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Heading judgments in minimal environments: the value of a heuristic when invariants are rare.

Observers made systematic heading judgments in two experiments simulating their translation through an environment with only two trees. When those trees converged or decelerated apart, observers tended to follow the invariant information and make heading judgments outside the near member of the pair. When those trees accelerated apart, however, observers tended to follow the heuristic information and make judgments outside the far member, although this result was tempered by the angular separation between the trees and their relative acceleration. The simultaneous existence and use of invariants and heuristics are discussed in terms of different metatheoretical approaches to perception.

Environment↗

Individual differences in collinearity judgment as a function of angular position.

Previous research indicates that perceived orientation and/or alignment of segments and points can vary as a function of the angular position of the stimulus elements. Several studies show that the variability of the responses is least and accuracy of judgment is greatest where segments and dots are aligned with a cardinal axis. Additionally, some report assimilation of judgments toward the nearest cardinal axis--that is, the segments (or dots) are seen as being closer to the horizontal or vertical than is true. The present research confirms that judgments of collinearity are least variable and most accurate when the segment being judged is aligned with a cardinal axis. However, we do not find any consistent tendency for cardinal axis assimilation. Plotting the collinearity error (delta) as a function of angular position (phi), we find a distinctive profile of oscillation for each subject. Furthermore, subjects who were evaluated in two sessions showed very similar profiles of delta oscillation from Day 1 to Day 2. Harmonic analysis indicated a wide-ranging pattern of significant components. The components at the 4th harmonic and below were more likely to be significant, but each subject showed differential loadings in terms of which of the components were significant, as well as in the sign and amplitude of significant components. These results may reflect idiosyncratic fixation tendencies, or individual differences in the design of neural mechanisms that encode the angular positions of stimuli.

Humans↗

[A choice of domain of judgment in acquisition of universal quantifier expressions].

The present paper examined whether 3-5 year old children can answer correctly to universal quantifier expressions which refer to elements in front of them. In Experiment 1, likely and unlikely situations, manipulated by entity color relation (e.g., likely: red flower, unlikely: black moon), were presented. The result showed that a large number of 4-5 year old children could not affirm the true but unlikely situations. In Experiment 2, the elements which did not have any typical color were used in the likely situations. Children made incorrect judgment equally to both likely and unlikely situations. However, in Experiment 3, those children were able to affirm or negate situations in front of them correctly, if the elements were novel to them. These results indicate that in true-false judgment for universal quantifier expressions, 4-5 year old children tend to base their judgment on their knowledge rather than situations just in front of them. This phenomenon is discussed from the point of view of intellectual realism.

Child, Preschool↗

Practical nursing judgment: a moderate realist conception.

Under the influence of idealist mainstream thinking that reality is mind-dependent, many nurses are dismissing the possibility of attaining objectively true judgments. A worrisome trend that has emerged from such thinking is to recommend that nursing practice decisions ultimately be based solely on subjective judgments. We present a conception of practical nursing judgment based on the common-sense philosophy of moderate realism, which has the potential to help offset the trend. It allows for nursing decision making in which nursing principles and rules are modified in light of the contingent circumstances of a nursing situation, resulting in decisions which have both a subjective and an objective aspect to them. This feature, plus the fact that the nursing principles are grounded in common natural needs, rights, and obligations, provides nurses with a basis for nursing care which is individualized, just, benevolent, and sensible, a means requisite to making our lives good.

Decision Making↗

How people make support judgments: individual differences in the traits used to infer supportiveness in others.

Social support and other social judgments are composed of several distinct components, of which relationship effects are an important part. With regard to support judgments, relationship effects refer to the fact that when judging the same targets, people differ systematically in whom they see as supportive. One explanation for this effect is that people differ in how they combine information about targets to judge supportiveness. Participants rated the supportiveness of hypothetical targets and targets from their own social networks. Multilevel modeling identified the traits participants used to make support judgments. There were significant differences in the extent to which participants used different target personality traits to judge supportiveness. In addition, participant neuroticism predicted the extent to which participants used target neuroticism and agreeableness to judge supportiveness.

