HUMAN COGNITION LABORATORY
PSYCHOLOGY DEPARTMENT
OLD DOMINION UNIVERSITY
LABORATORY LOCATION:
Mills Godwin Jr. Life Sciences Building Room 324 & 336
Psychology Department
Old Dominion University
CURRENT LAB MEMBERS:
IVAN K. ASH, Ph.D., Principal Investigator.
Research Interests: Problem Solving, Reasoning, Insight, Comprehension, Representation Formation, Judgment and Decision Making, Hindsight Bias, and Individual Differences.
ANN EDWARDS, Applied Experimental Program.
Research Interests: Medical Reasoning, Decision Making, & Expertise.
ROSS MAY, M.A., Applied Experimental Program.
Research Interests: Metacognitve and Social Judgment Formation.
MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN, Applied Experimental Program.
Research Interests: Social Cognition, Implicit Association, Judgments of Trust.
VIKTORIA TIDIKYTE-DAY, Master's Program.
Interests: Group Problem-Solving & Decision Making.
BRAD WHITTET, Master's Program.
Interests: Cognitive Neuroscience and Decision Making.
Undergraduate Researchers:
Fall 2008: Ashley Phillips, Grace Chiou, Erick Morgan, Linda Walubengo, Sara Anna Peoples, Scott Miles, Shari Osborne.
Interested in joining the Lab as a Graduate or Undergraduate student? Please refer to my Research Interests Page.
CURRENT PROJECTS:
Creativity and Group Problem-Solving
Graduate Researcher: Viktoria Tidikyte-Day
The purpose of this study is to examine how working within a group versus working alone affects creative problem-solving and what role gender plays in influencing problem-solving performance. Previous studies contradictory results as to whether working in a group improves or impedes creative problem solving performance and whether gender has an effect on the group performance. The contradictory results of the previous may be dueto the gender by group interaction.
De-biasing the Hindsight Bias Effect
Graduate Researcher: Brad Whittet
There is an old saying that hindsight is 20/20. The idea behind the phrase is that it is easy to be knowledgeable after events have happened. The Hindsight Effect describes the observation that once people are aware of the outcome to a situation, they have the tendency to falsely believe that they would have predicted the outcome. Our lab is currently conducting a series of studies designed to investigate the effects of post-outcome information in attenuating or exacerbating hindsight distortions.
Trust & Hindsight Bias
Graduate Researcher: Martin Smith-Rodden
A decision to trust or not to trust can be examined within a broader category of cognition called decisions under uncertainty. The purpose of this study is to investigate trust decisions through the lens of the hindsight bias effect. The hindsight bias effect (sometimes known as the "I knew it all along effect") is a consequence that often follows judgments under uncertainty, and will be defined and outlined through various competing theories that seek to explain it. Since trust is also considered a judgment under uncertainty, an examination will be made of trust decisions through the lens of hindsight bias research, in participant's evaluations of trust outcomes. It is hypothesized that recollections of trust judgments are subject to hindsight bias effects under certain conditions, especially those during the metacognitive experience following a mildly surprising outcome.
Working Memory and Deductive Reasoning
Co-Investigator: Clinton S. Comer, M.S.
Reasoning is broadly defined as the ability and propensity to infer new beliefs or ideas from presently available information or facts. Deductive reasoning, as opposed to inductive reasoning, is a type of reasoning that ensures the truth of the inferred conclusion. This makes it a very important and powerful type of reasoning. Over 100 years of research has shown that people exhibit systematic errors and biases when attempting to deductively reason. We are testing the predictions of different cognitive performance theories by investigating the interaction between individual differences in Working Memory Capacity and strategy use in predicting people's reasoning performance.
Investigating the cause of the AIDS Implicit Association Test effect: stigma against the victims vs. negative attitudes toward disease
Co-Investigator: Valerian J. Derlega, Ph.D., Psychology Department ODU
Graduate Researchers: Martin Smith-Rodden & Ann Edwards
The Implicit Association Test (IAT)is a commonly used tool in the investigation of implicit attitudes, biases, and prejudice (see Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). In a recent study researchers used this test to investigate people's implicit bias against those diagnosed with HIV or AIDS (Neumann et al., 2004). These researchers found that the IAT effect exhibited by participants correlated with other implicit AIDS avoidance measures. The authors suggested that the IAT may be used to measure individual's prejudice toward individuals infected with HIV. We are currently conducting preliminary studies to investigate whether the AIDS IAT effect is due to prejudice or simply due to the general negative attitudes associated with any deadly disease.
Valuing Diversity, and Implicit and Explicit Racism: A Construct Validity Study
Co-Investigator: Rebekka Gordon, Ph.D
These studies examine the construct validity of valuing diversity in relation to both explicit and implicit racial bias. Results of the first experiment indicated there was a significant relationship between the valuing diversity and implicit racial bias measure as well as between the valuing diversity and explicit racial bias measure. Explicit and implicit racial bias accounted for unique variance in the valuing diversity construct. The second experiment assessed how priming with counter-stereotypical exemplars affected responses to the same measures. Although it was expected that exposure to counter-stereotypical exemplars would produce decrements in implicit racial bias, the manipulation did not directly affect responses to any of the measures. Together, these studies clarify the fundamental nature of valuing diversity and provide further insight into the relationship between explicit and implicit racial attitudes.
Cognitive Impediments To Learning In A Dynamically Complex Environment
Co-Investigator: Russel Haines, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, IT & Decision Sciences ODU
Funding: 2007: Summer Experience Enhancing Collaborative Research (SEECR) Grant from Old Dominion University, $17,000.
This project investigates whether cognitive decision-making biases can be used to explain the "bull-whip" phenomenon (Lee, H. L., Padmanabhan, V., & Whang, S. 1997),which is often observed in supply chain interactions. Furthermore, we plan investigate the effects of supply chain interface information interventions designed to combat these cognitive biases to see if they will attenuate "bull-whip" ordering fluctuations.
Laboratory Alumni:
Graduate Researchers:
Rebekka Gordon, Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology in 2008
Clinton Comer, M.S. in Experimental Psychology in 2008
Undergraduate Researchers:
Spring 2008: JoAnne Boyce, Grace Choiu, Jennifer Morey, Ashley Phillips, Heather Scruggs
Fall 2007: JoAnne Boyce, David Finch, Jennifer Morey (McMaster), Heather Scruggs, Jennifer Talyor
Spring 2007: David Finch, Amanda Flecter, Jennifer McMaster, Jennifer Talyor
Spring 2006: Gozaim Ogwu
