The ability to infer intentions from observed behavior and predict actions based on this inference, known as intention attribution (IA), has been hypothesized to be impaired in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The underlying neural processes, however, have not been conclusively determined. The aim of this study was to examine the…

In our everyday life, we often need to anticipate the potential occurrence of events and their consequences. In this context, the way we represent contingencies can determine our ability to adapt to the environment. However, it is not clear how agents encode and organize available knowledge about the future to react to possible states of the…

Sign- and goal-tracking are differentially associated with drug abuse-related behavior. Recently, it has been hypothesized that sign- and goal-tracking behavior are mediated by different neurobehavioral valuation systems, including differential incentive salience attribution. Herein, we used different conditioned stimuli to preferentially elicit…

This article addresses the question of why the emotions children and adolescents anticipate in the context of hypothetical scenarios have been repeatedly found to predict actual (im)moral behavior. It argues that a common motivational account of this relationship is insufficient. Instead, three links are proposed that connect cognitive…

The cognitive approach to stereotypes views stereotyping as a natural consequence of normal cognitive processes; therefore, information that is inconsistent with a stereotype is less likely to be remembered. To investigate this hypothesis an earlier experiment was replicated in three studies. Subjects received congruent or neutral information…

Two five-week test-retest reliability studies of a measure of the unit of perception of ongoing behavior were conducted. In the first, 25 females and 23 males segmented a 7-minute action sequence under fine-unit or gross-unit instructional sets. Number of units marked at first viewing correlated .87 with number of units at retest. Correlations…

Shows that attributions about the causes of another person's behavior are only moderately good predictors of behavior. Reviews a particular area, showing the effects of a leader's attributions about a subordinate's behavior on the leader's actions towards that subordinate. Other factors are as important in predicting behavior as attributions.…

Literature from organizational and social psychology has suggested that three types of factors influence performance, i.e., cognitive, affective and behavioral. A model was developed to test a set of propositions concerning the relationship between the three kinds of factors, and included attributions, expectancies, general emotional responses to…

Individuals interacting with an unfamiliar target person behave according to prior impressions of the target. A perceiver's pre-interaction expectancy can mediate both his and the target person's behavior, resulting in behavioral confirmation or compensation. Male subjects (N=96) participated in dyadic interactions in which one subject (perceiver)…

A formal model is presented that decomposes the attribution of personal dispositions into identification and dispositional inference processes. Two illustrative experiments trace the processing of behavioral and situational information at the identification and dispositional inference stages and examine attributions as a joint product of the…

To examine whether a person's actions are more important in determining impressions of personality than are self-descriptions, subjects in two separate studies viewed two videotapes, one depicting a stimulus person's self-description and the other depicting that person's behavior in a conversation. Subjects rated the stimulus person on several…

This paper reviews the literature on the role of mediating cognitive factors in marital functioning and satisfaction. Types and patterns of causal attributions of distressed and nondistressed couples are compared and the effectiveness of various intervention models is discussed. The materials also discuss the role of unfulfilled expectations as a…

Research has provided support for the existence of certain actor-observer and self-serving biases in individuals' retrospective analyses about the causes of behavior. A question that has been relatively unexplored deals with whether the findings on actor-observer differences and the self-serving pattern in attributions are generalizable to…

Systematic investigations have verified the existence of a number of behavioral manifestations of the "Type A" behavior pattern. For example, brief exposure to salient uncontrollable stress has led to enhanced performance by Type A's on a subsequent task, whereas prolonged exposure has lead to performance deterioration. The ongoing experiences of…

Examines the implications of temporal separation for children's developmental differences in inferences drawn about an individual's characteristics after observing multiple instances of that individual's behavior. Also tests two competing hypotheses about how young children process information separated in time. (HOD)