Predictiveness and Reward Effects on Attention can be Explained by a Single Mechanism

In order to learn efficiently, organisms must learn how to distribute their attention to the available cues. Traditionally, most experiments on attention learning have involved discrete outcomes (e.g. no food vs. one food pellet, or category A vs. category B). A basic finding is that cues receive attention in proportion to how well they predict such outcomes. However, more recent research has shown an apparently independent effect of outcome value on attention (Le Pelley, Mitchell, & Johnson, 2013), in which cues associated with large rewards receive more attention than those associated with small rewards. It has been suggested that a separate derived attention mechanism - in which attention is based directly on association strength - is necessary to explain this result (Le Pelley, Mitchell, Beesley, George, & Wills, 2016). As our primary experimental contribution, we use modified versions of this design to replicate the value effect and show that it can be reversed by manipulating the rewards given for incorrect choices. Our simulations show that CompAct - a model in which cues compete for attention on the basis of their relative predictiveness - can account for both of our empirical results. The derived attention theory, in contrast, incorrectly predicts that cues associated with large rewards will always receive more attention. We conclude that we do not need separate mechanisms to account for predictiveness effects and value effects on attention.

The Unity Puzzle

This chapter introduces the major philosophical debate about the split-brain phenomenon. Split-brain surgery severs the major white matter fiber tract connecting the two cerebral hemispheres. A number of individuals who underwent this surgery later agreed to act as participants in experiments designed to reveal its psychobehavioral consequences. The basic finding is that, after they are surgically divided in this way, the two hemispheres cannot interact in all the ways they once could: indeed, split-brain subjects sometimes give the impression of having two minds and spheres of consciousness, one associated with each hemisphere. A split-brain subject nonetheless seems to be one of us, at the end of the day. The aim of the book is to reconcile these apparently opposing intuitions by explaining how a split-brain person could have multiple minds.

If It Were Only That Easy: The Use of Meta-Analytic Research by Organizational Scholars

This paper evaluates how researchers are currently citing meta-analytic results and provides specific recommendations for interpreting the information provided by meta-analysis (MA). The past four decades have seen a proliferation of MA research across the organizational sciences and myriad improvements to how MA is conducted. MAs are cited more frequently than individual primary studies and have a substantial influence on subsequent research and theorizing. Yet the consumption of meta-analytic results in organizational scholarship remains superficial. We evaluate citation practices for four seminal MAs and find that authors predominantly interpret meta-analytic findings in the simplest way possible: as evidence of the existence of a relationship between variables. In focusing only on this basic finding, citing authors neglect the complexity and rich detail provided by MA. We offer advice for how researchers can more effectively leverage the strengths of meta-analytic findings to inform subsequent research by taking advantage of the benefits that meta-analytic methodology can provide for the explanation of organizational phenomena.

Paradigm Resolution in the Life Cycle of Norse Umlaut

This paper follows on recent work (Iverson & Salmons 2004, 2007; Kiparsky 2005, 2006) seeking to resolve Kock's 1888 paradox intro-duced in his celebrated “period theory” of Old Norsei-umlaut. The basic finding is this: In paradigms where a phonological innovation has been rendered opaque by the operation of other sound changes, restructuring of the base form incorporates rather than derives the results of the innovation as it dies out; but if the innovation remains transparent in certain other paradigms, its expiration enables reversion to the antecedent phonological form. Both patterns can be subsumed under the traditional rubric of analogy, resulting in allomorphically uniform paradigms, but the former generalizes a sound change to con-texts in which it never occurred naturally, whereas the latter actually undoes, or reverses, a sound change.*

Risky Altruism as a Predictor of Criminal Victimization

This research tested the hypothesis that risky altruism is a significant predictor of criminal victimization. Two hundred sixty-eight respondents filled out a questionnaire measuring their experiences as crime victims, several personality variables, and their degree of altruism. Using factor analysis, a general altruism scale was subdivided into risky and safe altruism. Risky altruism correlated .31 with victimization, compared to .09 for safe altruism. This basic finding was true for both personal and property crime, and the pattern held for four different subgroups: a student sample and citizens from high-, moderate-, and low-crime areas. Separate measures of recent victimization and victimization directly related to helping someone (altruistic victimization) also showed significant relationships with risky altruism. Risky and safe altruism had different patterns of relationships with personality variables, with risky altruism being less related to prosocial personality, agreeableness, and conscientiousness, and more related to extraversion and sensation seeking.

Metaphorical “networks” and verbal communication: A semiotic perspective of human discourse

This paper presents the notion that verbal discourse is structured, in form and contents, by metaphorical reasoning. It discusses the concept of “metaphorical network” as a framework for relating the parts of a speech act to each other, since such an act seems to cohere into a meaningful text on the basis of “domains” that deliver common concepts. The basic finding of several research projects on this concept suggest that source domains allow speakers to derive sense from a verbal interaction because they interconnect the topic of discussion to culturally-meaningful images and ideas. This suggests, in turn, that language is intertwined with nonverbal systems of meaning, reflecting them in the contents of verbal messages. Overall, the concept of metaphorical networks implies that human cognition is highly associative in structure.

Retrospective Voting in Presidential Primaries

The research question of this study was whether voters who participated in presidential primaries cast retrospective votes. This problem was studied with data from CBS News/New York Times exit polls for three 1976 Republican primaries and for ten 1980 Democratic primaries. The analysis suggested that ballots cast in the presidential primaries of the party-in-power were primarily retrospective votes. Statistical controls were introduced for candidate image, ideology, issues, electability, party identification, and socioeconomic status. These controls did not alter the basic finding of retrospective voting.

Applying the Competition Model to bilingualism

This special issue brings together a set of four papers devoted to the experimental study of sentence processing by bilinguals in their second language. The basic finding reported in this research is that, in many cases, learners transfer their LI sentence processing strategies onto sentence processing in L2. Moreover, the influence of this transfer can be detected in weakened form even in fluent bilinguals who have spoken L2 for many years. In effect, these studies report on a kind of comprehension analog to “foreign accent” that first came to light during work on sentence comprehension within the framework of the Competition Model of Bates and MacWhinney (1982).

The Association between Market-Based Merger Premiums and Firms' Financial Position Prior to Merger

This paper tests the association between firms' prior financial performance and the magnitude and timing of merger premiums. The basic finding is that both financially healthy firms and financially troubled firms, as classified by the Altman Z score, earn merger premiums of 25%. However, the troubled firms experience market price increases earlier than healthy firms. Further analysis indicates that the early market price recovery of the troubled firms is consistent with the notion that tax loss carryforwards make acquisition attractive. In fact, the troubled firms with tax loss carryforwards experience merger premiums of 33.7% as opposed to 19.6% for troubled firms without tax loss carryforwards. These results indicate that the availability of the tax loss carryforwards may have facilitated mergers for troubled firms.