Papers Selected by Mina Kyogoku
■Mapping Conceptual
to Spatial Relations in Visual Reasoning
■Constructing Mental Models of Machines
from Text and Diagrams
■What Makes Some Problems Really Hard: Explorations in
the Problem Space of Difficulty
■Visual Capture
and Human Error
■Role of Memory Strength in Reality Monitoring Decisions:Evidence
From Source Attribution Biases
Mapping
Conceptual to Spatial Relations in Visual Reasoning
Merideth Gattis and Keith J.Holyoak(University of California,Los
Angeles)
Journal of Experimental Psychology:Learning,Memory,and
Cognition,1996,22,1,231-239.
In 3 experiments, the authors investigated the impact of goals and perceptual relations on graph interpretation when people evaluate functional dependencies between continuous variables. Participants made inferences about the relative rate of 2 continuous linear variables (altitude and temperature). The authors varied the assignments of variables to axes, the perceived cause-effect relation between the variables, and the causal status of the variable being queried. The most striking finding was that accuracy was greater when the slope-mapping constraint was honored, which requires that the variable being queried be assigned to the vertical axis, so that steeper lines map to faster changes in the queried variable. The authors propose that graphs provide external instantiations of intermediate mental representations, enabling people to move from visuospatial representations to abstractions through the use of natural mappings between perceptual and conceptual relations.
Constructing Mental Models of Machines from Text and Diagrams
Mary Hegarty (University of California at Santa Barbara) and
Marcel Adam Just (Carnegie-Mellon University)
Journal of Memory and Language,1993,32,717-742.
Monitored 47 readers' comprehension and eye-fixations as they read descriptions of pulley systems (PYSs). The comprehension data indicate that readers' comprehension depended on both the medium of instruction and the ability of the reader. The conjunction of text and diagrams particularly facilitated the understanding of how the PYS moved, whereas either medium alone was sufficient for conveying the system configuration. The eye-fixation data indicate that Ss integrated the information in the text and diagram at the level of individual PYS components or groups of connected components. They read the text in increments, often rereading the information about a component or group of components before constructing a spatial mental model of these components with the aid of the diagram. Ss' diagram inspections were concerned with encoding the relations between 2 or 3 components and/or integrating the relations between many components.
What Makes Some Problems Really Hard: Explorations in the Problem Space of Difficulty
Kenneth Kotovsky and Herbert A. Simon (Carnegie-Mellon University)
Cognitive Psychilogy,1990,22,143-183.
Four experiments with a total of 179 college students studied 2 aspects of problem solving (PS) within the milieu of the Chinese Ring puzzle, a problem decribed by S. N. Afriat (1982). Aspects of PS addressed were (1) the nature of the search space and its effect on PS behavior, and (2) the nature of the move operator (MO) and its effect on both PS behavior and transfer of skill from one problem to another. Data suggest that the extreme difficulty of the puzzle resides largely in the MO. In this type of problem isomorphy, the limited processing resources Ss bring to the problem are consumed by the task of discovering the nature of the moves to be made. The same types of capacity limitations limit transfer to more difficult isomorphisms.
Visual Capture and Human Error
Gerald E.Larson and Zannette A.Perry (Naval Health Reseach
Center,USA)
Applied Cognitive Psychology,1999,13,227-236.
Investigated relationships between everyday error rates, susceptibility to stimulus-driven (i.e., external) capture of visual attention and working memory. Ss were male and female 18-25 yr olds. Using an eye-tracking task called the antisaccade paradigm, relatively error-prone Ss made significantly more unintended, stimulus-driven eye movements. This finding suggests a link between error-proneness and a tendency toward environmental (vs volitional) control of behavior. No evidence was found for a connection between working memory capacity and error proneness or eye movements, although range restriction may have affected the working memory results. The findings are compatible with the view that some mishaps stem from environmental capture and triggering of inappropriate actions, and that individuals vary in their susceptibility to capture. Since antisaccade performance was correlated with reports of real-world mistakes in the current study, antisaccade scores may allow useful predictions about how accident probability varies as a function of different conditions.
Role of Memory Strength in Reality Monitoring Decisions:Evidence From Source Attribution Biases
Hunter G.Hoffman （University of Washington）
Journal
of Experimental Psychology:Learning,Memory,and Cognition 1997,23(2),371-383.
Reality monitoring of verbal memories was compared with decisions about pictorial memories in this study. Experiment 1 showed an advantage in memory for imagined over perceived words and bias to respond "perceived" on false alarms. Experiment 2 showed the opposite pattern: an advantage in memory for perceived pictures and a bias to respond "imagined" on false alarms. Participants attribute false alarms to whichever class of memories has the weakest trace strengths. The relative strength of memories of imagined and perceived objects was manipulated in Experiments 3 and 4, yielding changed in source attribution biases that were predicted by the strength heuristic. All 4 experiments generalize the mirror effect (an inverse relationship between patterns of hits and false alarms commonly found on recognition tests) to reality monitoring decisions. Results suggests that under some conditions differences between the strength of memories for perceived and imagined events, rather than differences in quantitive characteristics, are used to infer memory source.