Three Tasks for Use in Laboratory Small-Group Experiments

Abstract

Thomas L. Conner describes development and testing of Meaning Insight and Relational Insight 1 and 2. The tasks, which are still in use for expectation states research, were developed to test ideas in TR#1 and later theoretical developments for Conner’s dissertation. As noted with TR#1, treating expectation formation and maintenance as a Markov process requires tasks with multiple independent trials for testing predictions. Conner determined that these tasks do not have independent trials, a problem not solved until development of Spatial Judgment in TR#15. Besides methodological issues of contemporary relevance, historical interest attaches to the ways that Conner deals with problems of deciding appropriate criteria for laboratory tasks, and for adapting statistics to assess success of the tasks at meeting desirable criteria