Perceived numerosity of spatiotemporal events

Numerosity discrimination was examined when items were varied in space-time position rather than in space only. Observers were instructed to indicate which of two adjacent streams of visual events contained more items. The precision of numerosity discrimination of dynamic events was not remarkably different from that of static patterns. Two basic numerosity biases previously found for static dot patterns--inhibitory overestimation and satellite underestimation--were demonstrated for items distributed randomly over a spatiotemporal interval. It was also demonstrated that two streams, equated in the number and luminous energy of items, are not judged equal in their visible number if items in one of these two streams have longer duration than items in the second stream. These findings can be accounted for by the occupancy model of perceived numerosity (Allik & Tuulmets, 1991a) if it is supposed that the impact that each element has on its neighborhood is spread along both spatial and temporal coordinates. Perceived numerosity decreases with both spatial and temporal proximity between the visual items. Space and time have interchangeable effects on perceived numerosity: the amount of numerosity bias caused by the spatial proximity of items can also be produced by the properly chosen temporal proximity of items.     

Confirmatory factor analysis models of information processing stages: An alternative to difference scores.

Presents a general approach based on ANCOVA structures that can be used by cognitive psychologists to calculate correlations involving a component of information processing time that cannot be directly measured. The usual procedure has been to express this component as a difference between 2 times that can be directly measured. But correlations involving difference scores are notably attenuated by the presence of measurement error, and the substantive assumptions implicit in the calculation of difference scores may not be plausible. The recommended approach begins with reasonable statements of how components of processes are structured in confirmatory factor analysis models, which can be estimated by LISREL or COFAMM. In the process of fitting such models, the proper disattenuated correlation is estimated as part of a set of parameters implied by substantive assumptions. The validity of these assumptions can be tested by comparing the fit of the model to observed data. Such a comparison may suggest how assumptions should be modified to increase the plausibility of the model. This model-fitting approach is illustrated with data relating information-processing tasks to ability measures. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ethnic bias in counseling: An information processing approach.

Used an illusory correlation paradigm to measure the impact of counselor trainee stereotyping on the processing of information about ethnic groups. 13 Anglo-American and 7 ethnic-minority graduate students in counseling psychology were presented the following information relative to hypothetical persons: stereotypic characteristics, ethnicity, and blood type (a neutral stimulus). Ss were subsequently asked to make judgments about the relationship between ethnicity and stereotypic characteristics as well as between blood type and stereotypic characteristics. Both populations made nearly the same number of errors on the ethnicity items as on blood type items. However, the Anglo-American group made fewer errors on those items for which a stereotypic response was correct than on those items for which the stereotypic response was incorrect, indicating that stereotyping did affect the processing of information relative to ethnicity. This phenomenon was not present for the ethnic-minority group. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Count me in! On the automaticity of numerosity processing.

Extraction of numerosity (i.e., enumeration) is an essential component of mathematical abilities. The current study asked how automatic is the processing of numerosity and whether automatic activation is task dependent. Participants were presented with displays containing a variable number of digits and were asked to pay attention to the number of digits or to their numerical value, in separate blocks. Effects of task were tested with a comparative judgment task and a parity judgment task. In the comparative judgment task, participants had to indicate whether the numerosity or the numerical value of the digits was smaller or larger than 5. In the parity judgment task, participants had to indicate whether this value was odd or even. Irrelevant numerical values modulated performance regardless of task. In contrast, irrelevant numerosities modulated performance only in the comparative judgment task. These results suggest that numerical value is activated automatically, whereas activation of numerosity is modulated by task. We suggest that the differences observed are related to different cognitive and neural mechanisms recruited by these tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sexual preference biases in counseling: An information processing approach.

