Differential weighting of common and distinctive components.

We investigated possible explanations of the finding that the relative weight (W) of common components in similarity judgments is higher for verbal than for pictorial stimuli. A serial presentation of stimulus components had no effect on verbal stimuli; it increased the impact of both common and distinctive components of pictorial stimuli but did not affect their relative weight. On the other hand, W was increased by manipulations that reduced the cohesiveness of composite pictures, such as separating, scrambling, and mixing their components. Furthermore, W was decreased by manipulations that enhanced the cohesiveness of composite verbal stimuli by imposing structure on their components. Verbal and pictorial representations of the same stimuli yielded no systematic differences in W. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Retraction of Hard, Lozano, and Tversky (2006).

Reports a retraction of "Hierarchical encoding of behavior: Translating perception into action" by Bridgette Martin Hard, Sandra C. Lozano and Barbara Tversky (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2006[Nov], Vol 135[4], 588-608). All authors retract this article. Co-author Tversky and co-author Hard believe that the research results cannot be relied upon; Sandra C. Lozano takes full responsibility for the need to retract this article. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2006-20327-007.) People encode goal-directed behaviors, such as assembling an object, by segmenting them into discrete actions, organized as goal-subgoal hierarchies. Does hierarchical encoding contribute to observational learning? Participants in 3 experiments segmented an object assembly task into coarse and fine units of action and later performed it themselves. Hierarchical encoding, measured by segmentation patterns, correlated with more accurate and more hierarchically structured performance of the later assembly task. Furthermore, hierarchical encoding increased when participants (a) segmented coarse units first, (b) explicitly looked for hierarchical structure, and (c) described actions while segmenting them. Improving hierarchical encoding always led to improvements in learning, as well as a surprising shift toward encoding and executing actions from the actor's spatial perspective instead of the participants' own. Hierarchical encoding facilitates observational learning by organizing perceived actions into a representation that can serve as an action plan. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What do architects and students perceive in their design sketches? A protocol analysis

The present research aims at examining what information architects think of and read off from their own freehand sketches, and at revealing how they perceptually interact with and benefit from sketches. We explored this in a protocol analysis of retrospective reports; each participant worked on an architectural design task while drawing freehand sketches and later reported what she/he had been thinking of during the design task. This research lies within the scope of examinations of why freehand sketches as external representation are essential for crystallizing design ideas in early design processes.     

Choices, values, and frames.

Discusses the cognitive and the psychophysical determinants of choice in risky and riskless contexts. The psychophysics of value induce risk aversion in the domain of gains and risk seeking in the domain of losses. The psychophysics of chance induce overweighting of sure things and of improbable events, relative to events of moderate probability. Decision problems can be described or framed in multiple ways that give rise to different preferences, contrary to the invariance criterion of rational choice. The process of mental accounting, in which people organize the outcomes of transactions, explains some anomalies of consumer behavior. In particular, the acceptability of an option can depend on whether a negative outcome is evaluated as a cost or as an uncompensated loss. The relationships between decision values and experience values and between hedonic experience and objective states are discussed. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the evaluation of probability judgments: Calibration, resolution, and monotonicity.

Judgments of probability are commonly evaluated by 2 criteria: (1) calibration, namely, the correspondence between stated confidence and rate of occurrence, and (2) resolution, namely, the ability to distinguish between events that do and do not occur. Two representations of probability judgments are contrasted: the designated form that presupposes a particular coding of outcomes (e.g., rain vs no rain) and the inclusive form that incorporates all events and their complements. It is shown that the indices of calibration and resolution derived from these representations measure different characteristics of judgment. Calibration is distinguished from 2 types of overconfidence: specific and generic. An ordinal measure of performance is proposed and compared to the standard measures in forecasts of recession and in both numerical and verbal assessments of general knowledge. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A reconciliation of the evidence on eyewitness testimony: Comments on McCloskey and Zaragoza.

E. F. Loftus (see record 1978-26704-001) demonstrated distorted reports of memory for an event in the direction of postevent misleading information. M. McCloskey and M. Zaragoza (see record 1986-03053-001) argued that these results do not necessarily imply a weakening of the memory for the original event. They obtained evidence supporting their position by using a modified recognition test. In this experiment we introduced still another modification to the recognition test ("Yes"/"No" instead of forced choice) to answer McCloskey and Zaragoza's objections to Loftus and her colleagues' procedures. We obtained evidence for distorted reports of original information as a consequence of the misleading information. Memory and confidence data support an interference or inaccessibility interpretation of the memory errors but cannot rule out overwriting of the original information in some cases. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Causal versus diagnostic contingencies: On self-deception and on the voter's illusion.

Two experiments tested the notion that people select actions that are diagnostic of favorable outcomes even though the actions do not cause those outcomes. In Exp I, 38 undergraduates immersed their forearm into a chest of circulating cold water before and after physical exercise. Depending on condition, Ss learned that a long life expectancy was associated with either increases or decreases in tolerance to cold water after the exercise. As predicted, Ss showed changes in tolerance on the 2nd trial in the direction correlated with a long, healthy life. In Exp II, 315 undergraduates encountered 1 of 2 theories about the sort of voters who determine the margin of victory in an election. Only one of the theories would enable voting Ss to imagine that they could induce other like-minded persons to vote. As predicted, more Ss indicated that they would vote given that theory than given a theory in which the S's vote would not be diagnostic of the electoral outcome, although the causal impact of the S's vote was the same under both theories. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Affect, generalization, and the perception of risk.

Investigated the role of affect in judgments of risk in 4 experiments. 557 Ss were recruited on college campuses and read paragraphs modeled after newspaper reports that described fatal or nonfatal accidents or (Exp III) positive events. Ss were later asked to estimate the chances of specific fatal or nonfatal accidents happening to them and/or to the population in general. Experimental manipulations of affect induced by report of a tragic event produced a pervasive increase in Ss' estimates of the frequency of many risks and other undesirable events. Contrary to expectation, the effect was independent of the similarity between the report and the estimated risk: An account of a fatal stabbing did not increase the frequency estimate of homicide more than the estimates of unrelated risks such as natural hazards. An account of a happy event that created positive affect produced a comparable global decrease in judged frequency of risks. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parts, partonomies, and taxonomies.

Partonomies, such as body parts, like taxonomies, such as the animal kingdom, are hierarchical organizations of knowledge based on an asymmetric, transitive relation, part of or kind of. This article reports exploratory work on children's partonomic knowledge, and the relation between partonomic knowledge and use of taxonomic organization. Because parts are elements of both appearance and function, shared parts may facilitate the transition from classification based on perception to classification based on function. Children were more likely to group taxonomically when instances shared parts than when instances did not share parts. For adults, parts rated "good" are functionally significant as well as perceptually salient, for example, the seat of a chair. Perceptually salient parts—those affecting shape or large ones—were detected faster by younger children than were less salient parts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spatial concepts and perception of physical and diagrammed scenes

The accessibility of objects in mental spatial frameworks depends on their relation to the spatial axes of the world and people's typical interactions with space. The current study investigated perception of space. Subjects viewed either a physical model of a person surrounded by objects (Exp. 1) or diagrams of scenes (Exp. 2). Subjects named objects at directions from their own external perspective. For physical scenes, subjects were faster to name objects at Above/Below locations, followed by Front/Behind locations, followed by Left/Right locations. This finding indicates that subjects used spatial frameworks to locate objects perceptually. For diagrams, response times to name objects did not conform to this pattern, perhaps because the spatial axes of a diagram do not correspond to stable spatial axes of the world.