Left hemisphere superiority for pronounceable nonwords,but not for unpronounceable letter strings

Right-handed adults were asked to identify bilaterally presented linguistic stimuli under three experimental conditions. In Condition A, stimuli were three-letter pronounceable nonwords (such as TUP), and subjects were asked to report them by naming them. In Condition B, stimuli were three-letter pronounceable nonwords, and subjects were asked to report them as strings of letters. In Condition C, stimuli were more or less unpronounceable letter strings (such as UTP) created by rearranging the letters of pronounceable nonwords, and subjects reported them as strings of letters. Pronounceable nonwords were found to be better identified from the right visual hemifield irrespective of the way in which they were reported. Unpronounceable letter strings did not produce any visual hemifield difference. Nonwords are of interest because they can be seen as potential words that lack both specific semantic properties and entries in the subject's internal lexicon. The results of the experiment are consistent with the view that both the left and right cerebral hemispheres are able to identify letters but the left hemisphere is more sensitive to the pronounceability of the nonwords. This may happen either because the left hemisphere can make better use of resemblances to real words or because it has access to spelling to sound correspondence rules.     

Comments on the interpretation of lateral asymmetries in the naming of words and line drawings

Young, Bion, and Ellis (Brain and Language, 11, 54-65, 1980) found no visual hemifield differences for right-handed subjects' first reports of bilaterally presented picturable nouns and line drawings, and small RVF superiorities for second reports of these stimuli. Levine and Banich (1982), however, found no visual hemifield differences for line drawings, and a substantial RVF superiority for picturable words. Two procedural factors are identified as responsible for this difference in results; namely the lack of control of order of report in Levine and Banich's (1982) study, and their use of vertically aligned words. Levine and Banich's (1982) attempt to explain findings of side of presentation X report interactions in terms of directional scanning and reporting preferences is shown to be untenable. Explanations in terms of cerebral asymmetries are more convincing, but they must be related to explicit theoretical models.     

Familiarity decisions for faces presented to the left and right cerebral hemispheres

Right-handed subjects were asked to decide whether or not faces presented briefly in the RVF or in the LVF were familiar (familiar faces were those of famous people). This task avoids the need for extensive semantic processing or temporary storage involved in conventional naming or identification tasks, and thus eliminates the contribution of such factors to any observed asymmetry. The resulting finding of faster reaction times to LVF faces, with no overall visual hemifield difference in error rates, is taken to indicate a right-hemisphere superiority either in the processes used to construct facial representations or in the accessing of face recognition units, or both.     

Reconstruction from the mental image

In three experiments young children were asked to reconstruct an array of objects after they had imagined its appearance following either a rotation of the array or a change in their own position (Huttenlocher & Presson, 1973). In reconstructing arrays, subjects first positioned that object which would be most prominent to an observer following the imagined transformation. Surprisingly, this occurred even when subjects made an egocentric error by reconstructing a copy of the original array. Hence young children, although apparently egocentric, can imagine themselves in a new position with a new perspective. The mental operations which underlie imagined spatial transformations are discussed in light of the results.     

Studies toward a model of laterality effects for picture and word naming

Experiments requiring the naming of bilaterally presented nouns, picturable nouns, consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) nonwords, and line drawings are reported. In order to eliminate order of report strategies and facilitate comparison across experiments, the stimulus to be reported first was cued by underlining at presentation of each trial. Large right visual hemifield (RVF) superiorities were found to arise from both first and second reports for naming nouns and CVC nonwords. Drawings and picturable nouns, however, produced only a small RVF superiority arising entirely from subjects' second reports. It is proposed that hemispheric laterality effects for naming visually presented stimuli can arise from three principal sources, and the application of this model to existing studies is outlined.     

Object tracking and search in infancy: A review of data and a theoretical evaluation

Most research on infants' development of object and spatial concepts is based on object search tasks or visual tracking studies. In this review, it is concluded that many phenomena, particularly the tracking data, can be accounted for in terms of objective spatial perception in early infancy. However, some phenomena, particularly the stage IV search error, cannot be explained in these terms. A theoretical framework is put forward that integrates aspects of theory of direct perception with constructionist theory. First, it is proposed that objective properties of the basic spatial array are directly perceived, but that because perception is derived from action in the environment, there are initial limits to the scope and coherence of perception that diminish as the infant gains effective motor control. Second, it is proposed that in attempts to decipher the structure of social interchanges over objects, infants construct functional categorizations of objects that allow them to overcome limited awareness of their physical properties. Finally, it is suggested that these functional concepts provide an adequate means of interpreting the world, so that concepts based on the physical properties of objects, including their permanence, are relatively late developments.     

