Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied

Detecting threat-related intentional actions of others: Effects of image quality, response mode, and target cuing on vigilance.
Three experiments examined the vigilance performance of participants watching videos depicting intentional actions of an individual’s hand reaching for and grasping an object—involving transporting or using either a gun or a hairdryer—in order to detect infrequent threat-related actions. Participants indicated detection of target actions either manually or by withholding response. They also rated their subjective mental workload before and after each vigilance task. Irrespective of response mode, the detection rate of intentional threats declined over time on task and subjective workload increased, but only under visually degraded viewing conditions. This vigilance decrement was attenuated by temporal cues that were 75% valid in predicting a subsequent target action and eliminated with 100% valid cues. The findings indicate that detection of biological motion targets, and threat-related intentional actions in particular, although not attention sensitive under normal viewing conditions, is subject to vigilance decrement under degraded viewing conditions. The results are compatible with the view that the decrement in detecting threat-related intentional actions reflects increasing failure of attention allocation processes over time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)
Improving memory after interruption: Exploiting soft constraints and manipulating information access cost.
Forgetting what one was doing prior to interruption is an everyday problem. The recent soft constraints hypothesis (Gray, Sims, Fu, & Schoelles, 2006) emphasizes the strategic adaptation of information processing strategy to the task environment. It predicts that increasing information access cost (IAC: the time, and physical and mental effort involved in accessing information) encourages a more memory-intensive strategy. Like interruptions, access costs are also intrinsic to most work environments, such as when opening documents and e-mails. Three experiments investigated whether increasing IAC during a simple copying task can be an effective method for reducing forgetting following interruption. IAC was designated Low (all information permanently visible), Medium (a mouse movement to uncover target information), or High (an additional few seconds to uncover such information). Experiment 1 found that recall improved across all three levels of IAC. Subsequent experiments found that High IAC facilitated resumption after interruption, particularly when interruption occurred on half of all trials (Experiment 2), and improved prospective memory following two different interrupting tasks, even when one involved the disruptive effect of using the same type of resource as the primary task (Experiment 3). The improvement of memory after interruption with increased IAC supports the prediction of the soft constraints hypothesis. The main disadvantage of a high access cost was a reduction in speed of task completion. The practicality of manipulating IAC as a design method for inducing a memory-intensive strategy to protect against forgetting is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)
Using standards to improve middle school students’ accuracy at evaluating the quality of their recall.
When recalling key term definitions from class materials, students may recall entirely incorrect definitions, yet will often claim that these commission errors are entirely correct; that is, they are overconfident in the quality of their recall responses. We investigated whether this overconfidence could be reduced by providing various standards to middle school students as they evaluated their recall responses. Students studied key term definitions, attempted to recall each one, and then were asked to score the quality of their recall. In Experiment 1, they evaluated their recall responses by rating each response as fully correct, partially correct, or incorrect. Most important, as they evaluated a particular response, it was presented either alone (i.e., without a standard) or with the correct definition present. Providing this full-definition standard reduced overconfidence in commission errors: Students assigned full or partial credit to 73% of their commission errors when they received no standard, whereas they assigned credit to only 44% of these errors when receiving the full-definition standard. In Experiment 2, a new standard was introduced: Idea units from each definition were presented, and students indicated whether each idea unit was in their response. After making these idea-unit judgments, the students then evaluated the quality of their entire response. Idea-unit standards further reduced overconfidence. Thus, although middle school students are overconfident in evaluating the quality of their recall responses, using standards substantially reduces this overconfidence and promises to improve the efficacy of their self-regulated learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)
Effects of differential feedback on students’ examination performance.
The effects of feedback on performance and factors associated with it were examined in a large introductory psychology course. The experiment involved college students (N = 464) working on an essay examination under 3 conditions: no feedback, detailed feedback that was perceived by participants to be provided by the course instructor, and detailed feedback that was perceived by participants to be computer generated. Additionally, these conditions were crossed with factors of grade (receiving a numerical grade or not) and praise (receiving a statement of praise or not). The task under consideration was a single-question essay examination administered at the beginning of the course. Detailed feedback on the essay, specific to individual’s work, was found to be strongly related to student improvement in essay scores, with the influence of grades and praise being more complex. Generally, receipt of a tentative grade depressed performance, although this effect was ameliorated if accompanied by a statement of praise. Overall, detailed, descriptive feedback was found to be most effective when given alone, unaccompanied by grades or praise. It was also found that the perceived source of the feedback (the computer or the instructor) had little impact on the results. These findings are consistent with the research literature showing that descriptive feedback, which conveys information on how one performs the task and details ways to overcome difficulties, is far more effective than evaluative feedback, which simply informs students about how well they did. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)
Responses to deceleration during car following: Roles of optic flow, warnings, expectations, and interruptions.
