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Judgments of sameness and difference: experiments on decision time.

When asked to judge whether two stimuli (tones) were the "same" or "different," subjects took longer to decide that two identical stimuli were the same than to decide that two dissimilar stimuli were different. Thus these judgments are not equivalent obverse aspects of a unitary judgmental process. While decision theory can be extended to deal with the obtained data, a model based on an analogy with a statistical computer is more directly applicable.

Adult↗

Analysis of clinical judgment helps to improve agreement in the assessment of rheumatoid arthritis.

Experienced rheumatologists differ widely in their assessments of rheumatoid arthritis even after extensive efforts to improve agreement by discussion and consensus. The use of computer feedback to provide an analysis of clinicians' judgment policies in a highly structured investigation has been shown to improve agreement, but this may not apply in normal clinical practice. Here the successful convergence of clinical agreements by three rheumatologists using computer assisted feedback over several months in a National Health Service outpatient department is reported. In the three months without feedback their pooled agreement for assessing the severity of rheumatoid arthritis was r2 = 0.62. During the three months in which feedback was provided agreement rose to r2 = 0.92. The principal component of all three judgment policies at the end of the feedback period was 'articular index'.

Arthritis, Rheumatoid↗

Resurrecting autonomy during resuscitation--the concept of professional substituted judgment.

The urgency of the resuscitation and the impaired ability of the patient to make a reasonable autonomous decision both conspire against adequate consideration of the principles of medical ethics. Informed consent is usually not possible for these reasons and this leads many to consider that consent is not required for resuscitation, because resuscitation brings benefit and prevents harm and because the patient is not in a position to give or withhold consent. However, consent for resuscitation is required and the common models employed for this purpose are presumed consent or consent from a patient proxy. However, if we are to honour the principles of respect for patient autonomy, as well as beneficence and non-maleficence, when starting and continuing resuscitation we must try and achieve the best balance between benefit and harm from the patient's perspective. The concept of professional substituted judgment involves the resuscitators gathering as much information about the patient as they possibly can, including any previously expressed attitudes towards such a situation, and combining this with their acquired professional knowledge of the likely benefits and harms of the resuscitation endeavour and then exercising their moral imagination, imagining themselves as the patient, and asking "would I want this treatment?" By employing professional substituted judgment resuscitators should recognise when the balance of benefit and harm becomes unfavourable from the patient's perspective and at this point they have a moral obligation to withdraw resuscitation as they can no longer presume the patient's consent. In this way the principles of beneficence, non-maleficence and respect for patient autonomy are more favourably balanced than under other resuscitation decision making processes.

Ethics, Medical↗

Effect of fundamental frequency on medial [+voice]/[-voice] judgments.

Previous research has suggested that the direction of short-duration fundamental frequency (F0) perturbations following consonants helps to signal consonant [+voice]/[-voice] (abbreviated as [voice]) status. It has been proposed that the [voice] cue corresponds to the direction and extent of F0 perturbations relative to the overall intonation contour. A competing view, the low-frequency hypothesis, suggests that F0 participates in a more general way whereby low-frequency energy near the consonant contributes to [+voice] judgments. Listeners identified multiple stimulus series, each varying in voice onset time and ranging from /aga/ to /aka/. The series differed in overall intonation contour as well as in the direction of F0 perturbation relative to that contour. Consistent with one version of the low-frequency hypothesis, the F0 value at voicing onset, rather than the relative direction of the F0 perturbation, was the best predictor of [voice] judgments.

Adult↗

Clinical judgment and statistics. Lessons from a simulated randomized trial in coronary artery disease.

A simulated randomized clinical trial in coronary artery disease was conducted to illustrate the need for clinical judgment and modern statistical methods in assessing therapeutic claims in studies of complex diseases. Clinicians should be aware of problems that occur when a patient sample is subdivided and treatment effects are assessed within multiple prognostic categories. In this example, 1073 consecutive, medically treated coronary artery disease patients from the Duke University data bank were randomized into two groups. The groups were reasonably comparable and, as expected, there was no overall difference in survival. In a subgroup of 397 patients characterized by three-vessel disease and an abnormal left ventricular contraction, however, survival of group 1 patients was significantly different from that of group 2 patients. Multivariable adjustment procedures revealed that the difference resulted from the combined effect of small imbalances in the distribution of several prognostic factors. Another subgroup was identified in which a significant survival difference was not explained by multivariable methods. These are not unlikely examples in trials of a complex disease. Clinicians must exercise careful judgment in attributing such results to an efficacious therapy, as they may be due to chance or to inadequate baseline comparability of the groups.

