Neonatal sucking: Effects of quantity of the response-contingent fluid upon sucking rhythm and heart rate

The temporal organization of neonatal nutritive sucking and heart rate were studied in two consecutive 4-min periods to analyze the effects of two quantities of response-contingent fluid. One group of newborns experienced only the larger amount, a second experienced the smaller, and two other groups experienced both in counterbalanced order. Cumulative pausing time and intersuck intervals (sucking rate within bursts) were both affected by the amount of fluid delivered at each response. At the start of sucking bursts, heart rate accelerated to a stable level. Within-burst heart rates were higher with increased quantity of contingently delivered fluid. The results are discussed in relation to the distinction between nutritive and nonnutritive sucking and to previous findings on the effects of fluid sweetness upon sucking.     

Habituation in children within a behavior suppression paradigm

Using an instrumental response suppression paradigm, Experiment 1 demonstrated habituation and long-term retention of habituation to a tone stimulus in third-grade children, but specificity of habituation was not obtained when a new tone stimulus was presented. In Experiment 2 first graders showed specificity of habituation to auditory stimuli on the response suppression measure whereas fifth graders did not. However, both age groups evidenced specificity when a skin conductance measure was employed. In addition, specificity of habituation was not affected by amount of training at either age level. Experiment 3 demonstrated specificity of habituation in fifth graders on the response suppression measure when a cross-modality stimulus change was introduced. Implications of these data for analyses of habituation and traditional learning are discussed.     

How to reverse the vicious cycle of low self-esteem: The importance of attentional focus

Recent research suggests that the cognitive processes of low self-esteem people (low SEs) perpetuate low self-esteem and its undesirable emotional and behavioral correlates. For instance, it has been suggested that low SEs are more “self-conscious” than high self-esteem people (high SEs) and that self-consciousness can impair task performance. It was reasoned that if low SEs were led to focus their attention away from themselves and onto the task, performance would improve relative to high SEs. In a 2 × 3 between-subjects factorial design, subjects high and low in chronic self-esteem performed a concept formation task under three conditions: (1) in the presence of an audience, where self-focused attention is presumably high; (2) in a control group, in which attention was not manipulated; and (3) with instructions to concentrate on the task diligently. A significant interaction effect was obtained, indicating that low SEs performed worse than high SEs in the audience condition (p < .025), no differently in the control, and better than high SEs (p < .01) when instructed to concentrate on the task. Although the latter results are unusual in the context of self-esteem research, they are strikingly parallel to recent findings in the study of test anxiety.     

Memory for companions in preschool children

Memory of preschool children (4 years of age) for companions was investigated by comparing interview data using a picture sociometric technique with observational data on actual play companions. Accuracy decreased with successive nominations, and length of recall period. However children were able to name companions played with today, yesterday, last week and at the beginning of term, at well above chance levels. Accuracies improved during the term. The relevance of friendships and social experience for memory and cognitive processes in young children is discussed.     

Naloxone and Pavlovian fear conditioning

Previous research has shown that pretreating rats with the opiate antagonist naloxone increases the freezing that follows painful electric shock. Three experiments, using freezing behavior as a dependent variable, were carried out to determine whether the drug might cause this effect by enhancing fear conditioning. Two of the studies employed a differential context fear-conditioning paradigm. Naloxone did not affect freezing behavior during the preshock adaptation period. In Experiment 1, naloxone was found to increase resistance to extinction in the S+ context. In Experiment 2, naloxone was found to increase freezing in the S+ context. This effect was dependent upon administering naloxone during training but not dependent on administering it during testing. The third study employed a generalization paradigm. It was found that naloxone's effect on postshock freezing was dependent on the place of testing; as the contextual cues of the test chamber were changed from those of the conditioning chamber, the effect of naloxone on freezing was reduced. The results of these experiments lend strong support to the hypothesis that naloxone increases freezing by enhancing the conditioning of fear to contextual stimuli associated with shock.     

Self-consciousness and aspects of identity

This study investigated the relationship between public and private self-consciousness and social and personal aspects of identity. As predicted by self-consciousness theory, public self-consciousness correlated significantly more strongly with social than with personal aspects of identity, and private self-consciousness correlated significantly more strongly with personal than with social aspects of identity. Implications for the psychology of identity are discussed.     

Perceived tachistoscopic duration and early visual processing in preschool children and adults

Two experiments further explored the Avant et al. (1975) finding that stimulus familiarity influences prerecognition processing to generate differences in the apparent duration of tachistoscopic flashes. The first experiment tested for developmental differences in the effects of upright versus 90°, 180°, and 270° rotations of a single letter or number upon the apparent duration of pre- and postmasked 30- and 50-msec flashes with adults and 4- and 5-year-old children. All age groups judged upright presentations to be of briefer duration. These differences in apparent duration were interpreted to index the automaticity of contacts between stimulus inputs and their memory representations. Failure of the children to recognize the letter and number in any orientation indicates that contact between stimulus inputs and memory representations precedes allocation of attention to the presented stimulus. The second experiment explored the influence of spatial structures which are not coded verbally by testing effects of good and poor dot pattern Gestalts on the apparent duration of tachistoscopic flashes. Adults discriminated between apparent durations of good and poor Gestalts but 4- and 5-year-olds did not. Apparent duration differences in the two experiments showed that spatial pattern structure and familiarity with verbal stimuli influence early visual processing in different ways.     

