Response error and processing biases in confidence judgment

Previous studies showed that random error can explain overconfidence effects typically observed in the literature. One of these studies concluded that, after accounting for random error effects in the data, there is little support for cognitive‐processing biases in confidence elicitation. In this paper, we investigate more closely the random error explanation for overconfidence. We generated data from four models of confidence and then estimated the magnitude of random error in the data. Our results show that, in addition to the true magnitude of random error specified in the simulations, the error estimates are influenced by important cognitive‐processing biases in the confidence elicitation process. We found that random error in the response process can account for the degree of overconfidence found in calibration studies, even when that overconfidence is actually caused by other factors. Thus, the error models say little about whether cognitive biases are present in the confidence elicitation process. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘He's got his father's bias’: Parental influence on weight bias in young children

Our aim was to explore the role of parents in the transmission of stereotypical body size attitudes and awareness of weight loss strategies to preschool children. Participants were 279 3‐year‐old children and their parents, who provided data at baseline and 1 year later. Parents completed self‐report body size attitude and dieting measures. Child weight bias and awareness of weight loss strategies were assessed through interview. Over time, negative associations with large bodies and awareness of weight loss strategies increased. Fathers’ attitudes prospectively predicted boys’ weight bias and awareness of weight loss strategies. Among girls, parental attitudes were less predictive. Findings confirm the importance of fathers in the development of boys’ body attitudes and inform prevention programmes.     

Setting the sales budget: An exploratory study

This article explores how the sales budget is set in a business organization. Findings from a longitudinal participant observation study revealed that the sales budget is considered of great importance to the organization as sales estimates serve as premises for planning of production and supply and new product developments. It was observed that the sales budget was based on a narrow, inner-directed perspective, almost looking away from important environmental driving forces such as competitors and customers. The findings also showed that individuals involved in the sales budgeting process behaved opportunistically, influencing the budgetary process and outcomes. Theoretical and normative implications are highlighted.     

Individual differences in reverse Hindsight bias: I never thought something like chernobyl would happen. Did I?

Hindsight bias was studied in the context of the accident in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which took place on April 26th 1986. An individual difference factor which relates to the motivation to process information, need for cognition, was expected to moderate the occurrence of hindsight bias. Probability estimates of many casualties due to the use of nuclear power in The Netherlands were obtained from 212 individuals two months before the accident in Chernobyl. These estimates were compared with similar estimates made in hindsight by the same individuals five months after the accident. Loglinear Analyses reveal a systematic hindsight bias. However, the direction of the bias was contrary to expectations. In hindsight, individuals gave lower probabilities than they actually did two months before the Chernobyl accident. These results reveal a reverse hindsight bias. As hypothesized, need for cognition moderates hindsight bias: individuals low and medium in need for cognition express a systematic reverse hindsight bias, while individuals high in need for cognition do not. High need for cognition individuals also show higher literal consistency between the two measurements, which supports a memory explanation of the moderating effect of need for cognition.     

Rhetoric and “doing philosophy”

By drawing new distinctions labelled appeal and response to replace traditional rhetorical modes of written discourse, the essay sketches a new perspective about what philosophers are doing rhetorically in doing philosophy. To think of philosophers as simply engaged in argument is an oversimplification and a distortion of what philosophers do. Crucial to doing philosophy are four activities: (1) definition and redefinition of problems and issues that form both the focus of the canonical historical literature of philosophy and what goes on in contemporary philosophy as a discipline, (2) the development and use of formal languages and technical vocabularies to abbreviate and label complexity and to disambiguate and precise distinctions necessary to deal with problems and issues, (3) the development and exploration of argumentative appeals for acceptance or refutation of answers to questions raised by the philosophical problematic, and (4) the development and exploration of explanatory responses to questions raised by the problematic. In so far as these four activities are driven and sanctioned by the current, self-defining philosophical problematic, contemporary philosophy as a body of knowledge is historical, cumulative, and marked by progress, and the doing of philosophy is fundamentally the making of written appeals and responses about its problematic.     