Coronary Disease↗

Dynamical vs. judgmental comparison: hysteresis effects in motion perception.

Perceptual comparison was investigated by gradually varying the relative length of two apparent motion paths, and independently determining when an initial percept was lost during the course of attribute change and when an alternative percept emerged. Dynamical comparison was indicated by a range of attribute values for which perception was bistable. Within this range, a percept that lost stability was immediately replaced by an alternative percept. Judgmental comparison was indicated by a range of attribute values for which perception was uncertain. When an initial percept was lost, an alternative percept did not immediately emerge because the alternatives being compared could not be distinguished. Differences in the effects of random noise on dynamical vs. judgmental comparison were demonstrated with computational simulations, and implications are discussed for motion energy models and solutions to the motion correspondence problem.

Attention↗

Is AIDS a biasing factor in teacher judgment?

This study examined the effect that knowledge of a student having AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) would have on regular-education teacher judgment regarding special education placement. Regular-education, third-grade teachers in Indiana were sent one of two psychological reports. The reports were identical except that one report stated that the student had AIDS and the other stated that the student had rheumatic fever. AIDS was not found to be a biasing factor in teachers' judgments regarding special education services.

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome↗

Intuitive toxicology: expert and lay judgments of chemical risks.

Human beings have always been intuitive toxicologists, relying on their senses of sight, taste, and smell to detect harmful or unsafe food, water, and air. As we have come to recognize that our senses are not adequate to assess the dangers inherent in exposure to a chemical substance, we have created the sciences of toxicology and risk assessment to perform this function. Yet despite this great effort to overcome the limitations of intuitive toxicology, it has become evident that even our best scientific methods still depend heavily on extrapolations and judgments in order to infer human health risks from animal data. Many observers have acknowledged the inherent subjectivity in the assessment of chemical risks and have indicated a need to examine the subjective or intuitive elements of expert and lay risk judgments. Such an examination was begun by surveying members of the Society of Toxicology and the lay public about basic toxicological concepts, assumptions, and interpretations. The results demonstrated large differences between toxicologists and laypeople, as well as differences among toxicologists working in industry, academia, and government. In addition, toxicologists were found to be sharply divided in their opinions about the ability to predict a chemical's effect on human health on the basis of animal studies. These results place the problems of risk communication in a new light. Although the survey identifies misconceptions that experts should clarify for the public, it also suggests that controversies over chemical risks may be fueled as much by limitations of the science of risk assessment and disagreements among experts as by public misconceptions.

Humans↗

Battered women who kill their abusers: an examination of commonsense notions, cognitions, and judgments.

It has been argued that battered women who kill their abusers represent a special class of defendants being unfairly treated in the legal system. As a result, commentators have argued for reforms to permit the judicial system to respond more fairly. Researchers have investigated the influences of these prescribed legal modifications and the possible influence of various demographic and psychological factors on legal reforms. However, social scientists have not yet asked some fundamental, psychological questions. Is the law consistent with what society believes is right and just? Is there a commonsense notion of justice in these cases? What factors constitute cognitive decision rules and influence judgments in cases of battered women who kill their abusers? This study uses a basic, psychological method to identify psychological factors that are important in judgments regarding battered women who kill and to better understand commonsense notions of justice in these cases.

Battered Women↗

An experimental study of the clinical judgment of general physicians in evaluating and prescribing for depression.

Fifteen general physicians were given profiles of symptom combinations representing 80 depressed patients. They were asked to judge the severity of the disorder and to prescribe. There were two phases to the experiment, the formal structure of both being the same. In the first phase, all physicians based their judgments only on the cues of the Hamilton Depression scale; in the second, each physician defined his own cues. Multivariate regression analysis was applied to the observations. Agreement between the judges was low. Most had a more complex policy, in regard to both judgment of the severity of the depression and prescribing, when selecting their own cues than when restricted to textbook variables, but used it more consistently. The observations have important implications for training and research in psychiatry and in psychopharmacology.

Adult↗

Odd-even short forms of the Judgment of Line Orientation Test.

