Test Sophistication and Faking in the TAT Situation

This study investigated the effects of conscious altering of response (faking) and test sophistication on TAT performance. Thirty-six naive undergraduates and 36 TAT-sophisticated graduate students and clinicians wrote stories to all 20 TAT cards under one of two conditions: standard, and instructions to “fake” hostility. The four groups were then compared by Analysis of Variance on a number of quantitative response measures. Effects of the two experimental variables, sophistication and faking, varied with the response measure, but, in general, faking instructions led to response changes, and sophisticated subjects performed differently than naive ones. Some sex differences were also apparent. It was concluded that sophistication is a factor in how a subject fakes, the sophisticated subjects generally doing a better job of it. The implications for the effect of stimulus pull were discussed and it was concluded that the pull value of the stimulus is not affected by a peripheral response set but is affected by sophistication.     

PRODUCING GENERATIVE SENTENCE USAGE BY IMITATION AND REINFORCEMENT PROCEDURES1

Three retarded subjects and two developmentally normal toddlers were trained using imitation and reinforcement procedures to use correct sentences. The experimental task was to use sentences with correct subject-verb agreement to describe pictures that were presented to the subjects. Two classes of sentences were taught: those involving a plural subject that required the use of the verb “are” (for example, “the boys are running”) and those involving a singular subject that required the use of the verb “is” (for example, “the boy is running”). The basic design of the study involved multiple baselines for each class of sentences. Four of the subjects began to produce novel, untrained sentences of a particular type to generalization probe pictures when that particular class of sentence was currently being trained. Thus, the imitation and reinforcement procedures appeared to be functional in producing generative sentence usage for both types of sentences. One subject produced correct sentences to both singular and plural probe pictures when only “is” sentences had been taught. A reversal procedure and retraining phase indicated that for this subject, imitation and reinforcement procedures for training one class of sentence behavior seemed functional in producing generative responses of the other class of sentences.     

AN INVESTIGATION OF THE EFFECTS OF TOKEN REINFORCEMENT ON DIVERGENT VERBAL RESPONDING1

The effect of token reinforcement on three classes of divergent verbal responding to verbal stimulus items from three measures of the Wallach-Kogan Creativity test was examined. The subjects consisted of two “gifted”, two “average”, and two “learning disabled” children from a public-school setting. The design utilized both an intra-subject and inter-subject multiple-baseline design with a reversal design added. Tokens were dispensed contingent upon the number of appropriate verbal responses to each stimulus item, i.e., a continuous schedule of reinforcement was used—one token per appropriate response. Interobserver agreement on “appropiateness” was 993%. The tokens could be used to “purchase” items listed in a “menu” format (e.g., ball and jacks—100 tokens). Consistently large effects of token reinforcement were observed, without generalization of effect across the three classes of behaviors, or conditions. These results support the works of Goetz and Baer (Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1973, 6 , 209–217), Goetz and Salmonson (Behavior Analysis and Education, G. Semb, (Ed.), University of Kansas, 1972, 53–61), and Maloney and Hopkins (Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1973, 6 , 425–434). Implications lie in continued experimental analysis of behavior approach to the concept called “creativity”. Additionally, implications are made in classroom application of assessing and intervening in the area of divergent responding for children with deficits in those areas.     

Effects of Handwriting and Examiner's Expertise on Assessment of Essays

Abstract

The study was an investigation of the effects of density and personal space on simple and complex task performance and on feelings of crowding on 60 female Hindu students in India. A 2 × 2 design was used. Density was manipulated by varying the number of subjects in a fixed room space (social density), and the stop-distance technique was used to measure personal space. Results revealed that complex task performance was adversely affected by a high-density condition and by the personal space of the subjects, leading to a significant interaction effect of the two variables, but no significant main or interaction effect was found for the simple task performance. The subjects with “far” personal space under the high-density condition evaluated the environment of the experimental room as most crowded, more than any other subject did.     

Sex-role behavior and obedience to authority: A field study

Obedience by male and female subjects to male and female experimenters was investigated under various conditions of “perceived legitimacy.” The procedure involved an experimenter stopping a subject who was about to cross a street at a particular crosswalk, the subject was then instructed to cross at another designated location. The dependent variable was the level of obedience to these instructions. The four main factorial independent variables were the sex of the experimenter, the sex of the subject, and two conditions of “perceived legitimacy” (presence or absence of a “uniform,” presence or absence of an “explanation”). Significant results were obtained for the uniform and sex of subject main effects (more obedience with a uniform, more disobedience by females). Additional analyses indicated that “older” subjects disobeyed more often than “younger” ones, that “formally” dressed subjects disobeyed more often than “informally” dressed ones, and that ethnic minority group experimenters were disobeyed significantly more often than Caucasian experimenters. Significant interactions were also obtained, mainly due to the behavior of the younger men and the older women. Male and female experimenters were obeyed equally, in general. The results are discussed in relation to sex-role prejudice and discriminatory behavior.     

