Preference for news as a function of familiarity

The study was designed to test the hypothesis that interest in information reaches a maximum when something novel is predicted about a well-known subject. The hypothesis predicts that news will be considered more attractive the more familiar its source or theme. This was confirmed in two experiments, where Norwegian and British students were asked to state their interest in reading news from thirty countries of varying familiarity (Experiment 1) or from correspondents in twenty-six capital cities (Experiment 2). Subjects also stated their preferences for reading general information about the same countries or cities, and indicated from which of these they would prefer to receive postcard greetings. The results show preference for news to be closely related to familiarity of country or city ( r =0.93 and r =0.91). General information and postcard preferences were as predicted, less directly related to familiarity.     

Interventive Interviewing: Part I. Strategizing as a Fourth Guideline for the Therapist

A clinical interview affords far more opportunities to act therapeutically than most therapists realize. Because so many of these opportunities remain outside the therapist's conscious awareness, it is useful to elaborate guidelines that orient his or her general activity in directions that are liable to be therapeutic. The Milan associates defined three such basic guidelines: hypothesizing, circularity, and neutrality. Hypothesizing is clear and easy to accept. The notions of circularity and neutrality have aroused considerable interest but are not as readily understood. These guidelines may be clarified and operationalized when reformulated as conceptual postures. This process is enhanced by differentiating a fourth guideline, strategizing, which entails the therapist's decision making, including decisions about how to employ these postures. This paper, the first in a series of three, explores these four interviewing guidelines. The other papers will appear in a subsequent issue. Part II will focus on reflexive questioning, a mode of inquiry oriented toward mobilizing the family's own healing capacity. Part III will provide a scheme for analyzing and choosing among four major types of questions: linear questions, circular questions, reflexive questions, and strategic questions.     

Integration and cue overlap in recognition failure of recallable words

A highly systematic relation between the conditional probability of recognition given recall and the overall recognition hit rate has been demonstrated in a wide variety of experiments. A function describing this relationship was developed by Tulving & Wiseman (1975). Exceptions to this function have, in retrospect, been interpreted in terms of (a) a low integration between cue and target items, or (b) a high cue overlap between the two tests involved: recognition and recall. The experiment reported was designed to evaluate the joint and the separate contributions from integration and cue overlap for obtaining conformity with and exception from the Tulving-Wiseman function. In line with the predictions made, the results showed that these two factors in combination can account for data that fit the function and for exceptions above the function. In relative terms, the contribution from integration was somewhat more pronounced than that from cue overlap.     

"Knowledge by acquaintance" and "Knowledge-about": A psychometrical demonstration

In two studies, students were asked to rate their knowledge of a number of different topics, extracurricular as well as drawn from their textbooks of the history of psychology and philosophy. The score distributions on a scale from "unknown" to "well known" were in all cases distinctly U-formed, as if knowledge were a question of either/or, rather than one of degree. However, when knowledge was rated on a scale from "know nothing about" to "know much about", the U-pattern failed to appear, and the students tended generally to give more cautious ratings. The differences are interpreted as evidence for the philosophical and linguistic distinction between "knowledge by acquaintance" (German: "kennen", French: "connaître") and "knowledge-about" (German: "wissen", French: "savoir").     

Studies in subjective probability II: Dilemmas of chance

The study examines guessing patterns in situations where outcomes have an unequal probability of occurring. It is shown that people will not always predict the most probable outcome if this is an extreme, "unrepresentative" value (Experiments I and II). It is also demonstrated that predictions are influenced by which questions are asked (for instance, if a point prediction or an interval prediction is called for). Thus a sequence of questions can lead to incorrect (suboptimal) predictions, even if each answer is perfectly logical in itself. In this case, most subjects prefer to be consistent rather than being "rational", making the final prediction dependent upon the order in which decisions are made (Experiments III-V).     

A Unified Empirical Account of Responsibility Judgments*

Skeptical worries about moral responsibility seem to be widely appreciated and deeply felt. To address these worries—if nothing else to show that they are mistaken—theories of moral responsibility need to relate to whatever concept of responsibility underlies the worries. Unfortunately, the nature of that concept has proved hard to pin down. Not only do philosophers have conflicting intuitions; numerous recent empirical studies have suggested that both prosaic responsibility judgments and incompatibilist intuitions among the folk are influenced by a number of surprising factors, sometimes prompting apparently contradictory judgments. In this paper, we show how an independently motivated hypothesis about responsibility judgments provides a unified explanation of the more important results from these studies. According to this ‘Explanation Hypothesis’, to take an agent to be morally responsible for an event is to take a relevant motivational structure of the agent to be part of a significant explanation of the event. We argue that because of how explanatory interests and perspectives affect what we take as significant explanations, this analysis accounts for the puzzling variety of empirical results. If this is correct, the Explanation Hypothesis also provides a new way of understanding debates about moral responsibility.     

Preferential looking: A sudden shift in visual fixation pattern at 32 months of age

Observations of eye movements of young children in a modified preferential looking task suggest a change in the visual looking pattern taking place during a very brief time between 32 and 33 months of age. In the younger children, a grating stimulus elicited eye movements towards the target followed by a few seconds of focused attention; in the older children a visual avoidance behavior was observed where subjects looked consistently in the opposite direction of the target. An analysis of video recordings suggests that this avoidance pattern was a composite of a very brief initial target-directed eyemovement which was quickly arrested, and followed by eye movements in the opposite direction, initiating a search of the visual scene.