The Judgment of Line Orientation (JLO) Test is a relatively pure measure of visuospatial perception, analysis, and judgment. Among those with brain injury, the JLO is sensitive to right-hemisphere insult, particularly insult to the posterior right hemisphere. Individuals presenting other cognitive deficits, however, such as attentional dysfunction or problems with sustained effort may have difficulty completing the full 30-item JLO test. In an effort to minimize these factors, as well as maximize the probability of obtaining an interpretable protocol, the efficacy of 15-item versions of the JLO was explored. The results of this investigation suggest that utilizing the doubled raw score from odd or even 15-item short forms is a viable alternative to administering the full30-item version of the JLO.

Journal Article↗

Judgment of emotional nonlinguistic vocalizations: age-related differences.

Humans make extensive use of vocal information to attribute emotional states to other individuals. To date, most studies exploring perception of vocal emotions have done so in the context of speech prosody, although nonlinguistic emotional vocalizations represent an important, perhaps more universal, means to express emotions. Here, we explored the perception of emotional nonlinguistic vocalizations in healthy individuals, with an emphasis on potential age- and sex-related differences. Sixty participants rated 563 positive (e.g., laughs, sexual vocalizations), negative (e.g., cries, screams of fear), and neutral vocalizations (e.g., coughs), according to the valence, intensity, and authenticity of the emotion expressed. Ratings were consistent among individuals, suggesting that valence is an adequate measure of emotional categorization. An important effect of age emerged: (a) age by vocalization category interactions were observed for both valence and intensity ratings, and (b) younger participants rated stimuli as more emotional than older individuals (i.e., higher valence for positive, lower for negative, and more intense for both positive and negative). We also found a sex effect in the authenticity ratings: older women rated the vocalizations as less authentic than younger women whereas authenticity judgments did not differ between the two age groups in men. Taken together, these findings suggest that, as previously observed for facial expressions and prosody, the judgments of emotional vocalizations may vary with age.

Adult↗

Using our best judgment in conducting human research.

The federal regulations of human research were written to permit the use of discretion so that research can fit the circumstances under which it is conducted. For example, the researcher and institutional review board (IRB) could waive or alter some informed consent elements if they deem this the morally and scientifically best way to conduct the research. To do so, however, researchers and IRBs would first have to use mature moral and scientific judgment. They might also have to rely on empirical research to discover the most effective way to act on their moral sense (e.g., to discover how best to approach potential research participants and explain the nature and purpose of the research participation for which they are being recruited, to ensure comprehension and competent decision making). On discovering the most ethical way to proceed, they would then need to look to the federal regulations of human research to discover how to document their decision and justify it within that somewhat flexible regulatory structure. Unfortunately, many IRBs and researchers fail to take these sensible steps to solve ethical problems and proceed immediately to a default requirement of the regulations that places science at odds with the regulations and, ostensibly, with ethics. The following articles in this special issue are about the process of learning to engage in ethical problem solving and using the flexibility permitted by the federal regulations. These articles extricate researchers from the mindset that has gotten them into trouble, and, ideally, provoke them to use mature common sense and moral judgment.

Behavioral Research↗

Accessible content and accessibility experiences: the interplay of declarative and experiential information in judgment.

Recall tasks render 2 distinct sources of information available: the recalled content and the experienced ease or difficulty with which it can be brought to mind. Because retrieving many pieces of information is more difficult than retrieving only a few, reliance on accessible content and subjective accessibility experiences leads to opposite judgmental outcomes. People are likely to base judgments on accessibility experiences when they adopt a heuristic processing strategy and the informational value of the experience is not called into question. When the experience is considered nondiagnostic, or when a systematic processing strategy is adopted, people rely on accessible content. Implications for the operation of the availability heuristic and the emergence of knowledge accessibility effects are discussed.

Journal Article↗

The Galbraith judgment and the defence of diminished responsibility in Scotland.

New case law on diminished responsibility in Scotland (Galbraith v. HM Advocate 2001) re-defined the defence and clarified the role of expert witnesses. We examined how this judgment affected the use of the defence, provision of expert evidence and the outcome of trials. We studied homicide cases in one area of Scotland in the year before and the year after the new judgment. Results indicated little change in the number of cases where the defence was used, but a difference in how psychiatrists set out their opinions.

Adolescent↗

An application of judgment analysis to examination marking in psychology.