Need for uniqueness,self-schemas,and thought as moderators of the false-consensus effect

L. Ross and his colleagues (L. Ross, D. Greene, & P. House, 1977, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 32, 880–892) have demonstrated the tendency for people to expect peer similarity in behavior, termed the “false-consensus” bias. The present study was concerned with factors that might affect the generality of this bias. Specifically, we looked at the impact of level of need for uniqueness (C. R. Snyder & H. L. Fromkin, 1977, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 5, 518–527), existence of a self-schema (H. Markus, 1977, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 63–78), and thought on expectations of peer similarity. It was predicted that thought would polarize the estimates of high and low N Uniq individuals in opposite directions, but only when the individual possessed a self-schema along the relevant behavioral dimension. The results for behaviors reflecting independence supported this prediction. Discussion centered around limits of the false-consensus bias, along with consideration of the complexities involved in the link between availability factors and interpersonal judgments.     

Developmental constraints associated with children's use of the keyword method of foreign language vocabulary learning

Second- and sixth-grade (ages 7 and 11 years, respectively) subjects were instructed to learn simple Spanish vocabulary nouns using the keyword method. To remember a foreign word translation the keyword method user must: (1) associate the foreign word to an English word (the keyword) that sounds like part of the foreign word; and (2) remember an image of the keyword and translation referents interacting. Second-grade keyword users who were provided with interactive pictures remembered more vocabulary items than those who generated their own imagery links when given separate pictures of the keyword and translation referents. Second graders who generated their own linking images when given only the keywords and translation words recalled fewer items than both picture groups, and were not significantly different from control subjects. Sixth graders in the three imagery-link variations performed at comparable levels and better than control subjects. The results are in complete accord with previous speculations about the development of imagery strategies in children.     

Social inhibition as a function of observation and recording of performance

In order to compare the relative effects of observation of performance and recording of information about performance on social facilitation/inhibition, 256 college students solved three concept-attainment problems in an orthogonal design. The variables were (a) number of observers (an additional observer or the experimenter alone), (b) videorecording (yes or no), (c) audiorecording (yes or no), (d) task complexity (four, six, eight, or ten total attributes in the problems). Each of videotaping, filming, and audiotaping resulted in poorer performance than the control condition, with no differences between these three recording conditions. The presence of an additional observer had no effect on performance. Pulse measures indicated that the presence of an additional observer increased arousal, but covariance analysis indicated no association between differences in performance and arousal.     

Three theories of self-disclosure exchange

The present study tested predictions derived from equitable exchange, social attraction, and normative information theories of self-disclosure. Variables relevant to each theory were manipulated orthogonally in the following factorial design: (1) intimate vs. superficial vs. no confederate disclosure, (2) positive vs. negative evaluation delivered by the confederate, and (3) intimate vs. non-intimate disclosure as normative for the experimental situation. Groups in which the subject was exposed to one of the independent variables in the absence of the others were included, to yield 18 cells with 10 female subjects per cell. The findings conformed to equitable exchange theory, in that subjects were more willing to disclose to a high- than a low-revealing partner. However, disclosure appeared to be suppressed in response to low disclosure, rather than enhanced by intimate disclosure. Also, true reciprocity of disclosure did not occur, in that subjects did not completely match the intimacy of the confederate. Normative information proved to be a potent determinant of disclosure tendency. No support was found for social attraction theory. Although confederate evaluation was the best predictor of interpersonal attraction, it was the poorest predictor of intent to disclose. Attraction was not found to parallel disclosure level.     

Developmental differences in mental rotation.

A reaction time paradigm was used to investigate developmental differences in ability to rotate and compare imaginal representations. Third grade, fifth grade, and college students (ages 9, 11, and 20 years, respectively) were required to determine whether a letter of the alphabet was presented in its backward or normal position. Letters were presented at 0, 60, 120, 180, 240, or 300° orientations from upright. Subjects were given no advance information about a test letter, or they were given identity and orientation information. In the no information condition, reaction time increased for all age groups as a function of the departure in orientation of the test letter from an upright position. In the advance information condition, reaction time remained uniform across orientation for only the college subjects. The developmental implications of these findings are discussed.     

Size-distance perception in preschool children.

Children between three and six years of age matched the “apparent” and “real” size of familiar and unfamiliar objects 3, 6, or 9 feet away. Prior to the experimental sessions, the children were divided into two groups: (a) those who could distinguish the phenomenal from the real sizes of the arcs in the Jastrow illusion (the “Realists”) and (b) those who could not (the “Phenomenalists”). The results suggest that all children perceived size constancy up to distances of 9 feet solely on the basis of visual information.     

Dogmatism and information gathering in personality impression formation

Subjects were assigned the task of forming an impression of another person with information being gathered from two conflicting sources. One half were given a positive first impression, and one half were given a negative first impression before allowing them to select additional information. Final ratings were made when Ss indicated that they had taken sufficient information. Dogmatic Ss took in less information before passing “final judgment,” gave more extreme stability ratings, expressed greater liking for their agreed-with source, and showed a trend toward a preference for explaining away impression-discrepant information rather than to withhold judgment.     

Socially mediated fear reduction in rodents: Distraction,communication, or mere presence?

Two studies investigated why the presence of conspecifics reduces open-field fear. In Experiment 1 rats paired with another experimentally naive rat were not less fearful than alone controls. However, rats paired with a partner who had been preexposed to the open field exhibited fewer fear responses than alone controls. Since preexposed companions appeared to initiate more social interactions than nonpreexposed companions, it was argued that the preexposure effect could be the result of preexposed companions distracting actor rats from threatening stimuli. Experiment 2 tested this explanation by pairing socially sated or socially deprived rats with a socially sated or socially deprived companion. In accord with a distraction hypothesis, pairing two socially deprived rats produced the greatest fear reduction effects and also led to more social interaction than pairing socially sated rats. Alternative explanations involving conditioning and communication are discussed.