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Wixted and Ebbesen (1991) showed that forgetting functions produced by a variety of procedures are often well described by the power function, [at.sup.-b], where a and b are free parameters. However, all of their analyses were based on data arithmetically averaged over subjects. R. B. Anderson and Tweney (1997) argue that the power law of forgetting may be an artifact of arithmetically averaging individual subject forgetting functions that are truly exponential in form and that geometric averaging would avoid this potential problem. We agree that researchers should always be cognizant of the possibility of averaging artifacts, but we also show that our conclusions about the form of forgetting remain unchanged (and goodness-of-fit statistics are scarcely affected by) whether arithmetic or geometric averaging is used. In addition, an analysis of individual subject forgetting functions shows that they, too, are described much better by a power function than by an exponential.

Investigation files and court records of 282 disputed child-custody cases (San Diego, 1982) were coded and analyzed to determine predictors of judicial decision. Log-linear analysis of physical custody decisions as a function of factors contained in the files suggested that three categories of factors (mother, father, and child) were linked causally to a counselor's recommendation, which was linked subsequently to the judge's decision. Judicial decisions could be predicted accurately by a model that took very few factors into account. Only two factors directly affected the judge; counselor-recommendation and child preference. The major factor that influenced decisions was counselor recommendation (60% of the cases); cases that lacked this recommendation were predicted by an inferential measure of the child's preference (15% of the cases).

Two reaction-time experiments examined the cognitive processes by which people infer whether individuals who possess one trait also possess another. Subjects were college students. (CM)

During the gasoline shortage in 1974, 53 male and 36 female San Diego drivers waiting to purchase gasoline were asked to estimate the number of cars ahead of them in the line and the length of time they expected to wait. Unlike situations previously studied, drivers were unaware of the available amount of the commodity. Regressions of both the estimated number ahead on the actual number and the estimated waiting time on the actual time were significant (p < .001). In contrast to previous findings, people close to the end of lines did not underestimate the number ahead. Drivers overestimated irrespective of their position. However, considerable underestimation of the time drivers expected to wait was found throughout the lines, with the amount of underestimation proportionate to the distance from the beginning of the line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two field studies investigated complementary aspects of the notion that the presence of children affects adults' helping behavior. In the first, 33 lone women (19 accompanied, 14 unaccompanied by a child), 28 pairs of women (14 with, 14 without a child), and 30 mixed-sex couples (15 with, 15 without a child) encountered an "injured" confederate in parks and parking lots of shopping centers. The main results suggested that it may be the task of fathers to model altruism for children in this situation. In the second study, an adult woman, accompanied or unaccompanied by a child, or a lone child, asked a total of 84 women in their suburban homes to sign a petition which was either "appropriate" or "inappropriate" for children. While an interaction between the age-of-requester and appropriateness-of-petition factors was predicted, only the overall difference between petitions was significant (p < .01). Implications of these results were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]