Page 1. APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, VOL. 2, 173-179 (1988) Predictions of Movie Entertainment V... more Page 1. APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, VOL. 2, 173-179 (1988) Predictions of Movie Entertainment Value and the Representativeness Heuristic ARNOLD L. GLASS Psychology Department, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, USA ...
The componential analysis of language as an approach to semantics has a long, rich history spanni... more The componential analysis of language as an approach to semantics has a long, rich history spanning several disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics, and psychology. The basic idea is that a word can be broken down into a set of primitive properties (or ideas, features, markers, etc.) that can then be said to constitute its meaning. For example, man may be intuitively analyzed as the set of properties (male, human); and perhaps the property "human" may be further analyzed as (intelligent, mammal), etc. These properties (as they will henceforth be called) are ultimately represented as atomic, unitary, and independent particles. They may be thought of as a collection of uniquely colored marbles, where any assortment is possible. The assumption of independent properties is common to a wide variety of substantially different theories which have appeared in different disciplines. Katz and Fodor (1963) use markers and distinguishers to disambiguate the meaning of a word in the context of a particular sentence. Schaffer and Wallace (1970) and Meyer (1970) have proposed setinclusion models to explain the correlation between the time it takes to verify whether a word is a member of a certain semantic category and the "semantic distance" between that word and the category. For example, it takes longer for a subject to judge "true" in re
Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, Apr 1, 1976
The relationship between the effects of morphological complexity and associative production frequ... more The relationship between the effects of morphological complexity and associative production frequency (PF) was investigated in two experiments on sentence verification. Subjects were timed as they evaluated low-and high-PF sentences with predicates containing words that were morphologically either basic or derived (e.g., Birds have feathers vs. Birds are feathered). In the first experiment sentences with basic predicates were verified more quickly than sentences with derived predicates, and high-PF sentences were verified more quickly than low-PF sentences. The advantage of basic over derived forms was reduced for the high-PF sentences. In the second experiment, the predicate of each sentence (e.g., are feathered) was presented for 2 set before the subject word appeared. In this delay condition the basic and derived versions of high-PF sentences were verified equally quickly; but for low-PF sentences, the basic form was still evaluated more quickly. The fact that the effect of morphological complexity was not necessarily eliminated after a delay suggested that the main difficulty of derived forms arises not during initial comprehension, but during a later stage in the comparison of the subject and predicate concepts.
In addition to modern grid hardware, software, and network-control technologies, active consumer ... more In addition to modern grid hardware, software, and network-control technologies, active consumer participation is seen as an integral part of the emerging smart grid. To address the challenges that this creates, this paper explores the potential of prospect theory, a Nobel-Prize-winning theory, as a decision-making framework that can help understand how risk and uncertainty can impact the decisions of smart grid consumers.
In this paper, the problem of energy trading between smart grid prosumers that can simultaneously... more In this paper, the problem of energy trading between smart grid prosumers that can simultaneously consume and produce energy is studied. The problem is formulated as a noncooperative game between prosumers whose goal is to meet their energy demands at minimum cost by optimally utilizing their storage units and renewable (wind) energy sources. In this game, each prosumer will declare the amount of energy that will be sold or bought to maximize a utility function that captures the tradeoff between the profits gained from selling energy and the penalty incurred for failing to meet the declared amount, due to the stochastic nature of wind energy. The proposed game explicitly accounts for each prosumer's subjective perceptions using the framework of prospect theory (PT). In particular, a prosumer's perception of the probability of its possible profits from trading energy is captured via the weighting effect. In addition, the prosumer's valuation of its gains and losses with respect to its own preferences is captured via the so-called framing effect. To find the equilibrium of this game, a best response algorithm is proposed. Simulation results show the difference in prosumer behavior using traditional game-theoretic and prospect-theoretic analysis. In particular, the results show that probability weighting increases the sensitivity of the prosumers to penalties. Moreover, under PT, a prosumer tends to sell less energy compared to a conventional game-theoretic scenario.
Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, Apr 1, 1975
Two hypotheses about the processes by which people can reject false but meaningful sentences quan... more Two hypotheses about the processes by which people can reject false but meaningful sentences quantified by a//or some are outlined. These hypotheses distinguish between two basic types of false sentences: contradictory sentences (e.g., All/Some birds a~e dogs), which are rejected on the basis of a direct contradiction between the subject and predicate concepts; and counterexample sentences (e.g., All birds are robins), which are falsified when the person thinks of a counterexample to the assertion (e.g., canary). Experiment I demonstrated that people use contradictions to produce false completions of sentences. In Experiment II, the false production frequency norms obtained m Experiment I, together with the theoretical analysis of false sentences, were used to predict the time required to reject false sentences. The results supported the contradiction and counterexample hypotheses, and indicated that false sentences with subject and predicate words closely related m meaning can sometimes be disconflrmed relatively quickly. Experiment III extended the counterexample hypothesis to sentences containing the verb have (e.g., All buildings have elevators), and also provided some evidence that the process of exemplar search used to find counterexamples may also sometimes play a role in the verification of true generalizations. Theories of semantic memory have often had difficulties in explaining how people decided that sentences are false (Collins & Quillian, 1972). The possible mechanisms underlying the rejection of false sentences are the central concern of the present paper. The specific hypotheses that were tested in the experiments below emerge from a theoretical framework common to several recent memory models (e.g., Anderson & Bower, 1973; Collins & Quillian, 1969). The basic processing assumption underlying these models is that facts in memory are accessed m a particular 1 The ordering of authors is haphazard. We thank Edith Greene and Debbie Weinstein for their help in testing subjects, and
Active consumer participation is seen as an integral part of the emerging smart grid. Examples in... more Active consumer participation is seen as an integral part of the emerging smart grid. Examples include demandside management programs, incorporation of consumer-owned energy storage or renewable energy units, and active energy trading. However, despite the foreseen technological benefits of such consumer-centric grid features, to date, their widespread adoption in practice remains modest. To shed light on this challenge, this paper explores the potential of prospect theory, a Nobel-prize winning theory, as a decision-making framework that can help understand how risk and uncertainty can impact the decisions of smart grid consumers. After introducing the basic notions of prospect theory, several examples drawn from a number of smart grid applications are developed. These results show that a better understanding of the role of human decisionmaking within the smart grid is paramount for optimizing its operation and expediting the deployment of its various technologies.
Most studies of prosumer decision making in the smart grid have focused on single, temporally dis... more Most studies of prosumer decision making in the smart grid have focused on single, temporally discrete decisions within the framework of expected utility theory (EUT) and behavioral theories such as prospect theory. In this work, we study prosumer decision making in a more natural, ongoing market situation in which a prosumer has to decide every day whether to sell any surplus energy units generated by the solar panels on her roof or hold (store) the energy units in anticipation of a future sale at a better price. Within this context, we propose a new behavioral model that extends EUT to take into account the notion of a bounded temporal horizon over which various decision parameters are considered. Specifically, we introduce the notion of a bounded time window (the number of upcoming days over which a prosumer evaluates the probability that each possible price will be the highest) that prosumers implicitly impose on their decision making in arriving at "hold" or "sell" decisions. The new behavioral model assumes that humans make decisions that will affect their lives within a bounded time window regardless of how far into the future their units may be sold. Modeling the utility of the prosumer using parameters such as the offered price on a day, the number of energy units the prosumer has available for sale on a day, and the probabilities of the forecast prices, we fit both traditional EUT and the proposed behavioral model with bounded time windows to data collected from 57 homeowners over 68 days in a simulated energy market. Each prosumer generated surplus units of solar power and had the opportunity to sell those units to the local utility at the price set that day by the utility or hold the units for sale in the future. For most participants, a bounded horizon in the range of 4-5 days provided a much better fit to their responses than was found for the traditional (unbounded) EUT model, thus validating the need to model bounded horizons imposed in prosumer decision making.
