About

Arnold Glass is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Rutgers University, located on the Busch Campus. His research focuses on understanding the representations our brains form when we see, recall, or plan sentences. He aims to create detailed descriptions of these mental representations, known as computational models, which can be used to enable computer systems to see, speak, and remember in ways similar to humans. His work involves describing the procedures the brain uses to encode and retrieve information, often requiring detailed descriptions of simple tasks such as detecting repetitions in sequences of letters. This research makes use of various forms of description from mathematics and computer science, emphasizing the brain as an information processing system that transforms information rapidly and efficiently.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Developmental psychology
• Mathematics education

Selected publications

• The interaction of study sequence presentation mode and response assignment reveals the effects of multiple computational systems on an immediate visual recognition task

  Attention Perception & Psychophysics · 2025-02-26

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Participants responded whether a single digit was in the immediately preceding digit sequence by pressing one of two keys as rapidly as possible while trying to avoid errors. Each participant performed four different kinds of sessions: Either all of the digits of the study sequence were presented in the same position or the digits were presented in successive positions from left to right. Either the same response was assigned to the right key and the different response to the left key or vice versa. Response time (RT) was an increasing function of the length of the study sequence. RT was an increasing function of the target's position in the study sequence when the different response was assigned to the right key. When the same response was assigned to the right key, RT was a decreasing function of the target's position in the study sequence when the study sequence had been presented in one location but there was no effect of target position on RT when the study sequence had been presented from left to right. The effects of study sequence length and target position were independent in the three conditions in which there was an effect of target position. Also, RT decreased for targets that had previously appeared as test items but RT increased for lures that had previously appeared as test items. The results confirm a dual-system hypothesis of recognition involving both the perceived recency of the target and the retrieval of the previous context of the target.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Most people would use cell phones despite an emergency request for a pause

  Behavioural Public Policy · 2025-10-22

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  Abstract In three between-subject experiments, involving a total of 3180 participants, the majority of respondents indicated that during a weather emergency they would continue to use high bandwidth functions after receiving a text message requesting only emergency use. Projected excess demand for bandwidth could bring down the cellular communication network in the affected area. Messages incorporating an appeal to altruism, the incentive of a reduced phone bill, and the disincentive of an imminent collapse of the network for 24 hours all had no effect on intentions to use high bandwidth functions. Younger respondents and male respondents were less compliant than older respondents and female respondents. Their responses imply that an increasing number of individuals view even a brief separation from their cell phone as an existential threat that overrides other concerns including empathy for people in life-threatening circumstances.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A continuous aggregated accumulation model of recognition judgments.

  Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition · 2024-09-12 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  -responses are understood to be based on familiarity. Two kinds of models have been proposed for the process by which recognition decisions are made. In single-process models, familiarity and recollection are integrated, and there is a single criterion for recognition. In dual-process models, familiarity and recollection are segregated, and there are separate criteria for remember and know-judgments. Recent process models can account for the distribution of remember and know-responses (under a range of different assumptions) but do not address the time course of the recognition process. Paradoxical findings, indicating that familiarity is available faster than recollection but remember-responses are on average faster than know-responses, cannot be convincingly explained by any existing dual-process model. We propose a new model that resolves this paradox by analyzing in detail the time course of recollection and familiarity. Know-responses based on the high familiarity of the test item are faster than remember-responses based on recollection. However, low-familiarity, low-recollection responses are slow and are also categorized by participants as know-responses. Hence, the average know-response time is slower than average remember-response time because know-responses include both fast high-familiarity responses and slow low-familiarity, low-recollection responses. A 12-parameter quantitative model that describes the relationship among the effects of confidence, accuracy, and remember and know categorization on accuracy and reaction time provided the best fit between expected reaction time and observed reaction time among the models tested. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• Do smartphones belong in classrooms? Four scholars weigh in

  2023-07-26

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Response assignment influences visual recognition

  Attention Perception & Psychophysics · 2023-04-10 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Review of: "Social context of the brain and law: Is consciousness social?"

