The certainty and severity of punishment for crimes are commonly given credence as determinants of deterrence value, whereas celerity of punishment is not.Moreover, data are sparse and divided on the question of how certainty and severity components combine algebraically. Two experiments inspected the effects of certainty, severity,and celerity of hypothetical punishments on judged deterrence value, and the form of their factorial combination. Judged deterrence scale values were obtained for eight hypothetical conditions of punishment for serious crimes. These conditions of punishment consisted of orthogonal combinations of two levels each of certainty, severity, and celerity and were administered to independent subjects. Strong effects of certainty and severity and moderate effects of celerity were found, and there were no interactions among the three variables. Thus, celerity is pertinent to judged deterrence value, and the three components of punishment clearly combine additively rather than multiplicatively. It is argued that despite the empirical results, certainty, severity, and celerity must, however, ultimately be showp to combine according to a multiplying rule. The Discussion centers largely on an analysis and justification for that argument.In recent years research workers in psychology, sociology, and criminology have devoted increasing empirical attention to inspection of the deterrent effects of punishment. Such studies have been of two types. One is based on observations of the relationship between either actual or self-reported criminal acts and de facto criminal sanctions (e.g., Erickson, Gibbs, ). Most studies of deterrence fall broadly into this category. The other type of inquiry, which is of comparatively recent vintage, is strictly experimental in nature and commonly involves laboratory studies of perceived effects of The experiments are part of a research program supported by a grant from the University of Missouri's WeIdon Spring Fund. We thank AM Reiter Hass and Rita Rupich for clerical and statistical assistance.2 Requests for reprints should be sent to Edmund S. Howe,
Subjects typically display superior reproduction of good (redundant, symmetrical) visual patterns compared with poor ones. This pattern goodness effect could conceivably involve encoding processes, short-term memory processes, or response processes. The present experiments explored the time course of wholistic encoding of Garner dot patterns as a function of tachistoscopic exposure time, delay of backward masking, and post-mask shadowing. Within the specific framework of additive factors theory, Experiment I showed: (a) equal rates of encoding for all patterns since comparable slopes were obtained for the recall X processing time functions; and (b) superior absolute recall for good patterns since different intercepts were obtained. Experiment II demonstrated that when degree of encoding was initially equalized for all patterns, the rate of extraction of further information remained constant over available processing time and was unaffected by pattern goodness, slopes and intercepts for good versus poor patterns then being equal. Experiment III confirmed that, given some fixed duration of available processing time, information is abstracted at the same rate for all pattern regardless of the ratio stimulus display time to delay of mask onset. Experiment IV indicated that maintenance rehearsal normally occurs in the present experimental situation, and that very good patterns are somewhat less disrupted by shadowing over a three-second interval. While STM is thus implicated in the pattern goodness effect it does not follow that STM constitutes a complete explanation of the intercept differences reported here. Empirical evidence of response bias toward production of good patterns, however, was not found. It was shown that very good patterns are highly familiar and nameable, and proposed that they do consequently have an early encoding advantage.
The superior reproducibility of good, symmetrical patterns (the pattern goodness effect) is well documented. In the present experiment, the temporal course of the phenomenon was explored. Subjects attempted to recall 64 dot patterns having Array Sizes 4-7 and four levels of symmetry, following backward-masked exposure. It was found that all patterns were processed at the same rate, as is shown by a constant slope for all array size X symmetry X exposure time functions. An empirical index of pattern nameability was quite strongly correlated with symmetry and goodness. For Array Size 7 patterns, inclusion of the nameability index significantly raised the predictability of pattern recall above that observed with goodness value alone. These results suggest that when the immediate memory span is exceeded, the visual code may be supplemented by a verbal one.If one looks briefly at an array of dots in a square matrix and then attempts to reproduce the pattern, performance will deteriorate not only as the number of elements increases beyond three or four, but also as the arrangement of elements becomes less symmetrical and the pattern poorer in the gestalt sense. This pattern goodness effect was predicted many years ago by gestalt psychologists (e.g., Hochberg, 1974;Koffka, 1935), and empirical evidence that good patterns are encoded faster than poor ones has been shown for 5In Howe and lung's (1986) experiments, patterns consisting of 1-11 dots varying over four levels of symmetry were exposed for 1 sec. They found that (1) whole-pattern recall systematically declined as a function of array size and departure from symmetry, and (2) when floor and ceiling artifacts were controlled for, there was zero interaction between Array Sizes 4-8 and amount of symmetry.The generality of these results raises the question of the temporal point in processing at which the pattern goodness effect might occur, and this question is addressed here. One theoretical possibility is that the symmetry advantage is a differential rate of encoding phenomenon and thus a time-bound monotonic function occurring over the first 300 or so milliseconds. A necessary empirical observation for this differential rate of encoding hypothesis The research was supported in part by a grant from the University of Missouri Weldon Spring Fund. J. Powell is now at the University of Hartford, Connecticut, K. Jung is in the Market Research Department of Anheuser-Busch Companies, and C. Brandau is at Belleville College, lllinois. Send requests for reprints to Edmund Howe, Department of Psychology, University of Missouri-St. Louis, St. Louis, MO 63121.is that there should be a linear fan outcome, in this case a divergent interaction between amount of symmetry and available processing time. Such an observation would make rate of encoding dependent upon amount of symmetry. The absence of an interaction between symmetry and available processing time would suggest, on the other hand, that the symmetry advantage may entail an event occurring at a particular stage of processi...
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