Topic
Surprise
About: Surprise is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4371 publications have been published within this topic receiving 99386 citations.
Papers published on a yearly basis
Papers
More filters
TL;DR: Eyetracking is used to directly observe the impact of a novel color on its unannounced first presentation and shows that the novel color was quickly responded to with an eye movement, and that gaze was not turned away for a considerable amount of time, direct evidence that deviations from expectations bias attentional priorities and lead to enhanced processing of the deviating stimulus.
Abstract: In recent years, researchers have become increasingly interested in the effects that deviations from expectations have on cognitive processing and, in particular, on the deployment of attention. Previous evidence for a surprise–attention link had been based on indirect measures of attention allocation. Here we used eyetracking to directly observe the impact of a novel color on its unannounced first presentation, which we regarded as a surprise condition. The results show that the novel color was quickly responded to with an eye movement, and that gaze was not turned away for a considerable amount of time. These results are direct evidence that deviations from expectations bias attentional priorities and lead to enhanced processing of the deviating stimulus.
39 citations
TL;DR: The Donald O.Hebb Award for Distinguished Contribution to Psychology as aScience (1996) as mentioned in this paper was presented by the Canadian Psychological Association (CPA) for the first time in 1996.
Abstract: Donald O.Hebb Award for Distinguished Contribution to Psychology as aScience (1996) / Prix Donald O. Hebb pour contribution remarquable a lapsychologie en rant que science (1996)AbstractMany human lives are marked by periods of danger, deprivation, andchallenge. Psychology and related disciplines have traditionallyemphasized the destructive consequences of such events. More recently, abeginning has been made toward balancing this one-sided perspective withgrowing interest in coping and salutogenic (health-enhancing) reactions toadversity. This paper reviews evidence from laboratory experiments onrestricted stimulation, field studies in polar stations, archival analysesof decision-making under stress, and interviews with Holocaust survivors,which attests to the fortitude and resilience of human beings in the faceof severe environmental demands. Psychologists should address the manyremaining questions -- theoretical, scientific, and practical --concerning such positive reactions to even extreme stressors.I am grateful to the Canadian Psychological Association for bestowingupon me the 1996 Donald O. Hebb Award. I have two reasons for beingespecially pleased about the award. One is that it recalls my link with,and debt to, Donald Hebb, who among his many important contributions wasthe pioneer of research on how human beings are affected by stimulusrestriction, a question that has occupied much of my scientific attentionover the past three decades.The second is that, as the citation for my award indicated, I am ageneralist in an era of ever-increasing scientific specialization. Myresearch methods cover laboratory experiments, field observations,psychophysiological measures, paper and pencil tests, interviews, andarchival analyses; the areas in which I do research include environmental,social, personality, political, cognitive, and health psychology. I havesometimes wondered whether my energies would have been better concentratedin one area rather than being focussed, sequentially or simultaneously, onwhatever question seemed most intriguing at a given time. In retrospect,I'm happy that I followed my interests wherever they led me; but it wasgratifying to discover that my fellow psychologists also consider this tohave been a fruitful strategy.Actually, while my enthusiasms have been varied, they were notcompletely random. I discovered one connecting thread only a few yearsago, when I was being interviewed for an oral history project involvingchild survivors of the Holocaust. The interviewer asked me what the commontheme was in my apparently unconnected areas of research. I told him thatI recognized none; but thinking about it afterwards, I realized that myresearch has had one central topic: how human beings react to and copewith events that range from the unpleasant to the catastrophic --experiences that I subsume under the term, "challenging".In each of my research areas, most of my colleagues were concentratingon the aversive aspects and adverse consequences of challengingsituations. But I kept winding up, often to my own surprise, with resultsand interpretations that revealed that all of these experiences andenvironments also had pleasant features and favourable outcomes. Not onlythat, but it became clear that many participants in such experiencesthemselves had recognized and reported these positive characteristicsalong with negative ones.The stressful experiences that I have studied include some that arenovel but not harmful, as well as some that are traumaticallylife-threatening -- from participation in laboratory experiments onreduced sensory input, through living in remote and isolated capsules suchas polar and space stations, solitary confinement in prison, to being thetarget of genocidal persecution. At the most severe end of this range, itis clear that some experiences are so shattering as to leave very few ifany survivors without physical or psychological scars; and, because peopledo vary in their ability to overcome adverse circumstances, even less direevents have traumatic effects on some. …
39 citations
TL;DR: The authors used First Call Corp. earnings surprise data and market-adjusted stock returns for the seven-day period surrounding each of about 22,000 annual earnings announcements from 1992-1997 to address several questions recently posed by SEC officials.
Abstract: This study uses First Call Corp. earnings surprise data and market-adjusted stock returns for the seven-day period surrounding each of about 22,000 annual earnings announcements from 1992-1997 to address several questions recently posed by SEC officials. We find that mean and median stock returns of portfolios ranked on earnings surprise magnitudes typically have the same sign as the surprise, but have the opposite signs for about 45% of observations comprising each portfolio. We also find that for a given absolute surprise magnitude, absolute price response is inversely related to the dispersion of analysts' forecasts.
39 citations
TL;DR: By enacting health care reform in March 2010, President Barack Obama and the congressional Democrats electrified the national air almost as dramatically as did the playoff home run by Bobby Thompson that inspired Red Smith’s eloquence in 1951.
Abstract: By enacting health care reform in March 2010, President Barack Obama and the congressional Democrats electrified the national air almost as dramatically as did the playoff home run by Bobby Thompson that inspired Red Smith’s eloquence in 1951. Against huge historical and situational odds, the president and Congress steered into law new provisions and programs that, if they survive, will (among many other things) bring health care coverage to roughly 95 percent of the U.S. population and greatly modify the rules by which private insurers enroll subscribers and price products. That the measures that go beyond health insurance reform are largely contingent and speculative does nothing to diminish the magnitude of the achievement. As that American thought leader Miss Piggy might say, however, “Enough about the public interest, what about me?” After many years of teaching health politics, I can now no longer make do with perfunctory annual emendations in the margins of my yellowing lecture notes and must entertain seriously revisionist notions of the arts and limits of the possible in the U.S. system. March 2010 delivered at least five political surprises that have sent me back to the drawing board.
39 citations
39 citations