In the context of an upper-level psychology course, even when students were given an opportunity ... more In the context of an upper-level psychology course, even when students were given an opportunity to refer to text containing the answers and change their exam responses in order to improve their exam scores, their performance on these questions improved slightly or not at all. Four experiments evaluated competing explanations for the students' failure to correct their answers. Experiments 1-3 ruled out ceiling effects, cognitive bias from a previous response and item selection effects, respectively, as explanations of the result. Experiment 4 showed that no more than 41% of the students comprehended the paragraphs well enough to find the answer. Furthermore, even this 41% of the students did not put sufficient effort into finding the answer, regardless of the impact on their grade, when they were not coerced to do so.
This study examined whether patients with Korsakoff's disease suffer from increased PI during enc... more This study examined whether patients with Korsakoff's disease suffer from increased PI during encoding. The ability of the name of one category, e.g., BIRD, to prime the processing of members of another category, e.g., BODY PARTS, in a lexical decision task was used to assess the amount of PI during encoding. This task required a subject to inhibit the normal associations to BIRD. Young normals (25 years), older normals (48 years), alcoholics (45 years), and alcoholic Korsakoff patients (59 years) performed two lexical decision tasks. In the first experiment, the appearance of the neutral prime xxx 750 msec before the probe signaled that if the probe was a word, there was a 75% chance that it was from a particular category (e.g., BODY PARTS). The prime facilitated reaction time for words from the expected category for all four groups. The prime slowed reaction time for words that were not from the expected category for the young normals but did not influence reaction time for unexpected words for the three older groups. The second experiment was identical to the first except that a category word was used as the prime. The category word used as the prime was unrelated to the category of the words that were likely to follow it. For example, BIRD might be used to signal the likelihood that the word would be from the category, BODY PARTS. Again, young normals were slower to respond to unexpected probe words, but the three older groups were not. Again, the prime facilitated reaction time for expected words for the young normals, older normals, and alcoholics. However, the word prime did not facilitate reaction
The intrusion of internet-enabled electronic devices (laptop, tablet, and cell phone) has transfo... more The intrusion of internet-enabled electronic devices (laptop, tablet, and cell phone) has transformed the modern college lecture into a divided attention task. This study measured the effect of using an electronic device for a non-academic purpose during class on subsequent exam performance. In a two-section college course, electronic devices were permitted in half the lectures, so the effect of the devices was assessed in a within-student, withinitem counterbalanced experimental design. Dividing attention between an electronic device and the classroom lecture did not reduce comprehension of the lecture, as measured by within-class quiz questions. Instead, divided attention reduced long-term retention of the classroom lecture, which impaired subsequent unit exam and final exam performance. Students self-reported whether they had used an electronic device in each class. Exam performance was significantly worse than the no-device control condition both for students who did and did not use electronic devices during that class.
Aresty Rutgers undergraduate research journal, Oct 7, 2021
The dual system hypothesis posits the existence of two neural systems for memory and learning in ... more The dual system hypothesis posits the existence of two neural systems for memory and learning in the mammalian brain: the habit system and the improvisational system. This study sought to determine whether both systems are involved in a visual recognition task originally outlined in Sternberg (1966) and whether each system could be selectively engaged on the basis of response assignment. [13] Seventeen undergraduate students participated in an immediate visual recognition task where they responded whether or not a test consonant was present in a previous study sequence of one to six consonants by pressing one key for same or another key for different. When the different response was assigned to the spatially right "J" key, reaction time for targets and lures was a function of the study sequence size, indicating that the study sequence was serially scanned and compared with the test item by the habit system. However, when the same response was assigned to the spatially right "J" key, reaction time was not a function of study sequence size, indicating that the test item was not compared with the
Page 1. APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, VOL. 2, 173-179 (1988) Predictions of Movie Entertainment V... more Page 1. APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, VOL. 2, 173-179 (1988) Predictions of Movie Entertainment Value and the Representativeness Heuristic ARNOLD L. GLASS Psychology Department, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, USA ...
