S1 (FriAM 1-65) - The Psychonomic Society

Papers 79–85 Friday Afternoon
presentation theory, participants who made public predictions about
private performances were overconfident about their task performance,
while all other participants were underconfident. In addition,
Prediction Privacy interacted with Self-Monitoring status (high vs.
low) on performance outcomes, such that high self-monitors who
made public predictions worked the hardest and solved the most anagrams,
whereas low self-monitors who made private predictions
worked the least hard and solved the fewest anagrams. These findings
have important theoretical and practical implications concerning how
people’s public predictions may be related to their future performance.
1:50–2:05 (79)
Randomness Is Not a Unitary Concept. BRUCE D. BURNS &
CECILIA R. COX, University of Sydney—When people are told to regard
a process as random, what do they think that means? This was examined
in a series of questionnaires that presented university students
with nine statements and asked them to rate each with regard to how
characteristic they were of a random process (from must be true to
irrelevant). The results revealed widespread disagreement as to what
characteristics were defining for a process labeled random. Factor
analysis found three factors consistently. The first was a predictiveness
factor on which loaded statements about the lack of predictiveness, patterns,
and streaks. A second factor was independence/noncausality on
which equality of probabilities of outcomes also loaded. Correlations
of scores based on these two factors were significant but consistently
low. ACT scores correlated with independence/causality scores. These
results suggest that what people understand about a process when told
it is random is surprisingly variable.
2:10–2:25 (80)
Framing Effects Under Cognitive Load: Working Memory and Risky
Decisions. PAUL WHITNEY, CHRISTA A. RINEHART, JOHN M.
HINSON, ALLISON L. MATTHEWS, & AARON K. WIRICK, Washington
State University—Recent studies of cortical activity during
positively and negatively framed decisions indicate that the emotional
circuitry in the orbitomedial PFC, and to a lesser extent the WM circuits
of the dorsolateral PFC, are involved in framing effects. The
present study provides complementary behavioral evidence on framing
and risky decisions under conditions in which the available WM
resources and affective context were experimentally manipulated. Participants
made choices between a sure monetary gain or loss and a
gamble that could result in keeping a larger amount of money. In the
load conditions, each decision was made while maintaining a cold
(digit) or a hot (affectively negative or positive word) load in WM.
Both hot and cold loads influenced risk taking, but the effects did not
interact with the decision frames. The results have important implications
for dual process views of decision making.
2:30–2:45 (81)
Cognitive Aging and the Adaptive Selection of Decision Strategies.
RUI MATA, LAEL J. SCHOOLER, & JÖRG RIESKAMP, Max Planck
Institute for Human Development (read by Lael J. Schooler)—Does
aging compromise decision-making abilities? Or does experience offset
losses due to age-related cognitive decline? We investigated
younger and older adults’ strategy selection in environments favoring
either the use of information-intensive strategies or simpler, informationfrugal
strategies. Older adults looked up less information, took longer
to process it, and used simpler, less cognitively demanding strategies
in both environments compared to younger adults. Nevertheless,
younger and older adults seem to be savvy decision makers in that
they adapted their information search and strategy selection as a function
of environment structure. After taking environment into account,
measures of fluid intelligence, not crystallized intelligence, explained
age-related differences in information search and strategy selection.
Thus, while older adults, like younger adults, may know which strategies
are appropriate for a given environment, cognitive decline may
force them to rely on simpler strategies, which may or may not lead
to a loss in performance.
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2:50–3:05 (82)
Free Riding and Altruism in Vaccination Decisions. MENG LI,
JEFFREY VIETRI, & GRETCHEN B. CHAPMAN, Rutgers University,
& ALISON GALVANI & DAVID THOMAS, Yale University (read by
Gretchen B. Chapman)—Vaccination protects the vaccinated individual
and also benefits nonvaccinated others through herd immunity.
Thus, nonvaccinated individuals can “free ride” on the vaccination of
others. A Web-based study of 296 college students explored whether
altruism (benefiting others) and free riding motivates vaccination decisions.
Four “free riding” scenarios varied the nonvaccinated proportion
(.90, .40, .10, and .00) of the population who could potentially
transmit the disease to the participant. Participants’ mean rated likelihood
to vaccinate varied greatly across these four scenarios (76%,
65%, 52%, 26%; p � .0001). Four “altruism” scenarios held constant
the infection risk to the participant but varied the proportion (.90, .40,
.10, and .00) of the population that was unvaccinated and could therefore
benefit from the participant’s vaccination. Here, the mean likelihood
to vaccinate did not vary across scenarios (70%, 70%, 69%,
68%; p = .68). Thus, participants were eager to free ride but reluctant
to benefit others.
3:10–3:25 (83)
The Interaction of Food-Quantity Differences and Temporal Presentation
on the Amount of Food People Consume. JESSICA M.
CHOPLIN & LAURA MOTYKA, DePaul University—Previous research
suggests that judgments of food quantity affect the amounts of
food people eat. In two experiments, we investigated the interaction
of food-quantity differences and temporal presentation on participants’
judgments of food quantity and the amounts they ate. In Experiment
1, participants viewed two quantities of food presented either
simultaneously or sequentially and later recalled the quantities.
In Experiment 2, participants viewed two serving bowls of pasta salad
presented either simultaneously or sequentially and ate as much or as
little as they wished from the smaller bowl. The amounts they ate were
inversely related to biases in judgments of food quantity.
Inhibitory Processes in Memory
Beacon B, Friday Afternoon, 1:30–2:50
Chaired by Lili Sahakyan
University of North Carolina, Greensboro
1:30–1:45 (84)
Intentional Forgetting Is Easier After Two “Shots” Than One.
LILI SAHAKYAN, PETER F. DELANEY, & EMILY R. WALDUM,
University of North Carolina, Greensboro—Three experiments evaluated
whether the magnitude of the list-method directed forgetting effect
was strength dependent. Throughout these studies, items were
strengthened via operations known to increase both item and context
strength (spaced presentations), as well as manipulations that increment
the item strength without affecting the context strength (processing
time and processing depth). The assumptions regarding which
operations enhance item and context strength were based on the “oneshot”
hypothesis of context storage (Malmberg & Shiffrin, 2005). The
results revealed greater directed forgetting of strong items compared
to weak items, but only when strength was varied via spaced presentations
(Experiment 1). However, equivalent directed forgetting was
observed for strong and weak items when strengthening operations increased
item strength without affecting the context strength (Experiment
2 and Experiment 3). These results supported the predictions of
the context hypothesis of directed forgetting (Sahakyan & Kelley,
2002) and the “one-shot” hypothesis of context storage.
1:50–2:05 (85)
Inhibiting Intrusive Memories: Neural Mechanisms of Successful
and Failed Control Over the Retrieval of Unwanted Memories.
BENJAMIN J. LEVY & MICHAEL C. ANDERSON, University of
Oregon (read by Michael C. Anderson)—In the aftermath of trauma,