False memories in Lewy‐body disease

Recently, de Boysson, Belleville, Phillips et al. (2011) found that patients with Lewy‐body disease (LBD) showed significantly lower rates of false memories than healthy controls, using the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) experimental procedure. Given that this result could be explained by the practically null rate of true recognition in the LBD group (0.09), we decided to replicate the study by de Boysson et al. (2011), but including a new condition that would maximize the true recognition rate (and analyze its effect on the rate of false memories). Specifically, in a DRM experiment, we manipulated (within subjects) two study and recognition conditions: in the “immediate” condition, both the LBD patients and the control group of healthy older people received a different recognition test after each study list (containing twelve words associated with a non‐presented critical word), while in the “delayed” condition (similar to the one in de Boysson et al., 2011), the participants received the entire series of study lists and then took only one recognition test. The results showed that, in both samples, the “immediate” condition produced higher corrected rates of both true and false recognition than the “delayed” condition, although they were both lower in the LBD patients, which shows that these patients are capable of encoding and recognizing the general similitude underlying information (gist memory) in the right conditions.     

Undermining the Zeigarnik effect: Another hidden cost of reward

Forty college students participated in a study ostensibly designed to obtain measures of the hemispheric activity while they worked on a spatial reasoning task. In fact, our true interest was in determining whether subjects would return to the spatial reasoning task once the hemispheric recordings were completed. Subjects would normally be expected to return to the task by virtue of the Zeigarnik effect because no subject completed the task during the “hemispheric recording” phase. The manipulation involved telling one group of subjects that they would be paid $1.50 for participating in the study (expected reward group). The remainder of the subjects were not led to expect the reward (unexpected reward group). The result was that 86% of the unexpected reward subjects but only 58% of the expected reward subjects (p < .05) manifested the Zeigarnik effect. This differential tendency to return to the task was further reflected in time differences. The average unexpected reward subject spent 3 min 48 sec of a five-minute free-choice period at the task, whereas the average expected reward subject spent only 2 min 20 sec (p < .05). Reward expectancy, therefore, led to an undermining of the Zeigarnik effect. This observation supports Condry's prediction that rewarding performance at a task can lead to premature task disengagement.     

Processing ambiguous Spanish se in a minimal chain

The recovery of pieces of information that are not linguistically expressed is a constant feature of the process of language comprehension. In the processing literature, such missing information is generally referred to as “gaps”. Usually, one resolves gaps by finding “fillers” in either the sentence or the context. For instance, in Peter seemed to be upset, Peter is really the subject of being upset but appears as surface subject of seems. Sometimes constituents move, leaving gaps behind. Various Romance languages such as Spanish or Italian have a grammatical particle se/si, which, as it is extremely ambiguous, licenses different sorts of gaps. In Spanish, se can encode at least reflexive, impersonal, and passive meanings. In an eye-tracking experiment we contrast reflexive structures containing postverbal subjects with impersonal structures with no subjects (GAP se vendó apresuradamente el corredor/“the runner bandaged himself hurriedly” vs. GAP se vendó apresuradamente al corridor/“(someone) bandaged the runner hurriedly”). In a second manipulation we contrast the presence of an extra argument with se-passives (GAP se vendó el tobillo el corredor/“the runner bandaged his ankle” vs. GAP se vendó el tobillo al corridor/“the runner's ankle was bandaged”). Our comparisons involve contrasting standard transitive structures with nonstandard word order (postverbal subject and a preverbal subject gap) against inherently complex and less habitual structures such as impersonals (with no subject) or se-passives (with subjects in canonical object position). We evaluate the minimal chain principle (de Vincenzi, 1991 De Vincenzi, M. 1991. Syntactic parsing strategies in Italian, Dordrecht, , The Netherlands: Kluwer. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), according to which displacement is costly because it entails complex (derivational) “chains” that must be undone before phrasal packaging can commence. We show the minimal chain principle to be essentially correct when contrasting more complex but more frequent structures with less complex but less frequent structures. A noteworthy feature of this research is that the gaps appear before the fillers in the structures that we analyse.     