  2023-05-21

  peer-reviewOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Review of: "The Positive Impact of Dropping the Lowest Test Score on Academic Performance and Stress Levels in MathBased Graduate Courses"

  2023-04-29

  peer-reviewOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Prosumer Behavior: Decision Making with Bounded Horizon

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2021-01-31

  preprintOpen access

  Most studies of prosumer decision making in the smart grid have focused on single, temporally discrete decisions within the framework of expected utility theory (EUT) and behavioral theories such as prospect theory. In this work, we study prosumer decision making in a more natural, ongoing market situation in which a prosumer has to decide every day whether to sell any surplus energy units generated by the solar panels on her roof or hold (store) the energy units in anticipation of a future sale at a better price. Within this context, we propose a new behavioral model that extends EUT to take into account the notion of a bounded temporal horizon over which various decision parameters are considered. Specifically, we introduce the notion of a bounded time window (the number of upcoming days over which a prosumer evaluates the probability that each possible price will be the highest) that prosumers implicitly impose on their decision making in arriving at hold or sell decisions. The new behavioral model assumes that humans make decisions that will affect their lives within a bounded time window regardless of how far into the future their units may be sold. Modeling the utility of the prosumer using parameters such as the offered price on a day, the number of energy units the prosumer has available for sale on a day, and the probabilities of the forecast prices, we fit both traditional EUT and the proposed behavioral model with bounded time windows to data collected from 57 homeowners over 68 days in a simulated energy market. Each prosumer generated surplus units of solar power and had the opportunity to sell those units to the local utility at the price set that day by the utility or hold the units for sale in the future. For most participants, a bounded horizon in the range of 4-5 days provided a much better fit to their responses than was found for the traditional (unbounded) EUT model

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Changing Verbal Label Assignments Selects the Memory System for Responses in an Immediate Visual Recognition Task

  Aresty Rutgers Undergraduate Research Journal · 2021-10-07

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The dual system hypothesis posits the existence of two neural systems for memory and learning in the mammalian brain: the habit system and the improvisational system. This study sought to determine whether both systems are involved in a visual recognition task originally outlined in Sternberg (1966) and whether each system could be selectively engaged on the basis of response assignment. Seventeen undergraduate students participated in an immediate visual recognition task where they responded whether or not a test consonant was present in a previous study sequence of one to six consonants by pressing one key for same or another key for different. When the different response was assigned to the spatially right “J” key, reaction time for targets and lures was a function of the study sequence size, indicating that the study sequence was serially scanned and compared with the test item by the habit system. However, when the same response was assigned to the spatially right “J” key, reaction time was not a function of study sequence size, indicating that the test item was not compared with the study sequence and responses were instead determined by perceived recency/novelty of the test item by the improvisational system. Differences in reaction time depending on response assignment suggest the selection of one memory system over the other based on verbal labels assigned to response keys in different spatial locations. Verbal label refers to the label of same or different assigned to the response keys in the experiment instructions. Results expand upon Sternberg (1966)—which used the same visual recognition task design as this study but did not account for response assignment, obscuring evidence of contributions from both memory systems—and provide more evidence for the dual-system hypothesis by demonstrating the involvement of both memory systems in immediate visual recognition.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Fewer students are benefiting from doing their homework: an eleven-year study

  Educational Psychology · 2020 · 16 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Psychology
  • Developmental psychology
  • Mathematics education

  Performance on homework questions was compared with performance on related exam questions querying the same fact or principle, was used to assess the effect of answering online homework questions on subsequent exam performance. A distinctive pattern of performance was found for some students in which superior performance on online homework questions resulted in poorer exam performance. When assessed over an eleven-year period, for 2433 students in 12 different college lecture courses, the percent of students who did not benefit from correctly answering homework questions increased from 14% in 2008 to 55% in 2017. During the most recent two years of the study, when students were asked how they did their homework, students who benefitted from homework reported generating their own answers and students who reported copying the answers from another source did not benefit from homework.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Neha Sinha

  Pandit Bhagwat Dayal Sharma Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences

  18 shared

• Keith J. Holyoak

  University of California, Los Angeles

  16 shared

• Narayan B. Mandayam

  Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

  8 shared

• John I. Kiger

  Western Carolina University

  7 shared

• Arild Lian

  University of Oslo

  6 shared

• Mengxue Kang

  5 shared

• John K. Eddy

  Nokia (United States)

  4 shared

• Margaret R. Ingate

  Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

  4 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Psychology

  Stanford University

  1975

• B.A., Psychology

  University at Buffalo

  1971