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AUTOMATICITY (continued):Predicting flight performance, Thought suppression

<< AUTOMATICITY (continued):Experiment, Implications, Task interference
PATTERN RECOGNITION:Template Matching Models, Human flexibility >>
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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
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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
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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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Table of Contents:
  1. INTRODUCTION:Historical Background
  2. THE INFORMATION PROCESSING APPROACH
  3. COGNITIVE NEUROPSYCHOLOGY:Brains of Dead People, The Neuron
  4. COGNITIVE NEUROPSYCHOLOGY (CONTINUED):The Eye, The visual pathway
  5. COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY (CONTINUED):Hubel & Wiesel, Sensory Memory
  6. VISUAL SENSORY MEMORY EXPERIMENTS (CONTINUED):Psychological Time
  7. ATTENTION:Single-mindedness, In Shadowing Paradigm, Attention and meaning
  8. ATTENTION (continued):Implications, Treisman’s Model, Norman’s Model
  9. ATTENTION (continued):Capacity Models, Arousal, Multimode Theory
  10. ATTENTION:Subsidiary Task, Capacity Theory, Reaction Time & Accuracy, Implications
  11. RECAP OF LAST LESSONS:AUTOMATICITY, Automatic Processing
  12. AUTOMATICITY (continued):Experiment, Implications, Task interference
  13. AUTOMATICITY (continued):Predicting flight performance, Thought suppression
  14. PATTERN RECOGNITION:Template Matching Models, Human flexibility
  15. PATTERN RECOGNITION:Implications, Phonemes, Voicing, Place of articulation
  16. PATTERN RECOGNITION (continued):Adaptation paradigm
  17. PATTERN RECOGNITION (continued):Gestalt Theory of Perception
  18. PATTERN RECOGNITION (continued):Queen Elizabeth’s vase, Palmer (1977)
  19. OBJECT PERCEPTION (continued):Segmentation, Recognition of object
  20. ATTENTION & PATTERN RECOGNITION:Word Superiority Effect
  21. PATTERN RECOGNITION (CONTINUED):Neural Networks, Patterns of connections
  22. PATTERN RECOGNITION (CONTINUED):Effects of Sentence Context
  23. MEMORY:Short Term Working Memory, Atkinson & Shiffrin Model
  24. MEMORY:Rate of forgetting, Size of memory set
  25. Memory:Activation in a network, Magic number 7, Chunking
  26. Memory:Chunking, Individual differences in chunking
  27. MEMORY:THE NATURE OF FORGETTING, Release from PI, Central Executive
  28. Memory:Atkinson & Shiffrin Model, Long Term Memory, Different kinds of LTM
  29. Memory:Spread of Activation, Associative Priming, Implications, More Priming
  30. Memory:Interference, The Critical Assumption, Limited capacity
  31. Memory:Interference, Historical Memories, Recall versus Recognition
  32. Memory:Are forgotten memories lost forever?
  33. Memory:Recognition of lost memories, Representation of knowledge
  34. Memory:Benefits of Categorization, Levels of Categories
  35. Memory:Prototype, Rosch and Colleagues, Experiments of Stephen Read
  36. Memory:Schema Theory, A European Solution, Generalization hierarchies
  37. Memory:Superset Schemas, Part hierarchy, Slots Have More Schemas
  38. MEMORY:Representation of knowledge (continued), Memory for stories
  39. Memory:Representation of knowledge, PQ4R Method, Elaboration
  40. Memory:Study Methods, Analyze Story Structure, Use Multiple Modalities
  41. Memory:Mental Imagery, More evidence, Kosslyn yet again, Image Comparison
  42. Mental Imagery:Eidetic Imagery, Eidetic Psychotherapy, Hot and cold imagery
  43. Language and thought:Productivity & Regularity, Linguistic Intuition
  44. Cognitive development:Assimilation, Accommodation, Stage Theory
  45. Cognitive Development:Gender Identity, Learning Mathematics, Sensory Memory