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Attention
194
Book review: Stevens’ Handbook
of Experimental
Psychology
in the early fifties, when the normative foundations were layed for expected utility, and it was discovered that expected utility could not explain the many ‘inconsistencies’ in actual decision making. The most famous discovery of the authors may have been the ‘preference reversal phenomenon’, described concisely on p. 725, and considered today as one of the most profound challenges of decision making. After the introduction, the second section describes the structuring of the relevant aspects of decision problems, the third section considers several decision theories (single- or multi-attribute, (S)EU, prospect-, probabilistic-, regret-, . . . ), the fourth section deals with information processing (bounded rationality,. . . ); section five, the final section, deals with applications of decision theory. The chapter presents a balanced overview of the psychological literature on decision making, stressing experimental results. Of course, not all aspects of decision making can be covered equally thoroughly in the 65 pages of this chapter, within a Part on Cognition. The chapter pays most attention to the most important aspect of decision making, the processing of information in risky situations. Less attention is given to related work in economic literature, such as Machina (Econometrica, 1982) on ‘nonexpected’ utility, Yaari (Econometrica, 1987) on a way to transform objective probabilities into subjective ones without violating monotonicity or transitivity, Karni and Safra (Econometrica, 1987) on preference reversal. There are some minor inaccuracies; for example the definition of risk aversion on p. 693 is incorrect. Concerning recentness of references, among about 300 references we counted 24 dated later than 1982, and six later than 1984. P. Wakker
and Th. Bezembinder,
NICI
Volume. 2, chapter 11, pp. 739-811. Attention - by Richard M. Shiffrin. It is a great profit to have a chapter written by one of the leading experimentalists in the field. Richard Shiffrin is such an authority. Background, paradigms and data, therefore, are reviewed from first hand. A backlash can be the focussing on relatively few paradigms and theoritical orientations, mainly those for which a writer strived a scientific life long. For the greater part Shiffrin restricted the area of attentional phenomena to a comprehensive and thorough review on perceptual strategies and mechanisms involved in visual search tasks. The paradigms are nicely explained and many of the key experiments of the past two decades are figured out in detail to demonstrate the explanatory value of the differentation between controlled and automatic information processing. The price, however, is, and the author
Book review: Stevens’ Handbook of Experimental Psychology
195
is aware enough to mention it explicitly, a restriction of the topic of attention to a discussion on automaticity. Having studied the chapter, I could not suppress the idea that automaticity is a rather loosely defined concept. It refers to the highly variable proficiency with which subjects can process information as a function of training, set, stimulus features and configuration and many other variables. The explanatory value is going on when some task or some task aspect is ‘automatized’. At many places Shiffrin presents such explanations, like the formation of categorical codes to encode incoming information more efficiently, or changing over to a parallel testing procedure for the presence of certain stimulus features, or to the automatical invocation of processing activity by stimuli outside the focus of attention, or.. . and so many other. Here we meet the weak point of the approach. Automaticity means so many things that it could be questioned whether it is a useful concept in the end. In my view, for the understanding of transient variations of task proficiency, psychology needs a continued concentration on the headlines of the empirically most probable information processing architecture. Shiffrin gives many interesting clues to this point, but it is a byproduct of the automaticity discussion. In my view, a general outline of an information processing model might have been a better landscape for the interpretation of attentional phenomena. A somewhat similar feeling came to me when the author, at the end of his chapter, referred to the often uncritical use of the terms stimulus, feature, concept, response and so on. Especially in the field of perception, the history of experimental psychology has shown that a critical analysis of the concepts to be used is an essential condition to make any progress. Notwithstanding the restrictions made with regard to the theoretical scope of the chapter, it still remains a very useful review of experimental work on visual search. G.P. van Galen, NICI
Volume 2, chapter 12, pp. 813-862. Individual Differences in Cognitive Functioning
- by John B. Carroll.
