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Biomedical subjects

S J Dickman

Publications and source records attributed to S J Dickman.

2 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1990

Functional and dysfunctional impulsivity: personality and cognitive correlates.

The 3 studies reported here were designed to clarify the nature of the personality trait of impulsivity. Two types of impulsivity were distinguished. Dysfunctional impulsivity is the tendency to act with less forethought than most people of equal ability when this tendency is a source of difficulty; most previous work on impulsivity appears to have focused on this trait. Functional impulsivity, in contrast, is the tendency to act with relatively little forethought when such a style is optimal. The present work indicates that these two tendencies are not highly correlated and that they bear different relations both to other personality traits and to the manner in which certain basic cognitive processes are executed.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

Impulsivity and speed-accuracy tradeoffs in information processing.

Despite its theoretical importance for such areas of research as reflection-impulsivity (Kagan, 1966), there is little evidence to support the assumption that individual differences in the personality trait of impulsivity are associated with differences in the willingness to sacrifice accuracy for speed of information processing. The present studies explored this association further. In Experiment 1, high, medium, and low impulsives (identified by self-report) performed a visual-comparison task under conditions differing in the monetary payoff for speed relative to accuracy. High impulsives were consistently faster and less accurate than other subjects. However, an analysis based on Sternberg's (1969) additive-factor method indicated that high impulsives performed at least one stage of information processing as slowly and accurately as other subjects. In Experiment 2, it was found that high impulsives were actually more accurate than low impulsives when all subjects were required to process information extremely rapidly. Experiment 3 identified the response execution stage as one that high impulsives carry out just as slowly and accurately as other individuals. The data from these experiments pose problems for a simple speed-accuracy tradeoff model of impulsive cognitive functioning.

Adult↗