on an individual level. The results also showed that subjects have not only the four basic functions: positive linear, negative linear, U-shaped and inversely U-shaped, in their hypothesis hierarchies but also J-shaped functions. That the subjects can leam such functions is thus no discodinnation of the hypotheses sampling conception of learning as assumed in earlier studies.     

Connotations and cognitive conflict: A comment on the Kuhlman, Miller and Gungor results

In a recent study, Kuhlman et al. (1973) investigated the effects of differences in connotations on cognitive conflict in an experiment following Hammond's (1965) "lens model" interpersonal conflict (IPC) paradigm. The conflict task was a political decisions task which required the subjects to infer the future level of democratic institutions in a country from two cues: (1) The amount of state control over the individual (2) and the extent to which government was determined by elections. The subjects rated the concepts of "state control" and "elections" on four evaluative scales of the semantic differential. From these ratings, connotatively different pairs and connotatively similar pairs were created. In addition, the degree of denotative differences was varied in the experiment. Denotatively different pairs were created by training one of the subjects in each pair to use only the state-control cue and the other subject to use only the elections cue. Denotatively similar pairs were created by training the subjects in each pair to use the same cue.
After the training, the subjects in each pair went through 20 conflict trials. On each of these trials, they were given a card depicting the level of state control and the level of elections for a country. The subjects (I) studied this card, (2) announced their individual judgments of the criterion, (3) discussed the case until they could reach a joint judgment, acceptable to both of them, after which (4) they were informed of the correct answer and went on to the next trial. For further details on the procedure, the reader is referred to the original paper by Kuhl-man et al. (1973).