Conflicts between expected and actually performed

Authors: Hilde Haider Peter A Frensch

Publish Date: 2008/11/26

Volume: 73, Issue: 6, Pages: 817-834

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Abstract

According to the UnexpectedEvent Hypothesis UEH Frensch Haider Rünger Neugebauer Voigt Werg 2002 conflicts between expected and actually performed behaviors trigger attribution processes and ultimately lead to the ability to verbally report an incidentally experienced sequential regularity In two experiments we manipulated the likelihood that a specific conflict a premature response occurred in a sequential version of the Number Reduction Task NRT Experiment 1 demonstrated that a longer RSI leads to a larger number of premature responses and to more verbal report than a shorter RSI However this effect of the RSI on verbal report was removed when participants were discouraged from emitting premature responses Experiment 2 revealed that artificially inducing premature responses leads to an increase in verbal report but only when premature responses are introduced late in training Overall the findings strongly support the assumptions of the UEH

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