Writing nonwords to dictation

Two experiments show that the spelling of a nonword that is heard (i.e., /prein/) is influenced by the spelling of a word that is heard earlier (i.e., “brain” > prain and “crane” > prane). This is a robust effect and inspection of the pattern of results suggests that, under these conditions, both words and nonwords are lexically analyzed. A patient with an aquired reading disorder characterized as surface dyslexia was unaffected by such lexical influences in his spelling of nonwords. Moreover, his spelling suggested a defective ability to generate phonemically acceptable spellings of nonwords. Taken together with other reports of neurologically caused spelling impairments these results suggest that skill at assigning letters to sounds never becomes independent of lexical skill in adult readers. An analogical, lexically based parsing system for the reading and spelling of new (nonwords, as suggested by Marcel (1980) appears to be the best fit to these data.     

Cognitive dissonance and psychotherapy: The role of effort justification in inducing weight loss

The role of effort justification in psychotherapy was examined. It was hypothesized that the effort involved in therapy, plus the conscious decision to undergo that effort, leads to positive therapeutic changes through the reduction of cognitive dissonance. An experiment was conducted in which overweight subjects attempted to lose weight through one of two forms of “effort therapy”. These therapies were bogus in that they were based solely on the expenditure of effort on a series of cognitive tasks that were unrelated to any existing techniques or theory addressing weight loss. One of the therapies called for a high degree of effort while the degree of effort in the second therapy was low. A no-treatment control group was also included. It was predicted that greater weight loss would occur for high-effort than low-effort or control subjects, and that this weight loss would be maintained or increased over time. Results supported these predictions. Over an initial 3-week period, high-effort subjects lost slightly more weight than low-effort subjects or controls. A 6-month follow-up revealed that the effects of effort on weight loss had increased and were highly significant. Reliable differences remained even 1 year after the initial experimental sessions. Possible mechanisms mediating the dissonance effect were discussed, as were several alternative explanations.     

The growth of the effective visual field from birth to seven weeks

Visual orientation toward a peripheral stimulus by newborns and 7-week-old infants was examined with both a central stimulus present and absent. The presence of the central stimulus narrowed but did not eliminate peripheral responding. No age change was found when a central stimulus was present. However, older infants exhibited greater peripheral responding than newborns when the central stimulus was absent. The neonate appears to exercise internal control over his sampling of the stimulus array rather than being passively captured by it.     

Cognitive biases in blaming the victim

Past research on cognitive biases has demonstrated the existence of a hindsight effect, whereby the receipt of outcome knowledge increases the perceived likelihood of the reported event. Three experiments were conducted that tested and supported the hindsight effect as a cause of victim blaming. Subjects read detailed accounts that were identical except for the concluding sentence, which provided outcome information. Half the subjects in each experiment were informed that the woman narrating the account was raped; the other half read a neutral outcome. Experiment 1 demonstrated that subjects were unable to ignore the influence of outcome knowledge, leading to an exaggerated perception of how likely the outcome appeared. In Experiment 2, the woman was blamed more by subjects who read the rape outcome than by those who read the neutral outcome, despite the presentation of identical behaviors and personality traits prior to outcome information. The increased blame attributed by rape outcome subjects was behavioral, and not characterological, in nature. Experiment 3 found a direct association between the hindsight effect and victim blaming and also demonstrated that an attempt to reduce the negative impact of the hindsight effect on victim blaming was ineffective due to the salience of the rape outcome. Explaining how a neutral outcome was possible given the same account did not reduce victim blaming by subjects who received a rape outcome. Rather, those who received a neutral outcome increased their victim blaming when asked to explain a rape outcome. The implications for victims are discussed.     

The emergence of representation in search: Understanding the hider as an independent agent

Corrigan's results point the way toward a reconceptualization of how the development of representation affects search. The child does not cognitively recreate the invisible displacements of the object. Instead she seems to understand that the hider is an independent agent who can use simple hiding strategies that the child does not directly perceive. This representational skill for search, we propose, is one realization of a general representational capacity that emerges late in the second year. The general capacity is defined structurally as the ability to coordinate two sensorimotor systems into a single skill. Although there seem to be some discontinuities in the emergence of the representational capacity, its development is mostly gradual and continuous.     

Children's cultural values and parental child rearing strategies

Researchers during the past 40 years have infrequently disentangled the relationship between young black children's personal identity and group identity, generally treating them in an undifferentiated manner. Investigators suggest that impersonal agents determine young black children's white-biased cultural values, usually ignoring the influence of parental child-rearing strategies. Findings from three studies in the Midwest, North, and South document that preschool children show consistently Eurocentric (white-biased) choice behavior; the trend for most attitudes and preferences changes to an Afrocentric orientation during middle childhood. Parental interviews obtained from a subsample of Southern parents offer alternative interpretations of these choice patterns; values transmitted (e.g., teaching children about civil rights and racial discrimination) predict children's Afrocentric racial attitudes and preferences.     

