Thanks in part to groundbreaking work by companies such as Apple and IDEO, there has been growing interest in design as a way to improve the odds of new product success. This paper describes a user-centered design workshop developed for a new product marketing course. The workshop included exercises designed to explain and illustrate the…

This study investigates detrimental perceptual effects of adding extraneous stimuli to a tachistoscopic pattern. In two experiments, a general inhibitory effect on reproduction accuracy was found, along with a local effect on elements spatially close to the extraneous stimuli. (Editor)

The present paper reports a series of studies to investigate the role of word associations and to see if concrete operational children could solve verbal analogies by logical analysis. (Author)

In a factorial experiment, 90 male and 90 female subjects were given (a) either instructions to increase heart rate (HR), decrease HR, or no instructions to change their HR; (b) either true biofeedback, false biofeedback, or no biofeedback; and (c) either instructions concerning cognitions to help them change HR or no instructions concerning…

A theory is presented concerning the impact of attributions about the causes of emotional responses as they influence self-control in temptation situations. (Editor)

From experiments showing that subjects differentially attend to parts of the visual field, psychologists have inferred a limitation on human visual information processing capacity. The model presented describes an optimal way to allocate a limited quantity of "cognitive resources", "attention" or "mental effort". An experiment tests this model.…

Argues for the importance of combining the concerns of the functionalist (Dewey, 1910) approach to memory with investigations of the effects of context and task demands. Two experiments are reported that demonstrate interactions between task demands and the more traditional functionalist variables. Particularly demonstrates that the effects of…

The knowledge-assembly theory is proposed to explain the acquisition, representation, and processing of knowledge. The theory assumes that both the representation and processing of knowledge change qualitatively as learning progresses. (Editor)

This research was undertaken to explicate the role of behavioral rigidity and hypothesis behavior in concept learning of schizophrenics. (Author/RK)

It was suggested that thought changes cognitions to be more consistent with one's initial attitude direction and, therefore, results in attitude polarization. Specifically, it was predicted that polarization would be highest under thought with reality constraints absent, followed by thought with reality constraints present, followed by…

While it is clear that schizophrenic patients often exhibit disordered thinking, the specific nature of the deficit and its role, either as a basis of abnormal behavior or as a symptom of malfunction in some underlying control process, remain to be clarified by research and by theory. Describes two experiments on the performance of conceptual…

The major aim of this research was to study the ability of schizophrenic patients to solve problems that involve abstract thought and to transfer training from one problem to another. (Author/RK)

A technique for studying how parents think, make decisions, and solve childrearing problems, Computer-Presented Social Interactions (CPSI), is described. Two studies involving CPSI are presented. The first study concerns a common parental cognitive task: causal analysis of an undesired behavior. The task was to diagnose the cause of non-contingent…