Statistical combinations of specific measures have been shown to be superior to expert judgment in several fields. In this study, judgment analysis was applied to examination marking to investigate factors that influenced marks awarded and contributed to differences between first and second markers. Seven markers in psychology rated 551 examination answers on seven 'aspects' for which specific assessment criteria had been developed to support good practice in assessment. The aspects were: addressing the question, covering the area, understanding, evaluation, development of argument, structure and organization, and clarity. Principal-components analysis indicated one major factor and no more than two minor factors underlying the seven aspects. Aspect ratings were used to predict overall marks, using multiple regression to 'capture' the marking policies of individual markers. These varied from marker to marker in terms of the numbers of aspect ratings that made independent contributions to the prediction of overall marks and the extent to which aspect ratings explained the variance in overall marks. The number of independently predictive aspect ratings, and the amount of variance in overall marks explained by aspect ratings, were consistently higher for first markers (question setters) than for second markers. Co-markers' overall marks were then used as an external criterion to test the extent to which a simple model consisting of the sum of the aspect ratings improved on overall marks in the prediction of comarkers marks. The model significantly increased the variance in co-markers' marks accounted for, but only for second markers, who had not taught the material and had not set the question. Further research is needed to develop the criteria and especially to establish the reliability and validity of specific aspects of assessment. The present results support the view that, for second markers at least, combined measures of specific aspects of examination answers may help to improve the reliability of marking.

Educational Measurement↗

Use of image-based information in judgments of surface-reflectance properties.

We examined how well we can recover surface-reflectance properties from shading patterns under changes in surface shape. The stimulus we used was a square surface modulated in depth by a low-pass-filtered random field and rendered by the Phong illumination model [Commun. ACM 18, 311 (1975)]. Two different surface images (target and match) were presented side by side, with either the viewing direction or the surface-normal direction rotating around the horizontal axis. The target shape was manipulated by changing the spatial spectrum, and the target reflectance was manipulated by changing the diffuse-reflection coefficient and the specular-reflection exponent (shininess) of the Phong model. The shape parameters of the match stimulus were fixed, but its reflectance parameters were under the control of subjects, who had to make the apparent reflectance of the two surfaces as similar as possible. The results showed that the constant error (difference between simulated and matched values) was large except when the two surfaces had the same shape parameters or when they differed only in scale. The pattern of the constant errors and response variabilities suggests that the judgments of the subjects were based on the similarity of the luminance histogram of the surface image. Our results demonstrate a limitation of surface-reflectance constancy for changes in shape and the importance of image-based information in reflectance judgments. The results are discussed in relation to previous studies that showed effects of spatial layout on surface-reflectance perception.

Color Perception↗

Dynamical use of different sources of information in heading judgments from retinal flow.

The optic flow arising in the eyes of an observer during self-motion is influenced by the occurrence of eye movements. The determination of heading during eye movements may be based on the pattern of retinal image motion (the retinal flow) or on an additional use of an extraretinal eye-movement signal. Previous research has presented support for either of these hypotheses, depending on the movement geometry and the layout of the visual scene. A special situation in which all previous studies unequivocally have agreed that an extra-retinal signal is required occurs when the visual scene consists of a single frontoparallel plane. In this situation eye movements shift the center of expansion on the retina to a location that does not correspond to the direction of self-movement. Without extraretinal input, human observers confuse the center of expansion with their heading and show a systematical heading estimation error. We reexamined and further investigated this situation. We presented retinal flow stimuli on a large projection screen in the absence of extra-retinal input and varied stimulus size, presentation duration, and orientation of the plane. In contrast to previous studies we found that in the case of a perpendicular approach toward the plane, heading judgments can be accurate. Accurate judgments were observed when the field of view was large (90 degrees x 90 degrees) and the stimulus duration was short (< or = 0.5 s). For a small field of view or a prolonged stimulus presentation, a systematic and previously described error appeared that is related to the radial structure of the flow field and the location of the center of expansion. An oblique approach toward the plane results in an ambiguous flow field with two mathematically possible solutions for heading. In this situation, when the stimulus duration was short, subjects reported a perceived heading midway between these two solutions. For longer flow sequences, subjects again chose the center of expansion. Our results suggest a dynamical change in the analysis or interpretation of retinal flow during heading perception.

Adult↗