Learning on a response continuum: Comparison of a linear change and a functional learning model

Two reinforcement schedules were used to compare the predictive validity of a linear change model with a functional learning model. In one schedule, termed “convergent,” the linear change model predicts convergence to the optimum response, while in the other, termed “divergent,” this model predicts that a subject's response will not converge. The functional learning model predicts convergence in both cases. Another factor that was varied was presence or absence of random error or “noise” in the relationship between response and outcome. In the “noiseless” condition, in which no noise is added, a subject could discover the optimum response by chance, so that some subjects could appear to have converged fortuitously. In the “noisy” conditions such chance apparent convergence could not occur.The results did not unequivocally favor either model. While the linear change model's prediction of nonconvergence in the divergent conditions (particularly the “noisy” divergent condition) was not sustained, there was a clear difference in speed of convergence, counter to the prediction inferred from the functional learning model. Evidence that at least some subjects were utilizing a functional learning strategy was adduced from the fact that subjects were able to “map out” the relation between response and outcome quite accurately in a follow-up task. Almost all subjects in the “noisy” conditions had evidently “learned” a strong linear relation, with slope closely matching the veridical one.The data were consistent with a hybrid model assuming a “hierarchy of cognitive strategies” in which more complex strategies (e.g., functional learning) are utilized only when the simpler ones (e.g., a linear change strategy) fail to solve the problem.     

Who Knows? Knowledge Activation,Belief in Certainty of Knowledge,Maximization Tendencies and Need for Cognition in Answerability Judgments

In this study, investigating answerability judgments, 123 participants judged whether each of 46 general knowledge questions could currently be answered by themselves, by someone else, or by no one. There were 26 consensus questions (high expected consensus about their answerability) and 20 non-consensus questions. Before each question, half of the participants rated the extent of their knowledge related to the question. Results showed that answering consensus questions compared with non-consensus led to a lower proportion of “No one knows” answers. Moreover, in the knowledge rating condition compared with the control condition, participants choose “No one knows” proportionally less. Participants’ ratings of belief in certainty of knowledge were associated with more “Someone else knows” for the non-consensus questions. Moreover, tendency to maximization led to a higher proportion of “Someone else knows” options for the non-consensus questions. Finally, high need for cognition was associated with fewer choices of “Someone else knows.”     

Subjectivity as Encounter: Feminine Ethics in the Work of Bracha Lichtenberg‐Ettinger and Anne Enright

The fragility of the subject is a recurring issue in the work of Anne Enright, one of Ireland's most remarkable and innovative writers. It is this specific interest, together with her attempt to make women into subjects, that inevitably links her work to Bracha Lichtenberg‐Ettinger's theory of the matrixial borderspace, a feminine sphere that coexists with the Lacanian symbolic order and that, even before our entrance into this linguistic system, informs our subjectivity. By turning to a point in time before language—the encounter between “self” and “other” during pregnancy—both Enright and Ettinger test the boundaries of and the gaps within the linguistic system. It is the going before language that ultimately enables both to go beyond some of the most persistent dualisms present within the linguistic system and to create room for an alternative—a feminine—understanding of the ethical relationality between self and other.     

The effects of information processing complexity and interpersonal cue availability on strategic play in a mixed-motive game1

A 60-trial iterated PDG was played by 24 male undergraduates. Half were Abstract Information Processors, and half were Concrete Information Processors. In addition, half of the subject pairs played the game face-to-face, while in the other pairs the game was played in separate cubicles. Rather than allowing for free play, the subjects were given the illusion of playing against one another when in reality they all played against a simulation program. It was found that concrete subjects cooperated most in the presence of another player, and competed most when not facing him. This was apparently due to the tendency for the concrete players to be “caught” by the cooperative pull of the face-to-face condition. The abstract subjects tended to use information-seeking strategies in both conditions. When the information was irrelevant to the game (e.g., presence of a false “partner”) the abstract players did not maximize to the same degree as when the feedback was more meaningful.     

Aristotle,Plato and Bhagvad Gita on the “Soul”

This paper broadly aims at examining the idea of the “soul” or “atma” in ancient Greece and in India during the Axial Age. Against the backdrop of this general understanding, an attempt is made at comprehending the idea of the soul in Plato’s Phaedo in the light, on the one hand of Aristotle’s De Anima and on the other of Bhagavad Gita (or Gita in short). It is opined that Socrates’s views, in Phaedo, are closer in spirit to the Hindu ideas of “atma” in the Upanishads and the Gita than to the Greek ideas of the “soul”. An attempt has been made to provide a background for this paradoxical event.

     

TRAINING GENERALIZED RECEPTIVE PREPOSITIONS IN RETARDED CHILDREN1

Three retarded children were trained, using prompting and reinforcement procedures, to respond correctly to three categories of prepositional requests: “put the___ next to the___”, “put the___under the___”, and “put the___on top of the___”. Training sessions were alternated with probe sessions throughout the study. During training, a child was trained to respond to one request (e.g., “put the doll next to the cup”); during probing, the child was tested for generalization of this training to untrained requests. Responses to untrained requests were never prompted nor reinforced. The results showed that, as requests from one category were trained, the children's responses to the untrained requests of that category became increasingly correct. As discriminations among two or more categories were trained, the children's responses to the untrained requests of those categories also became increasingly correct. Thus, the methods employed appear to be successful in training generalized receptive discrimination among prepositional categories and possibly can be utilized in training other generalized receptive language skills.     

