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Cognitive
Psychology PSY 504
VU
Lesson
13
AUTOMATICITY
(continued)
Judging
frequency
Hasher
& Zacks (1984) talked
about judging frequency.
They said
People
are good at judging relative
frequency of events.
There
is considerable evidence to suggest
that this information is
encoded automatically.
This
knowledge allows us develop
expectancies about the
world.
Predicting
flight performance
Gopher
& Kahneman (1971) found
that flight attendants
frequently emphasized the
importance of
selective
attention in learning to fly
high-performance aircraft. Like
Pakistan air force has
many
planes.
Flying these planes need
sophisticated skills. Then
the selective attention is
very
important.
They have to understand
which plane needs more
attention.
Flight
cadets often failed because
they could not appropriately
divide their attention
among
simultaneous
activities or were slow to
recognize crucial signals
that arrived on
unattended
channels.
Gopher
and Kahneman tested 100
cadets in Israeli Air Force.
In that experiment, two
different
messages
came to different ears
through headphones. A tone
signaled which ear was
relevant.
High
tone was for right
ear and light tone
was for left ears.
Subjects had to report all
the digits
from
the relevant ear.
There
were three groups of
cadets.
Group
1: 17 cadets rejected early
during training on light
aircraft.
Group
2: 41 cadets rejected during
training on jet
aircraft.
Group
3: 42 cadets had reached
advanced training on jet
aircraft.
Group
3 was best group. Because
they had passed advanced
training on jet
craft.
Results
Results
of that experiment
were;
Those
that made 3 or more
errors:
76%
of Group 1 made 3 errors or
more.
56%
of Group 2 made 3 errors or
more.
24%
of Group 3 made 3 errors or
more.
The
results showed selective
listening task was the
best predictor of flight
performance. It means
selective
listening task is more
appropriate than other tests
in recruitment process.
This
has implications for fighter
pilot training in Pakistan
Air Force as well.
Predicting
Road Accidents
Kahneman,
Ben-Ishai & Lotan (1973)
studied bus drivers.
Accident
prone drivers: 2 or more
severe accidents in one
year
Accident-free
drivers: no accidents in the
same period
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Cognitive
Psychology PSY 504
VU
Intermediate
drivers: in-between the two
groups
Selective
Listening task had a high
correlation with driver
safety. Those drivers
performed best in
selective
listening task they were
safe drivers and had
low rate of
accidents.
Other
road accident
experiment
Mihal
& Barett (1976) used
seven tests to predict
accident involvement of commercial
drivers.
They
found selective listening
task to be the best
predictor.
Surprising
result was because a visual
task was not as good a
predictor as listening.
Perhaps
because selective listening
task is a general measure of
attention.
Those
good at switching attention in an
auditory task are also
good at visual tasks
(Hunt,
Pellegrino
& Yee, 1989)
Thought
suppression
Wegner
and colleagues (1987)
studied thought
suppression.
We
can think anything like
pink elephants. Suppose If
someone says us to don't
think about
purple
elephants we must think
about purple elephant even
someone tells us to don't
think.
They
wanted to investigate the
attention to internal sources of
information.
They
studied
Thought
suppression &
Thought
expression
There
were two situations of
experiment.
Suppression:
Don't think of a "White
Bear"
Expression:
Think of a White Bear
For
five minutes subjects were
put in a situation. Subjects
were instructed to
don't
think
of a "White Bear". You must
ring a bell whenever you
think of a White
Bear.
Results
Results
shows
Suppression
before Expression
Subjects
started 3.5 rings down to 1
ring
Suppression
after Expression
Subjects
started from 4.4 rings
down to 1 ring
Expression
before Suppression
Subjects
started 4.5 rings down to
1.8
Expression
after Suppression
Subjects
started 4.5 rings up
5.2
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Cognitive
Psychology PSY 504
VU
Implications
Paradoxical
effect of thought suppression is
that it produces a preoccupation
with the
suppressed
thought.
Subjects
use environmental cues to
help with thought
suppression which
become
associated
with the thought.
It
is better to work on suppression in an
environment which is different
from one's usual
environment.
Remedies
for rebound
Competing
thought actually reduces the
rebound effect.
Instructions
to think about a red
Volkswagen instead of a White
bear reduced
White
Bear thoughts during
expression (Wegner et al,
1987).
Subjects
who changed their
surroundings had fewer White
Bear thoughts (Wegner
&
Schneider, 1989).
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