Used an illusory correlation paradigm to measure the effect of stereotyping by mental health professionals on processing information about individuals identified according to sex and sexual preference (SP). 34 23–58 yr old mental health professionals (17 males and 17 females) rated themselves on an SP scale, were presented a series of cards that identified hypothetical persons according to sex and SP, and ascribed to these persons 2 randomly selected stereotypic characteristics associated with 1 of the SP groups. After studying the cards, Ss were asked to make judgments about the relationship between SP and sex and the stereotypic characteristics. Fewer errors were made on those items for which a stereotypic response was congruent with prevailing stereotypes than on those items for which the stereotypic response was incongruent, indicating that stereotyping did affect the processing of information relative to the sex and SP group. Ss had more difficulty correctly processing information attributed to gay men and lesbian women than information attributed to heterosexual men and women. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The development of automatic numerosity processing in preschoolers: Evidence for numerosity-perceptual interference.

Three experiments examined developmental changes in the automatic processing of numerosity and perceptual information using a nonsymbolic numerical Stroop paradigm. In Experiments 1 and 2 (E1 and E2), 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds had to compare the numerosities or the total filled areas of collections of dots (E1) or bars (E2) varying along both dimensions. Experiment 3 replicated E2's results in 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds. Results demonstrated the existence of reciprocal influences between numerical and perceptual information beginning at age 3. Moreover, the irrelevant perceptual influences remained stable throughout development, whereas the sensitivity to irrelevant numerical cues tended to increase with age despite children's growing inhibition capacities. No significant correlation could be found between these developmental changes and the acquisition of counting knowledge. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An information processing model of some seriation tasks.

Children were video-tape recorded while trying to solve one of Piaget's weight seriation tasks. Detailed protocol analyses and computer simulations of the behavior of three children at different stages of intellectual development are presented. The programs, organized as systems of production rules, simulate the Ss' behavior in detail. They show how intellectual development is related to the Ss' (a) progressive sophistication in structuring their environment, (b) better use of memory, (c) span for drawing inferences, and (d) initial conception of what a seriation is, as reflected in such parameters as the adequacy of their stop rules and single vs. multiple block comparisons. Two additional experiments (N=35) compare length with weight seriation; access to information is controlled in one of the length seriation conditions. Results indicate that the typically observed décalage in performance on the two tasks largely disappears when a systematic effort is made to render the information-processing requirements of the two tasks isomorphic. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intelligence and information processing during an auditory discrimination task with backward masking: An event-related potential analysis.

The relation between mental ability and auditory discrimination ability was examined by recording event-related potentials from 60 women during an auditory oddball task with backward masking. Across conditions that varied in intensity and in the interval between the target and masking stimuli, the higher ability (HA) group exhibited greater response accuracy, shorter response times, larger P3 amplitude, and shorter P3 latency to target stimuli than the lower ability (LA) group. When instructed to ignore the stimuli, the HA group exhibited shorter mismatch negativity latency to deviant tones than the LA group. The greater speed and accuracy of auditory discrimination for the HA group, observed here with multiple measures, is not a consequence of response strategy, test-taking ability, or attention deployment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Information choice and cue use: An experiment in group information processing.

The literature on group decision making suggests that collective decisions often differ from those of individuals. The present study, through the use of discriminant analysis, sought to account for performance differences between individuals and groups in a loan review situation involving 89 senior accounting or graduate business students. Ss were divided among 23 3-member groups and 20 individual Ss. Each group or individual received information about a business firm and was asked to classify its financial status. Information selection, cue use, and decision consistency were considered as explanatory variables. Results reveal significant performance differences between individual and committee decisions. These differences could not be accounted for by information selection or cue use, but the committees were found to be more consistent in their decisions. Unlike individuals, they were also able to improve their performance with supplementary financial information. Findings suggest that under certain circumstances, group decision making might be more effective than individual decision making because of information-processing advantages and the elimination of random individual error. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An evaluation of spatial information processing in aged rats.