The componential analysis of language as an approach to semantics has a long, rich history spanni... more The componential analysis of language as an approach to semantics has a long, rich history spanning several disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics, and psychology. The basic idea is that a word can be broken down into a set of primitive properties (or ideas, features, markers, etc.) that can then be said to constitute its meaning. For example, man may be intuitively analyzed as the set of properties (male, human); and perhaps the property "human" may be further analyzed as (intelligent, mammal), etc. These properties (as they will henceforth be called) are ultimately represented as atomic, unitary, and independent particles. They may be thought of as a collection of uniquely colored marbles, where any assortment is possible. The assumption of independent properties is common to a wide variety of substantially different theories which have appeared in different disciplines. Katz and Fodor (1963) use markers and distinguishers to disambiguate the meaning of a word in the context of a particular sentence. Schaffer and Wallace (1970) and Meyer (1970) have proposed setinclusion models to explain the correlation between the time it takes to verify whether a word is a member of a certain semantic category and the "semantic distance" between that word and the category. For example, it takes longer for a subject to judge "true" in re
Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, Apr 1, 1976
The relationship between the effects of morphological complexity and associative production frequ... more The relationship between the effects of morphological complexity and associative production frequency (PF) was investigated in two experiments on sentence verification. Subjects were timed as they evaluated low-and high-PF sentences with predicates containing words that were morphologically either basic or derived (e.g., Birds have feathers vs. Birds are feathered). In the first experiment sentences with basic predicates were verified more quickly than sentences with derived predicates, and high-PF sentences were verified more quickly than low-PF sentences. The advantage of basic over derived forms was reduced for the high-PF sentences. In the second experiment, the predicate of each sentence (e.g., are feathered) was presented for 2 set before the subject word appeared. In this delay condition the basic and derived versions of high-PF sentences were verified equally quickly; but for low-PF sentences, the basic form was still evaluated more quickly. The fact that the effect of morphological complexity was not necessarily eliminated after a delay suggested that the main difficulty of derived forms arises not during initial comprehension, but during a later stage in the comparison of the subject and predicate concepts.
In addition to modern grid hardware, software, and network-control technologies, active consumer ... more In addition to modern grid hardware, software, and network-control technologies, active consumer participation is seen as an integral part of the emerging smart grid. To address the challenges that this creates, this paper explores the potential of prospect theory, a Nobel-Prize-winning theory, as a decision-making framework that can help understand how risk and uncertainty can impact the decisions of smart grid consumers.
In this paper, the problem of energy trading between smart grid prosumers that can simultaneously... more In this paper, the problem of energy trading between smart grid prosumers that can simultaneously consume and produce energy is studied. The problem is formulated as a noncooperative game between prosumers whose goal is to meet their energy demands at minimum cost by optimally utilizing their storage units and renewable (wind) energy sources. In this game, each prosumer will declare the amount of energy that will be sold or bought to maximize a utility function that captures the tradeoff between the profits gained from selling energy and the penalty incurred for failing to meet the declared amount, due to the stochastic nature of wind energy. The proposed game explicitly accounts for each prosumer's subjective perceptions using the framework of prospect theory (PT). In particular, a prosumer's perception of the probability of its possible profits from trading energy is captured via the weighting effect. In addition, the prosumer's valuation of its gains and losses with respect to its own preferences is captured via the so-called framing effect. To find the equilibrium of this game, a best response algorithm is proposed. Simulation results show the difference in prosumer behavior using traditional game-theoretic and prospect-theoretic analysis. In particular, the results show that probability weighting increases the sensitivity of the prosumers to penalties. Moreover, under PT, a prosumer tends to sell less energy compared to a conventional game-theoretic scenario.
Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, Apr 1, 1975
Two hypotheses about the processes by which people can reject false but meaningful sentences quan... more Two hypotheses about the processes by which people can reject false but meaningful sentences quantified by a//or some are outlined. These hypotheses distinguish between two basic types of false sentences: contradictory sentences (e.g., All/Some birds a~e dogs), which are rejected on the basis of a direct contradiction between the subject and predicate concepts; and counterexample sentences (e.g., All birds are robins), which are falsified when the person thinks of a counterexample to the assertion (e.g., canary). Experiment I demonstrated that people use contradictions to produce false completions of sentences. In Experiment II, the false production frequency norms obtained m Experiment I, together with the theoretical analysis of false sentences, were used to predict the time required to reject false sentences. The results supported the contradiction and counterexample hypotheses, and indicated that false sentences with subject and predicate words closely related m meaning can sometimes be disconflrmed relatively quickly. Experiment III extended the counterexample hypothesis to sentences containing the verb have (e.g., All buildings have elevators), and also provided some evidence that the process of exemplar search used to find counterexamples may also sometimes play a role in the verification of true generalizations. Theories of semantic memory have often had difficulties in explaining how people decided that sentences are false (Collins & Quillian, 1972). The possible mechanisms underlying the rejection of false sentences are the central concern of the present paper. The specific hypotheses that were tested in the experiments below emerge from a theoretical framework common to several recent memory models (e.g., Anderson & Bower, 1973; Collins & Quillian, 1969). The basic processing assumption underlying these models is that facts in memory are accessed m a particular 1 The ordering of authors is haphazard. We thank Edith Greene and Debbie Weinstein for their help in testing subjects, and
Active consumer participation is seen as an integral part of the emerging smart grid. Examples in... more Active consumer participation is seen as an integral part of the emerging smart grid. Examples include demandside management programs, incorporation of consumer-owned energy storage or renewable energy units, and active energy trading. However, despite the foreseen technological benefits of such consumer-centric grid features, to date, their widespread adoption in practice remains modest. To shed light on this challenge, this paper explores the potential of prospect theory, a Nobel-prize winning theory, as a decision-making framework that can help understand how risk and uncertainty can impact the decisions of smart grid consumers. After introducing the basic notions of prospect theory, several examples drawn from a number of smart grid applications are developed. These results show that a better understanding of the role of human decisionmaking within the smart grid is paramount for optimizing its operation and expediting the deployment of its various technologies.
Most studies of prosumer decision making in the smart grid have focused on single, temporally dis... more Most studies of prosumer decision making in the smart grid have focused on single, temporally discrete decisions within the framework of expected utility theory (EUT) and behavioral theories such as prospect theory. In this work, we study prosumer decision making in a more natural, ongoing market situation in which a prosumer has to decide every day whether to sell any surplus energy units generated by the solar panels on her roof or hold (store) the energy units in anticipation of a future sale at a better price. Within this context, we propose a new behavioral model that extends EUT to take into account the notion of a bounded temporal horizon over which various decision parameters are considered. Specifically, we introduce the notion of a bounded time window (the number of upcoming days over which a prosumer evaluates the probability that each possible price will be the highest) that prosumers implicitly impose on their decision making in arriving at "hold" or "sell" decisions. The new behavioral model assumes that humans make decisions that will affect their lives within a bounded time window regardless of how far into the future their units may be sold. Modeling the utility of the prosumer using parameters such as the offered price on a day, the number of energy units the prosumer has available for sale on a day, and the probabilities of the forecast prices, we fit both traditional EUT and the proposed behavioral model with bounded time windows to data collected from 57 homeowners over 68 days in a simulated energy market. Each prosumer generated surplus units of solar power and had the opportunity to sell those units to the local utility at the price set that day by the utility or hold the units for sale in the future. For most participants, a bounded horizon in the range of 4-5 days provided a much better fit to their responses than was found for the traditional (unbounded) EUT model, thus validating the need to model bounded horizons imposed in prosumer decision making.