Adolescent↗

The influence of victim gender and sexual orientation on judgments of the victim in a depicted stranger rape.

This study investigated the impact of respondent gender, victim gender, and victim sexual orientation on judgments toward the victim of a depicted stranger rape. Respondents were required to read a scenario in which victim gender and sexual orientation varied between subjects, and to complete measures of behavioral blame, responsibility, and severity of the attack. Results revealed that male respondents made more anti-victim judgments than female respondents did. Male respondents judged gay male victims more negatively than they did other victims. Female respondents' judgments were pro-victim regardless of victim gender and victim sexual orientation. Results are discussed in relation to the feminist analysis of victim blame, and blame toward male rape victims. Implications for support services, particularly of male victims, are also considered.

Adolescent↗

Intentionality, degree of damage, and moral judgments.

153 first graders were given Piagetian moral judgment problems with a new simplified methodology as well as the usual story-pair paradigm. The new methodology involved making quantitative judgments about single stories and examined the influence of level of intentionality and degree of damage upon absolute punishment ratings. Contrary to results obtained with a story-pair methodology, it was found that with single stories even 6-year-old children responded to the level of intention in the stories as well as the quantity and quality of damage involved. This suggested that Piaget's methodology may be forcing children to employ a simplifying strategy while under other conditions they are able to perform the mental operations necessary to make complex moral judgments.

Child↗

Task difficulty reduces the left visual hemispace bias for judgments of emotion in chimeric faces.

A prior study (Carbary, Almerigi, & Harris, 2001) of adults' judgments of emotional chimeric faces showed that the left visual hemispace (LVH) bias normally found on a free-viewing chimeric faces test is reduced when the task is judged to be difficult. Taking into account theory and research on hemispheric differences in styles, or strategies, of information processing, we proposed that the reduction was related to a change in these strategies. Two new experiments are presented that independently manipulate task difficulty and show the same task difficulty-related effect as in our prior study. Data are also presented suggesting that the strategy most commonly adopted for difficult judgments is part-based or feature-oriented, whereas the strategy most commonly adopted for easy judgments is reliance on "first impression."

Affect↗

[A functional explanation of normative prescriptive-evaluative judgments and the concept of "evolutionary ethics"].

Neodarwinian ethology, today above all represented by sociobiology, is conceived of by responsible exponents as a descriptive and explanatory theory that cannot include any normative declarations. Still other, indeed notable, authors belonging to the discipline in question, either underhand or frankly employ prescriptive or evaluative judgments, or they claim (what is not an insight of natural science) that it is impossible to provide a rational foundation for prescriptive or evaluative judgments. (Michael Ruse and Edward O. Wilson even assert the latter without relinquishing the former.) Several functional explanations of normative validity claims advanced by Michael Ruse, Edward O. Wilson, Donald T. Campbell, Florian von Schilcher and Neil Tennant are designed to show that prescriptive or evaluative judgments cannot be justified. The reasonableness of this move is, however, dubious, because it implies strategies of raising oneself into a privileged status or of rendering the position of oneself immune from criticism by shifting it among the objects of the theory. Then Wilson's concept of 'evolutionary ethics' is thoroughly--and critically--analyzed. The suspicion that Wilson's fallacies in the transition from biological facts to moral norms are of exemplary nature is finally examined on the basis of tenets advanced by Herbert Spencer, Wolfgang Wickler, and Hans Mohr.

Bioethics↗

Effects of aging on the magnitude and accuracy of quality-of-encoding judgments.