The spatial learning abilities of young, middle-age, and senescent rats were investigated in 2 experiments using several versions of the Morris water maze task. In Exp I, Long-Evans hooded rats were trained to find a submerged escape platform hidden within the water maze. Aged Ss exhibited acquisition deficits compared with either young or middle-age Ss. With continued training, all age groups eventually achieved comparable asymptotic levels of performance. To identify the basis of the age-related impairments observed in Exp I, naive young and aged Ss in Exp II were initially tested for their ability to locate a cued escape platform in the water maze. The escape latencies of both young and aged Ss rapidly decreased to equivalent asymptotic levels. Following cue training, young Ss exhibit a significant spatial bias for the region of the testing apparatus where the platform was positioned during training. In contrast, aged Ss showed no spatial bias. Training was continued in Exp II using a novel submerged platform location for each S. During these place training trials, the escape latencies of senescent Ss were longer than those of young Ss. These impairments were also accompanied by a lack of spatial bias among aged Ss relative to young controls. Results indicate that age-related impairments in water maze performance reflect a specific deficit in the ability of aged rats to utilize spatial information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Test anxiety: Deficits in information processing.

Compared 194 high, medium, and low test-anxious undergraduates (Worry and Emotionality Questionnaire) on the retrieval deficit hypothesis. The hypothesis was supported by results showing that high test-anxious Ss did poorly on essay and short-answer questions but did well on multiple choice questions that involved less active retrieval. Specifically, results show that high test-anxious Ss (a) did poorly on a take-home examination that did not emphasize retrieval, (b) reported problems in learning material throughout the course, (c) had problems picking important points in the reading assignments, and (d) encoded information at a more superficial level. Results imply that the worry reported by high test-anxious Ss may not simply be a personality characteristic but may rather be due to their inadequate knowledge of the subject matter. Results also imply that programs for helping such Ss should emphasize developing learning strategies and coping techniques for the test situation. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An analysis of learned helplessness: II. The processing of success.

Continues the authors' (see record 1979-13073-001) study of learned helplessness. Previous findings indicate that helpless children attributed their failure to lack of ability and viewed them as insurmountable. Mastery-oriented children, in contrast, tended to emphasize motivational factors and to view failure as surmountable. Although the performance of the 2 groups was usually identical during success or prior to failure, research suggested that these groups may well differ in the degree to which they perceived that their successes are replicable and their failures are avoidable. In the present study, 56 male and 56 female 4th–6th graders performed a task on which they encountered success and then failure. 56 Ss were asked a series of questions about their performance after success and 56 after failure. Compared to mastery-oriented Ss, helpless Ss underestimated the number of successes (and overestimated the number of failures), did not view successes as indicative of ability, and did not expect the successes to continue. Subsequent failure led them to devalue their performance but left the mastery-oriented Ss undaunted. Thus, for helpless children, successes are less salient, less predictive, and less enduring—less successful. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individual differences in skill learning: An integration of psychometric and information processing perspectives.

Reexamines the nature of individual differences in novel and practiced performance on skill learning tasks from an information processing framework. Two major sources of data and discussion are reanalyzed and critically evaluated. One source concerns the changes in interindividual between-subjects variability with task practice; the other pertains to associations between intellectual abilities and task performance during skill acquisition. Early studies yielded mixed results regarding the convergence or divergence of individual differences with practice. Other studies indicated small or trivial correlations between individual differences in intelligence and "gain" scores. More recent studies indicated small correlations between performance measures on skill learning tasks and standard intellectual and cognitive ability measures, as well as increasing amounts of task-specific variance over learning trials. Data confirm the proposition that individuals converge on performance as tasks become less dependent on attentional resources with practice. When appropriate methodological techniques are used and crucial task characteristics are taken into account, intellectual abilities play a substantial part in determining individual differences in skill learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Continuous versus discrete information processing: Modeling accumulation of partial information.