Effects of relative reinforcer frequency on complex color detection

Pigeons were trained under a discrete-trials detection procedure in which one of a set of color stimuli was presented on the center key and a single response turned off the stimulus and illuminated two side keys. Single responses to one or the other side key produced occasional reinforcers depending on the value of the color stimulus. In Experiment 1, one color-stimulus set comprised 559, 564, 569, and 574 nm, and right-key pecks were occasionally reinforced following presentations of members of this set. The other stimulus set comprised 579, 584, 589, and 594 nm, and left-key pecks were occasionally reinforced following presentations of members of this set. Across seven experimental conditions, the left/(left + right) relative reinforcer frequency was varied from .1 to .9. In Experiment 2, one stimulus set contained only one member, 574 nm, and right-key responses were occasionally reinforced following its presentation. Over 12 experimental conditions, two manipulations were carried out. First, the number of stimuli comprising the other stimulus set was increased from one (579 nm) to two (579 and 584 nm) to three (579, 584, and 589 nm) and to four (579, 584, 589, and 594 nm), and left-key responses were reinforced occasionally following center-key presentations of members of this set. Second, for each stimulus combination, the left/(left + right) relative reinforcer frequency was varied from .1 to .5 to .9 across three experimental conditions. The principal finding of Experiments 1 and 2 was that reinforcers and stimuli interacted in their effects on behavior. In Experiment 3, pairs of adjacent stimuli (5 nm apart) in the range 559 to 594 nm were presented in each experimental condition, and the left/(left + right) relative reinforcer frequency was held constant at .5. The data from all three experiments were analyzed according to a detection model describing performance in multiple-stimulus two-response procedures. This model provided independent measures of stimulus discriminability, contingency discriminability, and bias. The analysis showed that (a) consistent with the color-naming function, pigeons were better able to discriminate between higher nanometer values than lower nanometer values; (b) their ability to discriminate between the stimuli was independent of the number of wavelengths comprising each stimulus set; (c) they allocated delivered reinforcers very accurately to the previously emitted response; and (d) no consistent biases emerged.     

The role of observing and attention in establishing stimulus control.

Early theorists (Skinner, Spence) interpreted discrimination learning in terms of the strengthening of the response to one stimulus and its weakening to the other. But this analysis does not account for the increasing independence of the two performances as training continues or for increases in control by dimensions of a stimulus other than the one used in training. Correlation of stimuli with different densities of reinforcement produces an increase in the behavior necessary to observe them, and greater observing of and attending to the relevant stimuli may account for the increase in control by these stimuli. The observing analysis also encompasses errorless training, and the selective nature of observing explains the feature-positive effect and the relatively shallow gradients of generalization generated by negative discriminative stimuli. The effectiveness of the observing analysis in handling these special cases adds to the converging lines of evidence supporting its integrative power and thus its validity.     

USE OF ESCAPE AND REWARD IN THE MANAGEMENT OF YOUNG CHILDREN DURING DENTAL TREATMENT

A reinforced practice procedure was used to facilitate cooperative behavior in five children, aged 3 to 6 years, during dental treatment. In a multiple baseline design across subjects, the children were rewarded with escape, inexpensive stickers, and praise for cooperative behavior in the presence of the sights, sounds, and some sensations of the dental instruments prior to actual dental treatment. Direct observations of disruptive behavior via a 15-s interval recording system indicated baseline levels as high as 90% were reduced to less than 15% by the final treatment visit. In addition, the procedure was effective in reducing overall heart rate and blood pressure reactivity to dental treatment. All children were rated by the involved dental professionals as more cooperative and relaxed following exposure to reinforced practice.     

SOCIAL INFLUENCES ON “SELF-STIMULATORY” BEHAVIOR: ANALYSIS AND TREATMENT APPLICATION

We tested the hypothesis that the “self-stimulatory” behaviors exhibited by some individuals may be socially mediated. Four developmentally disabled children who exhibited hand flapping and body rocking participated in a series of three experiments conducted to assess the influence of social variables on stereotyped behavior and to develop a treatment based on the assessment. Experiment 1 used an assessment procedure to determine the relative influences of social attention and task demands on stereotyped behavior. For all four children, hand flapping and body rocking increased when difficult academic tasks were introduced. Experiment 2 involved the use of a procedural time-out and demonstrated that removing task demands contingent on stereotyped behavior resulted in increased rates of hand flapping and body rocking. In Experiment 3, these results were used to develop a communication treatment that consisted of teaching the children to request assistance on the difficult tasks. This treatment resulted in significant reductions in self-stimulatory behavior. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that some forms of repetitive stereotyped behavior may come to serve social functions (e.g., escape from aversive situations). Teaching a functionally equivalent communicative alternative to escape-motivated stereotyped behavior can be an effective form of intervention for this problem.     

The interaction of stimulus and reinforcer control in complex temporal discrimination.

Six pigeons were trained in a discrete-trials signal-detection procedure to discriminate between a fixed-duration stimulus (5 s or 20 s) and a set of variable durations ranging from 2.5 s to 57.5 s in steps of 5 s. For each fixed-duration stimulus, the ratio of reinforcer frequencies contingent upon reporting the fixed versus the variable stimulus was systematically manipulated. Detection performance was well controlled by both the stimulus value and the reinforcer ratio. Both the discriminability between the fixed duration and the set of variable durations, and the discriminability between the fixed duration and each of the variable durations, were independent of the reinforcer-frequency ratio when discriminability was measured as log d. The sensitivity of response bias to reinforcement-ratio changes was independent of the value of the fixed duration, but was not independent of the discriminability of the variable durations from the fixed durations. Under current models, discriminability measures in complex temporal discrimination may be independent of biasing manipulations, but bias measures are not independent of stimulus values.