This chapter deals with the role and study of individual differences (IDS) in cognitive experimental psychology. As the author observes, most experimental psychologists only consider such IDS as error term in F-tests of experimental effects, whereas a behavioral science is incomplete unless IDS are taken into account. This introduction is followed by three main sections. The first section discusses the methodology of IDS in experimental settings. As IDS may be studied at the level of information processing stages, a
Book review: Stevens’ Handbook
of Experimental
Psychology
in the early fifties, when the normative foundations were layed for expected utility, and it was discovered that expected utility could not explain the many ‘inconsistencies’ in actual decision making. The most famous discovery of the authors may have been the ‘preference reversal phenomenon’, described concisely on p. 725, and considered today as one of the most profound challenges of decision making. After the introduction, the second section describes the structuring of the relevant aspects of decision problems, the third section considers several decision theories (single- or multi-attribute, (S)EU, prospect-, probabilistic-, regret-, . . . ), the fourth section deals with information processing (bounded rationality,. . . ); section five, the final section, deals with applications of decision theory. The chapter presents a balanced overview of the psychological literature on decision making, stressing experimental results. Of course, not all aspects of decision making can be covered equally thoroughly in the 65 pages of this chapter, within a Part on Cognition. The chapter pays most attention to the most important aspect of decision making, the processing of information in risky situations. Less attention is given to related work in economic literature, such as Machina (Econometrica, 1982) on ‘nonexpected’ utility, Yaari (Econometrica, 1987) on a way to transform objective probabilities into subjective ones without violating monotonicity or transitivity, Karni and Safra (Econometrica, 1987) on preference reversal. There are some minor inaccuracies; for example the definition of risk aversion on p. 693 is incorrect. Concerning recentness of references, among about 300 references we counted 24 dated later than 1982, and six later than 1984. P. Wakker
and Th. Bezembinder,
NICI
Volume. 2, chapter 11, pp. 739-811. Attention - by Richard M. Shiffrin. It is a great profit to have a chapter written by one of the leading experimentalists in the field. Richard Shiffrin is such an authority. Background, paradigms and data, therefore, are reviewed from first hand. A backlash can be the focussing on relatively few paradigms and theoritical orientations, mainly those for which a writer strived a scientific life long. For the greater part Shiffrin restricted the area of attentional phenomena to a comprehensive and thorough review on perceptual strategies and mechanisms involved in visual search tasks. The paradigms are nicely explained and many of the key experiments of the past two decades are figured out in detail to demonstrate the explanatory value of the differentation between controlled and automatic information processing. The price, however, is, and the author
Book review: Stevens’ Handbook of Experimental Psychology
195
is aware enough to mention it explicitly, a restriction of the topic of attention to a discussion on automaticity. Having studied the chapter, I could not suppress the idea that automaticity is a rather loosely defined concept. It refers to the highly variable proficiency with which subjects can process information as a function of training, set, stimulus features and configuration and many other variables. The explanatory value is going on when some task or some task aspect is ‘automatized’. At many places Shiffrin presents such explanations, like the formation of categorical codes to encode incoming information more efficiently, or changing over to a parallel testing procedure for the presence of certain stimulus features, or to the automatical invocation of processing activity by stimuli outside the focus of attention, or.. . and so many other. Here we meet the weak point of the approach. Automaticity means so many things that it could be questioned whether it is a useful concept in the end. In my view, for the understanding of transient variations of task proficiency, psychology needs a continued concentration on the headlines of the empirically most probable information processing architecture. Shiffrin gives many interesting clues to this point, but it is a byproduct of the automaticity discussion. In my view, a general outline of an information processing model might have been a better landscape for the interpretation of attentional phenomena. A somewhat similar feeling came to me when the author, at the end of his chapter, referred to the often uncritical use of the terms stimulus, feature, concept, response and so on. Especially in the field of perception, the history of experimental psychology has shown that a critical analysis of the concepts to be used is an essential condition to make any progress. Notwithstanding the restrictions made with regard to the theoretical scope of the chapter, it still remains a very useful review of experimental work on visual search. G.P. van Galen, NICI
Volume 2, chapter 12, pp. 813-862. Individual Differences in Cognitive Functioning
- by John B. Carroll.
This chapter deals with the role and study of individual differences (IDS) in cognitive experimental psychology. As the author observes, most experimental psychologists only consider such IDS as error term in F-tests of experimental effects, whereas a behavioral science is incomplete unless IDS are taken into account. This introduction is followed by three main sections. The first section discusses the methodology of IDS in experimental settings. As IDS may be studied at the level of information processing stages, a