Acquired and developmental spelling dyslexia

Two cases of acquired spelling dyslexia and one case of developmental spelling dyslexia are described along with accounts of their performance on various psycholinguistic tasks. It is argued that there is some evidence that spelling dyslexia may exist in developmental form but that parallels are difficult to draw because of the very different histories of child and adult cases. It is also suggested that features of surface dyslexia exist in at least a proportion of spelling dyslexic cases and that this may be influenced by level of premorbid reading skill.     

The effect of standard, motivation, and strategy instructions on the facial processing accuracy of internal and external subjects

In the present study, it was hypothesized that poorer performance of externals in cognitive and interpersonal tasks also would be found in the processing of nonverbal information in the form of a facial affect recognition task. It was further hypothesized that the poorer nonverbal processing performance of externals was due to either their lower motivation or their use of less effective processing strategies. Subjects (N = 70) were divided into internal and external groups and then further subdivided into groups that received standard, motivational, or strategy instructions. Analysis of subjects' responses to the facial affect recognition task showed internals performed significantly better than externals under standard conditions. However, neither motivational nor strategy instructions improved the performance of externals. The implications for interpersonal functioning of the poorer nonverbal processing ability of extenrals was discussed from both theoretical and methodological perspectives.     

Contrasting cases of Italian agrammatic aphasia without comprehension disorder

This study examined the effects of different concurrent verbal memory loads on a recognition accuracy task using bilaterally presented nouns. Four different memory load conditions were examined. They varied along a size dimension of either three or six words and along a complexity dimension of either easy concrete nouns or difficult highly abstract nouns. In each of the above conditions and in one control group, order or word report was controlled and in a second control group subjects were free to report the lateralized words in any order they wished. There were 20 subjects in each of the six groups. As expected, a significant right visual field superiority for verbal processing was obtained. there were no main effects of size of memory load nor complexity of m emory load on the laterality patterns. More subtle fluctuations in the patterns were found in the form of significant interactions between memory load, order of word report, and visual field. These interaction effects suggest that words reported second in the bilateral task, are more susceptible to the interfering effects of either larger or more complex memory loads. This is particularly true for right visual field words. While these data generally support a structural model of hemispheric organization, the interaction effects suggest that modifications must be made to the basic model to account for such factors as hemispheric capacity limits and order of report in the bilateral task.     

Moral judgment and attitudes toward authority of political resisters

In an exploration of the personal basis of resistance to authority, moral judgment and attitudes toward authority were examined in 183 men and women political resisters, including antinuclear, draft registration, and tax resisters, and anarchists, and compared to 34 liberal and 29 conservative activists. The measures used were the Defining Issues Test and a specially designed attitude survey. As predicted, the differences between resisters and nonresisters were in the realm of cognitive beliefs and values. Strong rejection of political and social authority, a belief that individual conscience is a better guide to conduct than the law, a professed unwillingness to be in positions of authority over others, and a lack of conventional religious affiliation significantly differentiated the resisters from the nonresisters. The resisters also measured high in level of moral judgment but were significantly different only from the conservatives.     

Infants' search for visible objects: implications for the interpretation of early search errors

This study examined the error patterns of 9-month-old infants searching for hidden objects and objects that were visible within a container. Although errors occurred in both conditions, there were important differences between them. When the object was hidden, infants showed significant perseveration in that they searched more often at the object's previous hiding place than at a control location. When the object was visible, however, they made fewer errors and the errors they did make were as likely to be to the control location as to the previous hiding place. These results suggest that infants' errors in searching for a visible object reflect lapses of attention rather than systematic misunderstandings of objects or space and so are not incompatible with an information-processing account of early search.     

Visual dominance in inhibitory conditioning in the pigeon

In a conditioned inhibition paradigm (A+, B+, AX?_, pigeons received either of two keylight stimuli reliably followed by food (A+, B+). However, when one of these keylights was accompanied by another stimulus, food did not follow (AX?). For some groups, the putative inhibitor was a tone, whereas for others it was illumination of a red houselight. The birds pecked the A and B stimuli at a high rate. When X was red houselight, the birds pecked A at a much lower rate in the presence of X. When X was a tone, discrimination between A and AX was much poorer. Moreover, in a transfer test, red houselight inhibited responding to the other keylight, B, but tone did not. These results indicate that red houselight becomes a conditioned inhibitor more quickly than tone in appetitive situations, just as red houselight becomes a conditioned excitor more quickly in those situations. These results contradict the assertion that the latter outcome occurs because red houselight is a stronger appetitive excitor than tone at the start of the experiment (the “head start” hypothesis).