Irigaray on the Problem of Subjectivity1

In Speculum of the Other Woman (1974), Luce Irigaray argues that “any theory of the subject has always been appropriated by the masculine.” This paper offers an analysis of Irigaray's critique of subjectivity and examines the psychological mechanism referred to as “the phallic economy of castration.” A different way of conceiving the relation between subject and object is explored by imagining a new subject of desire.     

Priming effect in affirmative complex conditional connectives

We report the results of an experiment that examined the mental representations underlying the comprehension of complex conditional connectives (such as “A, on condition that B”) and the conditional if (such as “A, if B”). The mental representations during the comprehension stage were analysed using a “priming methodology”. The experiment showed that participants read the possibility “A and not-B” faster when it was primed by “A, if B” than when it was primed by “A, on condition that B”. The finding suggests that people understand the sentence “A, on condition that B” as biconditional; other possibilities (“A and B”, “not-A and B”, “not-A and not-B”) were primed equally by both connectives. We discuss the implications of this for current theories of reasoning.     

The paradox of evolution

In the second (and expanded) version of Origin of the Species, Darwin introduces the term “advanced progressive development” in an attempt to describe the development of the more complex species from the simpler ones. More than 100 years have passed since Darwin tried to qualify and conceptualize the directional question of evolution, and very little progress has been made regarding the subject. The appearance of the species, from the simple to the more complex, is today an empirical fact, one which is no longer dependent upon any theory, including that of Darwin. This work examines the subject of advanced development in evolution by attempting to answer a few basic questions: What parameters may be used to evaluate complexity? Can any rules or order be identified as to the development of the species? Is the mechanism of “natural selection” sufficient to explain the direction or ‘purpose’ of evolution? Can the human race be included within the “rules” of Darwin's evolutionary theory?

The purpose of this essay is to develop and represent a new conceptual framework. Through this, it will be possible to offer a principle answer to all four questions.     

Books Available for Review

The frontispiece of the Blacky Pictures was projected to groups of junior and senior high school students; stories were obtained from 72 males and 64 females. A comparable slide of “Whitey the cat” provided the stimulus for stories from an additional 71 male and 71 female students. Identification responses were assumed to occur when a subject referred to a sexually ambiguous, cartoon character as being of the same sex as the subject. When this operational definition of identification was employed, female subjects did not identify more with “Whitey the cat” than with “Blacky the dog;” in fact, over 95% of the female subjects referred to the main character as masculine regardless of which stimulus was presented. Male and female responses were essentially indistinguishable. There was no significant difference between male and female subjects in identifying the cartoon sibling as female. The results are interpreted in terms of linguistic and other socio-cultural determinants rather than in terms of psychodynamic factors. Caution is urged in the interpretation of alleged cross-sex identification responses in the verbal productions of females on projective techniques.     

Upward versus Downward Anchoring in Frequency Judgments of Social Facts

Frequency estimation of social facts in two methods of judgment elicitation was investigated. In the “narrow-range” condition, subjects answered questions in the format: “Out of 100 incidents, how many belong to category X?” In the “wide-range” condition, the frequency for the same event was assessed with respect to “Out of 10,000”. Judged frequencies in the wide-range condition were divided by 100, and were compared with the corresponding judgments in the narrow-range condition. Such comparisons were made for low-frequency and high-frequency events. Previous research has shown that, for low-frequency events, judged frequencies are proportionally greater in the narrow-range than in the wide-range condition. These results reflect cognitive processes of implicit anchoring, whereby judged frequencies lie close to small numbers within the response ranges provided. I call this process “downward anchoring,” and predicted that this tendency would be replicated in the present study. Moreover, I predicted that assessments about high-frequency events would evoke similar cognitive processes operating in the opposite direction. By such “upward anchoring,” judged frequencies would lie close to relatively larger numbers within the given response ranges. Consequently, I predicted that judged frequencies for high-frequency events would be proportionally greater in the wide-range condition than in the narrow-range condition. These predictions were confirmed.     

Petitioner's Attire and Petition Signing by Peace Demonstrators: A Field Experiment1

Two female experimenters, one dressed as a “hippie” and the other wearing “straight” dress, solicited signatures for an anti-war petition at the April 1971 Washington peace demonstration. Although the petition was identical in both conditions, and a large degree of attitudinal homogeneity in the subject population could be assumed, the hippie condition produced more signatures, more subjects who signed without looking at the petition, and attracted a larger number of unsolicited signatures. These differences were attributed to the effect of implied attitude (reference group) similarity between experimenters and subjects in the hippie and dissimilarity in the straight condition; in-group members were more effective than out-group members, despite experimenter-subject similarity in explicit attitudes under both conditions.