Age invariance in monitoring associative learning has been the norm in numerous investigations concerning how accurately people predict future recall, predictions that are based partly on people's beliefs about forgetting. In this study, we obtained a measure of monitoring that is minimally influenced by beliefs about forgetting. Participants made quality-of-encoding (QUE) judgments by rating how well each item had been encoded. In 2 experiments, older and younger adults studied 60 paired-associate items; immediately after studying each one, they made a QUE judgment. Each item was presented at a 4-s or 8-s presentation rate. QUEs from both age groups were sensitive to the production of different strategies, presentation rate, and item characteristics. Reliable age differences in the correlation of QUEs and subsequent recall were found for related items but not for unrelated items. The outcomes indicate similar processes for generating QUE judgments by older and younger adults, but they also suggest the possibility of an age-related deficit in the accuracy of monitoring encoding in some experimental conditions.

Adult↗

Contraction bias in memorial quantifying judgment: does it come from a stable compressed memory representation or a dynamic adaptation process?

A common response bias in psychophysical judgments is regression toward the mean (overestimation of small and underestimation of large values, or the response contraction bias). The same bias is observed in magnitude estimation from memorized quantities. Participants estimated alphabetic interval distances between 2 letters for different levels of interletter distances. The underestimated and overestimated values and the point of least error changed, depending on the level of alphabetic distances judged; furthermore, their estimation showed a progressively increasing tendency toward the mean, rendering the estimation progressively less accurate as the estimation task was repeated. We conclude that the regression toward the mean in memorial quantifying judgment derives from a cognitive adaptation process rather than from a permanent, compressed memory representation of the stimuli. Two opposing views on the adaptive meaning of this judgment bias are discussed.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

Children's obligatory and discretionary moral judgments.

This study examined children's obligatory moral judgments (which reflect a moral requirement) and discretionary moral judgments (which reflect moral worthiness, but not a requirement). 72 children participated across grades 2, 5, and 8 (mean ages, 8-3, 11-0, and 13-11). Children were interviewed in response to stimulus stories that controlled for the degree of agent's cost (low and high) for performing positive moral acts (giving money for food to an impoverished, hungry person) and negative moral acts (not stealing money for food). Results showed that negative moral acts were more often conceived as obligatory than positive moral acts. In addition, the results support the proposition that children's concepts of obligation underlie judgments to codify law, that justice reasoning builds on concepts of welfare, and that with increasing age discretionary moral reasoning incorporates such character traits as benevolence, sacrifice, and supererogation. Discussion includes consideration of how the study's conceptualization and analysis can provide guidance to a moral-developmental research program.

Adolescent↗

Modeling clinical judgment and implicit guideline compliance in the diagnosis of melanomas using machine learning.

We explore several machine learning techniques to model clinical decision making of 6 dermatologists in the clinical task of melanoma diagnosis of 177 pigmented skin lesions (76 malignant, 101 benign). In particular we apply Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifiers to model clinician judgments, Markov Blanket and SVM feature selection to eliminate clinical features that are effectively ignored by the dermatologists, and a novel explanation technique whereby regression tree induction is run on the reduced SVM model's output to explain the physicians' implicit patterns of decision making. Our main findings include: (a) clinician judgments can be accurately predicted, (b) subtle decision making rules are revealed enabling the explanation of differences of opinion among physicians, and (c) physician judgment is non-compliant with the diagnostic guidelines that physicians self-report as guiding their decision making.

Artificial Intelligence↗

Understanding due discretion of judgment in Catholic marriage courts.

Psychiatrists and psychologists provide consultation to the Catholic Church's marriage courts. Operating under the Church's legal code, these tribunals assess the validity of weddings that have ended in divorce. This report describes one of the standards used for this purpose, the lack of due discretion of judgment, which is concerned with the maturity, understanding, and appreciation that the couple brought to the ceremony. This normal capacity is vulnerable to various mental illnesses, which if present with sufficient severity may nullify the marriage vows as seen by the Church (though not necessarily by the state). Such a finding results in freedom to marry again despite the Church's ban on divorce, provided that due discretion of judgment is regained. Case examples and discussion of the assessment process for due discretion of judgment prepare the consultant to apply psychiatric findings to this unique and urgent legal issue.

Adult↗

Demographic, clinical, and psychosocial predictors of the reliability of mothers' clinical judgments.

