George Mandler

Bio: George Mandler is an academic researcher from University of California, San Diego. The author has contributed to research in topics: Recall & Free recall. The author has an hindex of 50, co-authored 147 publications receiving 15324 citations. Previous affiliations of George Mandler include University of California & University of Toronto.

Recognizing: The judgment of previous occurrence.

Abstract: Several suggestions for a class of theories of recognition memory have been proposed during the past decade. These models address predictions about judgments of prior occurrence of an event, not the identification of what it is, The history and current status of one of these models is discussed. The model postulates the detection of familiarity and the utilization of retrieval mechanisms as additive and separate processes. The phenomenal experience of familiarity is assigned to intraevent organizational integrative processes; retrieval depends on interevent elaborative processes. Other current theoretical options are described, and relevant supportive data from the literature are reviewed. New tests of the model involving both free recall and word pair paradigms are presented. The dual process model is extended to the word frequency effect and to the recognition difficulties of amnesic patients. In general English usage the verb to recognize usually is denned as the act of perceiving something as previously known. It is an apparently clear as well as etymologically correct usage, that is, to know again. In this article the process of recognizing will be analyzed, but it will be restricted to the recognition of the prior occurrence of an event. This restriction follows psychological rather than common usage. Experimentation that addresses problems of recognition has typically required subjects to make judg. nents about prior encounters with some tar

The information that amnesic patients do not forget.

Abstract: The performance of three kinds of amnesic patients and control subjects was assessed using four methods for testing memory: free recall, recognition, cued recall, and word completion. Whereas amnesic patients were impaired on free recall, recognition, and cued recall, they were normal on word completion. Moreover, performance on the word-completion test declined at a normal rate reaching chance after about 120 min. The word-completion test resembled the cued-recall test in that the initial letters of previously presented words were given as cues. It differed from cued recall only in the instructions, which directed subjects away from the memory aspects of the test and asked them to complete each three-letter cue with the first word that came to mind. The present results offer an explanation of conflicting findings that have been obtained with amnesic patients on tests of the cued-recall type. The results are considered in terms of a process (activation or procedural learning), which is spared in amnesia and not dependent on the integrity of the damaged brain regions.

Subitizing: an analysis of its component processes.

Abstract: SUMMARY The term subitizing was coined by Kaufman, Lord, Reese, and Volkmann in 1949 to describe the rapid, confident, and accurate report of the numerosity of arrays of elements presented for short durations. They noted that this process, different from counting and estimating, was restricted to arrays with 6 or fewer elements. Ever since the general awareness of some such process in the nineteenth century, the phenomenon has been a benchmark for the limited capacity of human consciousness, Previous research, as well as the data in these experiments, shows that the reaction time function for different arrays (ranging in size from 1 to 15) has a shallow slope for arrays with 1 to 3 elements followed by a straight line slope for arrays of 4 to 6 or 7, at which point the reaction time discontinuity typically occurs; reaction times then stay fairly constant as the array size increases, and the numerosity response becomes much less accurate. When the array is exposed for unlimited presentation time, the reaction time slope is a straight line from size 4 to as large as 30 or 40. In the latter case, subjects are clearly counting the array. Apart from replicating the previous findings under a variety of conditions, we have shown that subjects can make a very fast "countability" judgment indicating whether or not they could, if requested, give an accurate numerosity response. These judgments are fast and produce a yes response within the subitizing range, and a no response thereafter. Developmental data had indicated that children count arrays as small as 2 and 3; adults seem to give a more automatic response, shown ajso in the fast reaction times to those array sizes. The suggestion that this response is an acquired one to certain frequently appearing canonical patterns of two and three events (pairs/lines and triples/ triangles) was explored in another experiment in which subjects were given canonical patterns for arrays of up to 10. These data showed that within very few trials the response to these canonical patterns was just as fast and accurate as the response to the smaller (1 to 3) array sizes. Finally, the data demonstrated that the slope for array sizes from 4 to 6 with short exposure time was indistinguishable from the slope for array sizes from 4 to 15 under an unlimited exposure condition. We concluded that the reaction time function found in subitizing consists of three processes: a response to arrays of 1 to 3 that is fast and accurate and is based on acquired canonical patterns; a,response to arrays of 4 to 6 or 7 that is based on mental counting, that is, the counting of arrays that can be kept in consciousness (attention); and an estimating response for arrays larger than 6 that cannot be held in consciousness for mental counting.

Self-efficacy: toward a unifying theory of behavioral change.

Abstract: The present article presents an integrative theoretical framework to explain and to predict psychological changes achieved by different modes of treatment. This theory states that psychological procedures, whatever their form, alter the level and strength of self-efficacy. It is hypothesized that expectations of personal efficacy determine whether coping behavior will be initiated, how much effort will be expended, and how long it will be sustained in the face of obstacles and aversive experiences. Persistence in activities that are subjectively threatening but in fact relatively safe produces, through experiences of mastery, further enhancement of self-efficacy and corresponding reductions in defensive behavior. In the proposed model, expectations of personal efficacy are derived from four principal sources of information: performance accomplishments, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and physiological states. The more dependable the experiential sources, the greater are the changes in perceived selfefficacy. A number of factors are identified as influencing the cognitive processing of efficacy information arising from enactive, vicarious, exhortative, and emotive sources. The differential power of diverse therapeutic procedures is analyzed in terms of the postulated cognitive mechanism of operation. Findings are reported from microanalyses of enactive, vicarious, and emotive modes of treatment that support the hypothesized relationship between perceived self-efficacy and behavioral changes. Possible directions for further research are discussed.

Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes.

Abstract: Evidence is reviewed which suggests that there may be little or no direct introspective access to higher order cognitive processes. Subjects are sometimes (a) unaware of the existence of a stimulus that importantly influenced a response, (b) unaware of the existence of the response, and (c) unaware that the stimulus has affected the response. It is proposed that when people attempt to report on their cognitive processes, that is, on the processes mediating the effects of a stimulus on a response, they do not do so on the basis of any true introspection. Instead, their reports are based on a priori, implicit causal theories, or judgments about the extent to which a particular stimulus is a plausible cause of a given response. This suggests that though people may not be able to observe directly their cognitive processes, they will sometimes be able to report accurately about them. Accurate reports will occur when influential stimuli are salient and are plausible causes of the responses they produce, and will not occur when stimuli are not salient or are not plausible causes.

A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality

Abstract: Past work has documented and described major patterns of adaptive and maladaptive behavior: the mastery-oriented and the helpless patterns. In this article, we present a research-based model that accounts for these patterns in terms of underlying psychological processes. The model specifies how individuals' implicit theories orient them toward particular goals and how these goals set up the different patterns. Indeed, we show how each feature (cognitive, affective, and behavioral) of the adaptive and maladaptive patterns can be seen to follow directly from different goals. We then examine the generality of the model and use it to illuminate phenomena in a wide variety of domains. Finally, we place the model in its broadest context and examine its implications for our understanding of motivational and personality processes. The task for investigators of motivation and personality is to identify major patterns of behavior and link them to underlying psychological processes. In this article we (a) describe a research-based model that accounts for major patterns of behavior, (b) examine the generality of this model—its utility for understanding domains beyond the ones in which it was originally developed, and (c) explore the broader implications of the model for motivational and personality processes.