In the context of an upper-level psychology course, even when students were given an opportunity ... more In the context of an upper-level psychology course, even when students were given an opportunity to refer to text containing the answers and change their exam responses in order to improve their exam scores, their performance on these questions improved slightly or not at all. Four experiments evaluated competing explanations for the students' failure to correct their answers. Experiments 1-3 ruled out ceiling effects, cognitive bias from a previous response and item selection effects, respectively, as explanations of the result. Experiment 4 showed that no more than 41% of the students comprehended the paragraphs well enough to find the answer. Furthermore, even this 41% of the students did not put sufficient effort into finding the answer, regardless of the impact on their grade, when they were not coerced to do so.
This study examined whether patients with Korsakoff's disease suffer from increased PI during enc... more This study examined whether patients with Korsakoff's disease suffer from increased PI during encoding. The ability of the name of one category, e.g., BIRD, to prime the processing of members of another category, e.g., BODY PARTS, in a lexical decision task was used to assess the amount of PI during encoding. This task required a subject to inhibit the normal associations to BIRD. Young normals (25 years), older normals (48 years), alcoholics (45 years), and alcoholic Korsakoff patients (59 years) performed two lexical decision tasks. In the first experiment, the appearance of the neutral prime xxx 750 msec before the probe signaled that if the probe was a word, there was a 75% chance that it was from a particular category (e.g., BODY PARTS). The prime facilitated reaction time for words from the expected category for all four groups. The prime slowed reaction time for words that were not from the expected category for the young normals but did not influence reaction time for unexpected words for the three older groups. The second experiment was identical to the first except that a category word was used as the prime. The category word used as the prime was unrelated to the category of the words that were likely to follow it. For example, BIRD might be used to signal the likelihood that the word would be from the category, BODY PARTS. Again, young normals were slower to respond to unexpected probe words, but the three older groups were not. Again, the prime facilitated reaction time for expected words for the young normals, older normals, and alcoholics. However, the word prime did not facilitate reaction
The intrusion of internet-enabled electronic devices (laptop, tablet, and cell phone) has transfo... more The intrusion of internet-enabled electronic devices (laptop, tablet, and cell phone) has transformed the modern college lecture into a divided attention task. This study measured the effect of using an electronic device for a non-academic purpose during class on subsequent exam performance. In a two-section college course, electronic devices were permitted in half the lectures, so the effect of the devices was assessed in a within-student, withinitem counterbalanced experimental design. Dividing attention between an electronic device and the classroom lecture did not reduce comprehension of the lecture, as measured by within-class quiz questions. Instead, divided attention reduced long-term retention of the classroom lecture, which impaired subsequent unit exam and final exam performance. Students self-reported whether they had used an electronic device in each class. Exam performance was significantly worse than the no-device control condition both for students who did and did not use electronic devices during that class.
Aresty Rutgers undergraduate research journal, Oct 7, 2021
The dual system hypothesis posits the existence of two neural systems for memory and learning in ... more The dual system hypothesis posits the existence of two neural systems for memory and learning in the mammalian brain: the habit system and the improvisational system. This study sought to determine whether both systems are involved in a visual recognition task originally outlined in Sternberg (1966) and whether each system could be selectively engaged on the basis of response assignment. [13] Seventeen undergraduate students participated in an immediate visual recognition task where they responded whether or not a test consonant was present in a previous study sequence of one to six consonants by pressing one key for same or another key for different. When the different response was assigned to the spatially right "J" key, reaction time for targets and lures was a function of the study sequence size, indicating that the study sequence was serially scanned and compared with the test item by the habit system. However, when the same response was assigned to the spatially right "J" key, reaction time was not a function of study sequence size, indicating that the test item was not compared with the
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