More than 25% of accidents are rear-end collisions. It is essential to identify the factors that contribute to such collisions. One such factor is a driver’s ability to respond to the deceleration of the car ahead. In Experiment 1, we measured effects of optic flow information and discrete visual and auditory warnings (brake lights, tones) on responses to deceleration during car following. With computer simulations of car-following scenes, university students pressed a button when the lead car decelerated. Both classes of information affected responses. Observers relied on discrete warnings when optic flow information was relatively less effective as determined by the lead car’s headway and deceleration rate. This is consistent with DeLucia’s (2008) conceptual framework of space perception that emphasized the importance of viewing distance and motion (and task). In Experiment 2, we measured responses to deceleration after a visual interruption. Scenes were designed to tease apart the role of expectations and optic flow. Responses mostly were consistent with optic flow information presented after the interruption rather than with putative mental expectations that were set up by the lead car’s motion prior to the interruption. The theoretical implication of the present results is that responses to deceleration are based on multiple sources of information, including optical size, optical expansion rate and tau, and discrete warnings that are independent of optic flow. The practical implication is that in-vehicle collision-avoidance warning systems may be more useful when optic flow is less effective (e.g., slow deceleration rates), implicating a role for adaptive collision-warning systems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)
My imagination versus your feelings: Can personal affective forecasts be improved by knowing other peoples’ emotions?
A proposed remedy for biased affective forecasts is to base judgments on the actual feelings of people (surrogates) currently experiencing the event, rather than using imagination which conjures an inaccurate vision of the future. Gilbert et al. (2009) forced people to use surrogate reports by withholding all event information, resulting in better predictions. However, in life surrogate information rarely supplants event information—can people effectively integrate both types of information into their judgments? In five studies, respondents predicted the impact of a health state on their own happiness. Respondents incorporated surrogate information into their judgments both in the presence and absence of event information. However, they inappropriately discounted other people’s experiences as a valid predictor of their own—particularly in the presence of event information—and imagined their happiness would be different to surrogates’ happiness. Excluding preexisting event knowledge, changing the size of the surrogate sample, or increasing the size of the response scale did not alter the adjustment. Although surrogate information improved affective forecasts, its influence was diminished by the presence of event information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)
Human figure drawings and children’s recall of touching.
In 2 studies, children ages 3 to 7 years were asked to recall a series of touches that occurred during a previous staged event. The recall interview took place 1 week after the event in Study 1 and immediately after the event in Study 2. Each recall interview had 2 sections: In 1 section, children were given human figure drawings (HFDs) and were asked to show where the touching took place; in the other section, the same questions were asked without the HFDs (verbal condition). Children were randomly assigned to 2 different conditions: HFD 1st/verbal 2nd or verbal 1st/HFD 2nd. There were 2 major findings. First, HFDs elicited more errors than the verbal condition when used to probe for information that the child had already been asked. Second, regardless of interview method, children had poor recall of the touches even when these occurred minutes before the interview. It is suggested that cognitive mechanisms involving memory and semantics underlie children’s poor recall of touching in both verbal and HFD conditions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)
Predicting sentencing for low-level crimes: Comparing models of human judgment.
Laws and guidelines regulating legal decision making are often imposed without taking the cognitive processes of the legal decision maker into account. In the case of sentencing, this raises the question of whether the sentencing decisions of prosecutors and judges are consistent with legal policy. Especially in handling low-level crimes, legal personnel suffer from high case loads and time pressure, which can make it difficult to comply with the often complex rulings of the law. To understand the cognitive processes underlying sentencing decisions, an analysis of trial records in cases of larceny, fraud, and forgery was conducted. Applying a Bayesian approach, five models of human judgment were tested against each other to predict the sentencing recommendations of the prosecution and to identify the crucial factors influencing sentencing decisions. The factors influencing sentencing were broadly consistent with the penal code. However, the prosecutors considered only a limited number of factors and neglected factors that were legally relevant and rated as highly important. Furthermore, testing the various cognitive judgment models against each other revealed that the sentencing process was apparently not consistent with the judgment policy recommended by the legal literature. Instead, the results show that prosecutors’ sentencing recommendations were best described by the mapping model, a heuristic model of quantitative estimation. According to this model, sentencing recommendations rely on a categorization of cases based on the cases’ characteristics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied - Vol 15, Iss 4