Barbara A. Spellman

Promoting an open research culture

Author guidelines for journals could help to promote transparency, openness, and reproducibility Transparency, openness, and reproducibility are readily recognized as vital features of science (1, 2). When asked, most scientists embrace these features as disciplinary norms and values (3). Therefore, one might expect that these valued features would be routine in daily practice. Yet, a growing body of evidence suggests that this is not the case (4–6).

On the status of inhibitory mechanisms in cognition: Memory retrieval as a model case

Theories of cognition frequently assume the existence of inhibitory mechanisms that deactivate mental representations. Justifying this assumption is difficult because cognitive effects thought to reflect inhibition can often be explained without recourse to inhibitory processes. This article addresses the uncertain status of cognitive inhibitory mechanisms, focusing on their function in memory retrieval. On the basis of a novel form of forgetting reported herein, it is shown that classical associative theories of interference are insufficient as accounts of forgetting and that inhibitory processes must be at work. It is argued that inhibitory processes are used to resolve computational problems of selection common to memory retrieval and selective attention and that retrieval is best regarded as conceptually focused selective attention.

If Saddam is Hitler then who is George Bush? Analogical mapping between systems of social roles

The analogy between World War II and the 1991 Persian Gulf crisis led people to construct a coherent system of roles for the participants in the Gulf crisis. The Analogical Constraint Mapping Engine (ACME), a model of analogical mapping by constraint satisfaction (Holyoak & Thagard, 1989), makes predictions about the types of correspondences people are likely to draw between the people and countries in these analogs. Both a survey (Experiment 1) and an experimental study (Experiment 2) revealed clear evidence that people have a strong tendency to generate mappings that honor certain basic coherence constraints. In Experiment 3, with science-fiction materials, further evidence for the generality of these constraints was obtained. Computer simulations of Experiments 2 and 3 using ACME yielded mappings similar to those generated by Ss. General models of analogical reasoning may have implications for everyday understanding of complex systems of social roles.

When Predictions Create Reality: Judgments of Learning May Alter What They Are Intended to Assess

Nelson and Dunlosky (Psychological Science, July 1991) reported that subjects making judgments of learning (JOLs) can be extremely accurate at predicting subsequent recall performance on a paired-associate task when the JOL task is delayed for a short while after study They argued that this result is surprising given the results of earlier research, as well as their own current experiment, indicating that JOLs are quite inaccurate when made immediately after study We note that the delayed-JOL procedure used by Nelson and Dunlosky invited covert recall practice (which was reported by their subjects) Retrieval practice is a well-known determinant of subsequent recall Accordingly, Nelson and Dunloskys findings can be explained by the simple assumption that people base delayed JOLs on an assessment of retrieval success which in turn influences their retrieval success on the subsequent recall test

Acting as Intuitive Scientists: Contingency Judgments Are Made While Controlling for Alternative Potential Causes

In judging the efficacy of multiple causes of an effect, human performance has been found to deviate from the “normative”ΔP contingency rule However, in cases of multiple causes, that rule might not be normative, scientists and philosophers, for example, know that when judging a potential cause, one must control for all other potential causes. In an experiment in which they were shown trial-by-trial effects of two potential causes (which sometimes covaried), subjects used conditional rather than unconditional contingencies to rate the efficacy of the causes. A conditional contingency analysis may explain various “nonnormative” cue-integration effects (e.g., discounting) found in the literature and is relevant to how people unravel Simpsons paradox.

Relational learning with and without awareness: Transitive inference using nonverbal stimuli in humans

Learning complex relationships among items and representing them flexibly have been shown to be highly similar in function and structure to conscious forms of learning. However, it is unclear whether conscious learning is essential for the exhibition of flexibility in learning. Successful performance on the transitive inference task requires representational flexibility. Participants learned four overlapping premise pairs (A > B, B > C, C > D, D > E) that could be encoded separately or as a sequential hierarchy (A > B > C > D > E). Some participants (informed) were told prior to training that the task required an inference made from premise pairs. Other participants (uninformed) were told simply that they were to learn a series of pairs by trial and error. Testing consisted of unreinforced trials that included the nonadjacent pair, B versus D, to assess capacity for transitive inference. Not surprisingly, those in the informed condition outperformed those in the uninformed condition. After completion of training and testing, uninformed participants were given a postexperimental questionnaire to assess awareness of the task structure. In contrast with expectations, successful performance on the transitive inference task for uninformed participants does not depend on or correlate with postexperimental awareness. The present results suggest that relational learning tasks do not necessarily require conscious processes.

Calibration Trumps Confidence as a Basis for Witness Credibility

Confident witnesses are deemed more credible than unconfident ones, and accurate witnesses are deemed more credible than inaccurate ones. But are those effects independent? Two experiments show that errors in testimony damage the overall credibility of witnesses who were confident about the erroneous testimony more than that of witnesses who were not confident about it. Furthermore, after making an error, less confident witnesses may appear more credible than more confident ones. Our interpretation of these results is that people make inferences about source calibration when evaluating testimony and other social communication.

Analogical priming via semantic relations.

Research on semantic memory has often tacitly treated semantic relations as simple conduits for spreading activation between associated object concepts, rather than as integral components of semantic organization. Yet conceptual relations, and the role bindings they impose on the objects they relate, are central to such cognitive tasks as discourse comprehension, inference, problem solving, and analogical reasoning. The present study addresses the question of whether semantic relations and their bindings can influence access to semantic memory. The experiments investigated whether, and under what conditions, presenting a prime pair of words linked by 1 of 10 common semantic relations would facilitate processing of a target pair of words linked by the same relation. No effect was observed when participants merely read the prime; however, relational priming was observed under instructions to note and use the semantic relations. Participants were faster at making a lexical decision or naming a word on a related pair of target words when that pair was primed with an analogously related pair of words than when the prime pair consisted of either two unrelated words or two words linked by some other relation. This evidence of analogical priming suggests that under an appropriate strategic set, lexical decisions and naming latencies can be influenced by a process akin to analogical mapping.

When Possibility Informs Reality Counterfactual Thinking as a Cue to Causality

People often engage in counterfactual thinking, that is, imagining alternatives to the real world and mentally playing out the consequences. Yet the counterfactuals people tend to imagine are a small subset of those that could possibly be imagined. There is some debate as to the relation between counterfactual thinking and causal beliefs. Some researchers argue that counter-factual thinking is the key to causal judgments; current research suggests, however, that the relation is rather complex. When people think about counterfactuals, they focus on ways to prevent bad or uncommon outcomes; when people think about causes, they focus on things that covary with outcomes. Counterfactual thinking may affect causality judgments by changing beliefs about the probabilities of possible alternatives to what actually happened, thereby changing beliefs as to whether a cause and effect actually covary. The way in which counterfactual thinking affects causal attributions may have practical consequences for mental health and the legal system.

Forgetting by remembering: Stereotype inhibition through rehearsal of alternative aspects of identity

Abstract We applied previous research on retrieval-induced forgetting to the issue of stereotype inhibition. All participants learned about a target person who belonged to a stereotyped group, and then practiced retrieving a subset of the target’s characteristics. When participants practiced individuating information about the target, they showed inhibited memory for the target’s stereotypic traits. When participants practiced stereotypic information about the target, they showed inhibited memory for: (a) traits associated with another stereotyped aspect of the target’s identity; (b) individuating traits of the target; and (c) other, unpracticed traits of the target associated with the same stereotype. Stereotype belief moderated these inhibition effects; the more strongly participants believed in the stereotype, the less inhibition of stereotype-relevant traits they showed.