Comments on D. E. Meyer and colleagues' (see record 1988-28535-001) new technique for examining the time course of information processing, which is a variant of the response signal procedure: On some trials Ss are presented with a signal that requires them to respond, whereas on other trials they respond normally. The accuracy of guesses based on partial information can be determined by using the data from the regular trials and a simple race model to remove the contribution of fast-finishing regular trials from signal trial data. This analysis shows that the accuracy of guesses is relatively low and is either approximately constant or grows slowly over the time course of retrieval. Myers et al argue that this pattern of results rules out most continuous models of information processing. But the analyses presented in the present article show that this pattern is consistent with several stochastic RT models: the simple random walk, the runs, and the continuous diffusion models. The diffusion model is assessed with data from a new experiment using the study–test recognition memory procedure. Fitting the diffusion model to the data from regular trials fixes all parameters of the model except one (the signal encoding and decision parameter). With this one free parameter, the model predicts the observed guessing accuracy. It is concluded that the results obtained from Meyer and colleagues' new technique give qualitative support to some stochastic models and quantitative support to the continuous diffusion model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An analysis of hierarchical processing in visual perception.

Perception is viewed as a process in which attributes of a stimulus are analyzed in step-wise fashion. 2 experiments with 19 undergraduates, were carried out in which the attributes of spatial location and identity were examined for 2 types of materials. Results indicate that identification of letters requires more stimulus energy than identification of lines. There were no differences between identification of lines, localization of lines, or localization of letters. In general, results support a hierarchical processing hypothesis. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Depression and information processing: Self-schemata and the encoding of self-referent information.

Tested the suggestion made by cognitive theorists that in depression, negative environmental events can activate self-schemata that structure the processing of information in a negative fashion. Either success or failure feedback was provided to 23 depressed and 24 nondepressed female undergraduates (determined by Beck Depression Inventory scores), and the personal favorability of trait adjectives recalled in a depth-of-processing paradigm was examined. At the self-referent processing level, depressed Ss did not respond to success feedback by processing and recalling more favorable self-references, while nondepressed Ss did so respond. These findings suggest that depressed individuals suffer from a deficit in the ability to activate positive self-schemata with which to process positive self-relevant information and not necessarily from an oversensitivity in the processing of negative information. (31 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The stimulus in information processing.

Argues that the nature of the stimulus is an important variable determining how information is processed. 2 major stimulus concepts are discussed: dimensional integrality vs. separability, and state vs. process limited stimuli. These concepts relate to the effects of stimulus redundancy on discrimination. There will be a gain with redundancy: (a) if the need for redundancy is due to a process limitation and the redundant dimensions are integral, or (b) if the need for redundancy is due to state limitation and the redundant dimensions are separable. Redundancy can also lead to improvement in discrimination if the stimulus elements can be integrated into a gestalt whole. (28 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-schema and social information processing.

Tested the hypothesis that desirability of self-rating on a trait is predictive of the way information related to that trait is processed during the perception of others. In Exps I and II, 122 undergraduates' self-ratings on 15 traits and yes-no response latencies in person perception were collected. Desirability of self-rating on a trait was related to the perceived general desirability of the trait. This relation was hypothesized to reflect an influence of the self on person perception processes. Consistent with research by the present author (see record 1984-06453-001) on self-image bias, 2 alternative models of this influence were proposed: defensive and cognitive. In Exp III, 72 undergraduates' self-perceptions were manipulated by either positive or negative feedback. Results support the defensive model and indicate that even small situational changes in self-perceptions are capable of producing specific changes in the way an individual processes information about others. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An information integration analysis of retail store image.

The process whereby judges form images of retail stores was analyzed with an information integration approach and functional measurement methodology. The study, which involved 59 university students, sought to determine how 4 factors of image information (kind of store, location, price, and clientele) were combined into a resultant image. Dependent variables concerned the Ss' favorability judgments of the stores and their behavioral intentions to shop there. Results show unequal weighting of information and interactions among image attributes. Results are discussed in terms of the usefulness of the information integration approach for owners and advertisers in their attempts to create optimal store images. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)