Abstract
Subjects made judgments concerning the strength and direction of the contingency between two dichotomous variables in a situation in which no contingency actually existed. The judgments exhibited a significant primacy effect. The effects of warning and not warning the subjects that they would be required to recall the frequencies of observed event co-occurrences implied that this primacy effect was due to 'attention decrement' (Anderson 1981). According to this hypothesis, attention to contingency-relevant information diminishes after the subject is exposed to only a small portion of the available information.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 293-302 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Acta Psychologica |
Volume | 62 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Aug 1986 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Robert Revnew for his assistance in carrying out the reported in part by U.S. National Institute of Mental Health Grant