This study investigated how well similarity models of Chinese characters developed in previous research could be used to model human judgments across different levels of proficiency in Chinese. The behavioral data collected from the three groups of participants confirmed the superiority of and preference for configurations over components in experts' perceptions. In contrast, Chinese learners' and novices' criteria for similarity judgments were less clear, as indicated by the low proportion of variance that could be accounted for by extended tree analysis of their group judgments. We discuss computational challenges in modeling human perception and judgments about Chinese characters and propose future directions for research, including the potential use of statistical and machine learning techniques with larger datasets for improved model development.

What do people learn from experience with repeated decisions?Is it merely implicit behavioral tendencies? If so, wouldarticulating or summarizing what is learned change behavior?Online participants (N=126) experienced 100 trials of adecisions-from-experience problem with outcome feedback.Some participants then verbally summarized what they hadlearned and estimated the probability of the risky gain eitherfor themselves (Self condition) or for another hypotheticalplayer (Other condition); others did not summarize (Controlcondition). Finally, they faced 20 more decision trials.Verbalizing a social message to another person significantlyincreased sure choices (that is, decreased risk-taking) insubsequent decision making. In general, participantsunderestimated the probabilities of both certain and riskyprospects, and articulating a summary message (Self or Other)seemed to increase this conservatism.

We investigate how people understand English text that describes changes in a numeric quantity over time. We hypothesizethat people find it easier to comprehend text that specifies the starting quantity and ending quantity in chronological order,in contrast to how some news media tend to report this type of information, stating the ending quantity first, presumablybecause the ending quantity is the ”news”. Our hypothesis is that it is more difficult for readers to comprehend a sentencepresenting quantities in reverse chronological order, requiring more processing time by the reader and leading to reducedaccuracy in answering follow-up questions about the quantities. The results of an experiment supported the hypothesis.This finding has theoretical implications for models of text comprehension, and practical implications for how to commu-nicate technical material in newspapers, educational texts teaching or requiring the use of quantitative information, andtests and assessments based on reading passages.

Knowledge diversity is widely acknowledged to be beneficial for collaborative groups engaged in problem solving. An experiment was conducted to determine whether knowledge diversity and assigned task roles for members in an online virtual collaborative group affect group task performance and individual learning and transfer, and to explore the role of explanations as a mediating variable in these effects. Two control conditions were included that involved individual work, with and without self-explanations. Results showed that the frequency of explanations in dyadic discourse were correlated with individual learning, and that groups with knowledge diversity tend to use more explanations. These findings suggest that discussing explanations is a key feature of successful group work that contributes to determining how much individual learning occurs and how well it transfers from collaborative activities to similar, novel tasks.

Prior research on a possible role of regulatory focus orientation (Higgins, 1998) in financial decision-making has focusedon description-based tasks in which people receive explicit information about the characteristics of a decision problem apriori. However, relatively few real-world decisions resemble this type of laboratory task. Here, we examine how regu-latory focus orientation influences peoples decision behavior in an experience-based sampling paradigm (Hertwig et al.,2004), where people learn about the characteristics of a decision problem only through experience. We investigated ifindividuals chronic regulatory focus orientation (promotion-focus or prevention-focus) predicts process (sampling) andoutcomes (risky versus sure-thing choices) in a sampling paradigm task. Regulatory focus did not predict sampling behav-ior, nor the number of risky choices in the gain domain, but promotion focus orientation was correlated with the prevalenceof risky choices in the loss domain. Also, the big-5 personality trait of Openness was found to be related to number ofsampled outcomes for losses and to risky choices for gains.

Research on human collaboration has suggested thatknowledge diversity improves group performance in complextasks such as design, problem solving and forecasting.However, in educational settings it is important to also askwhether learning and transfer for individuals within the groupis enhanced or hindered by diversity in collaborative workgroups. We compare performance in a transportation networkdesign task for two types of collaborative groups, andcompare their performance to that of individuals. In onegroup condition (Distributed Knowledge) each dyad memberhas been trained on a different subtask of a complex jointdesign problem in advance of the collaborative activity. Thesedifferent training tasks should predispose the two dyadmembers to adopt different perspectives, issues, and designstrategies, thus generating greater cognitive diversity for thegroup. In the other group condition (Shared Knowledge) bothdyad participants experienced the same training involvingboth subtasks. Task performance results show a group versusindividual advantage in performance, but a non-significantdifference in performance between the two group knowledgediversity conditions. The group knowledge manipulation didaffect group process, as measured by time spentcollaborating, number of turns taken, and number of wordsspoken. The findings suggest that group diversity canpromote individual learning and transfer when sufficient timeis allowed for discussion and group work.