The purpose of this study was to investigate to what extent selected adverse demographic, clinical, and psychosocial data measured at the 2-week well child visit could predict poorer reliability of mothers' judgments during acute illness episodes over the next 32 months. The study was a randomized trial of the Acute Illness Observation Scales (AIOS); 369 mothers participated, 183 in the intervention group using the Acute Illness Observation Scales and 186 in the control group using a three-point global assessment scale. There were 704 acute illnesses judged simultaneously and independently by mothers and pediatricians. Standard Pearson r correlations were performed between the independent variables, taken singly and in all possible combinations, and the dependent variable, reliability of mothers' judgments as measured by weighted kappa (kappa W). Group assignment was entered as an independent variable. Analyses were performed separately for all first, second, and third acute illness visits to control for any "practice effect" (analysis 1). To control for consistency of observers, the first, second, and third visits of mothers with three visits were also analyzed (analysis 2). Depending on the visit number, adverse demographic, clinical, and psychosocial characteristics did correlate with poorer reliability independent of group assignment. The correlations ranged from small (analysis 1, first visit, multiple variable r2 = 4%) to large (analysis 2, second visit, multiple variable r2 = 29%). Controlling for both visit number and consistency of observers vs visit number alone (analysis 2 vs analysis 1) increased multivariate correlations to kappa W. The results support the untoward impact that adverse demographic, clinical, and psychosocial factors have on mothers' clinical judgment. These data may assist pediatricians in identifying parents who might benefit from more intensive teaching and support about acute illness episodes in their children.

Acute Disease↗

Effect of outcome on physician judgments of appropriateness of care.

Is a permanent injury more likely to elicit a rating of inappropriate care than a temporary injury? To explore this question, we asked 112 practicing anesthesiologists to judge the appropriateness of care in 21 cases involving adverse anesthetic outcomes. The original outcome in each case was classified as either temporary or permanent. The authors then generated a matching alternate case identical to the original in every respect except that a plausible outcome of opposite severity was substituted. The original and alternate cases were randomly divided into two sets and assigned to reviewers who were blind to the intent of the study. The reviewers were asked to rate independently the care in each case as appropriate, less than appropriate, or impossible to judge, based on their personal (implicit) judgment of reasonable and prudent practice. A significant inverse relationship between severity of outcome and judgments of appropriateness of care was observed in 15 (71%) of the 21 matched pairs of cases. Overall, the proportion of ratings for appropriate care decreased by 31 percentage points when the outcome was changed from temporary to permanent and increased by 28 percentage points when the outcome was changed from permanent to temporary. We conclude that knowledge of the severity of outcome can influence a reviewer's judgment of the appropriateness of care.

Anesthesia↗

The tacit dimension of clinical judgment.

Two distinct views of the nature of clinical judgment are identified and contrasted. The dominant view that clinical judgment is a fully explicit process is compared to the relatively neglected view that tacit knowledge plays a substantial role in the clinician's mental operations. The tacit dimension of medical thinking is explored at length. The discussion suggests severe limits when applying decision analysis, expert systems, and computer-aided cost-benefit review to medicine. The goals and practices of postgraduate medical education are also examined from this perspective, as are various other implications for the clinician. The paper concludes that it is valuable to explore the nature of medical thinking in order to improve clinical practice and education. Such explorations should, however, take cognizance of the often overlooked tacit dimension of clinical judgment. Possible constraints on the medical applicability of both formal expert systems and heavily didactic instructional programs are considered.

Clinical Medicine↗

Teaching clinical judgment in periodontics.

Clinical judgment is a complex process that is difficult to develop. It is the essence of the health professional, yet most dental curricula do not emphasize the learning of the judgmental process. In this paper the judgmental process is analyzed into three components: input, mediation, and output. Following the analysis, suggestions for using these components are presented in four instructional phases: the introductory phase, the initial guidance phase, the application phase, and the feedback phase. While the illustrations used are drawn from periodontics, the principles are generalizable to the teaching of all clinical disciplines.

Clinical Competence↗