Effects of Induced Mood on Attention and Decision Strategies in Risky Choice.

The effects of induced incidental moods on patterns of information search and decision outcomes were investigated in a risky choice task with mixed-domain problems. Viewing of short videos was used to induce either happy or sad mood in participants, who then made choices between pairs of options consisting of a probabilistic gain coupled with a probabilistic loss. Eyetracking measures of information search, specifically frequencies of transitions between key aspects of the decision alternatives, were analyzed and related to use of heuristic or analytic compensatory strategies.

The influence of sleep on emotional and cognitive processing is primarily trait- (but not state-) dependent.

Human studies of sleep and cognition have established thatdifferent sleep stages contribute to distinct aspects of cognitive and emotional processing. However, since the majority of these findings are based on single-night studies, it is difficult to determine whether such effects arise due to individual, between-subject differences in sleep patterns, or from within-subject variations in sleep over time. In the current study, weinvestigated the longitudinal relationship between sleep patterns and cognitive performance by monitoring both in parallel, daily, for a week.

Striving for perfection and falling short: The influence of goals on probability matching.

Probability matching in sequential prediction tasks is argued to occur because participants implicitly adopt the unrealistic goal of perfect prediction of sequences. Biases in the understanding of randomness then lead them to generate mixed rather than pure sequences of predictions in attempting to achieve this goal. In Study 1, N = 350 participants predicted 100 trials of a binary-outcome event.

Cognitive tools shape thought: diagrams in design.

Thinking often entails interacting with cognitive tools. In many cases, notably design, the predominant tool is the page. The page allows externalizing, organizing, and reorganizing thought.

Conventional wisdom: negotiating conventions of reference enhances category learning.

Collaborators generally coordinate their activities through communication, during which they readily negotiate a shared lexicon for activity-related objects. This social-pragmatic activity both recruits and affects cognitive and social-cognitive processes ranging from selective attention to perspective taking. We ask whether negotiating reference also facilitates category learning or might private verbalization yield comparable facilitation? Participants in three referential conditions learned to classify imaginary creatures according to combinations of functional features-nutritive and destructive-that implicitly defined four categories.

Observed attention allocation processes in category learning.

In two empirical studies of attention allocation during category learning, we investigate the idea that category learners learn to allocate attention optimally across stimulus dimensions. We argue that "optimal" patterns of attention allocation are model or process specific, that human learners do not always optimize attention, and that one reason they fail to do so is that under certain conditions the cost of information retrieval or use may affect the attentional strategy adopted by learners. We empirically investigate these issues using a computer interface incorporating an "information-board" display that collects detailed information on participants' patterns of attention allocation and information search during learning trials.