Assumptions underlying psychological testing

Tests purporting to reflect the learning aptitudes of school children differ much more than generally is recognized. However, error in assesing such learning aptitude inheres much more in the users of the tests than in the tests themselves. Assumptions fundamental to such assessment, or even testing, are considered. It is particularly important that the assessor, or tester, constantly be sensitive to the nature of the relationship between the psychological demands of test items or tests and the learning demands confronting the child. Even tests that generally are grossly or crudely used often can yield psychoeducationally meaninful information if their results are differentially perceived in terms of the light they throw on the psychological operations fundamental to learning, “process,” as contrasted with that thrown on the results of the functioning of such operations, “product.”     

Driye-leyel and flexibility in paired-associate nonsense-syllable learning

“High-anxiety” and “low-anxiety” subjects, selected for extreme scores on the Taylor Anxiety Scale, learned a list of paired-associate nonsense syllables in the belief that they were undergoing an intelligence test. Both groups were then given a second list of paired associates to learn, the stimulus-items being the same as those of the first list but the responses being changed. Before the presentation of the second list, half the subjects in each group were given anxiety-increasing instructions and the remaining half were given reassuring instructions.

The results verified two predictions made from Hull's behaviour theory, using the concept of fear or anxiety as a secondary drive:—“high anxiety” subjects took more trials to master the second learning task than “low-anxiety” subjects; and there was a significant interaction between initial anxiety-level and type of instructions, such that “high-anxiety” subjects who received drive-increasing instructions had a worse performance in the second part than all other sub-groups. There was no indication that “low-anxiety” subjects were significantly affected by the type of instructions received. The “high-anxiety” group had greater difficulty than the “low-anxiety” group in learning the first list, but the difference was non-significant.     

The cholinergic neurotransmitter system in human memory and dementia: A review

The present paper reviews three types of evidence implicating the role of acetylcholine in human memory and dementia: (1) neuropathological evidence that the cholinergic transmitter system is depleted in Alzheimer-type dementia; (2) psychopharmacological studies that have employed “cholinergic blockade” as a model of cholinergic depletion; and (3) clinical studies of cholinergic “replacement” therapy in Alzheimer-type dementia. The evidence that the cholinergic system is depleted in Alzheimer-type dementia has been complemented by the finding that cholinergic blockade in healthy subjects causes a substantial learning (or “acquisition”) deficit in episodic memory. The overall results of studies of replacement therapy have generally been disappointing, but a few have reported benefits in recall and recognition tests. The role of the cholinergic system in many aspects of memory remains to be elucidated; but it seems unlikely that cholinergic depletion accounts for all aspects of the memory disorder in Alzheimer-type dementia, and possibly the depletions of other neurotransmitters also contribute to the memory impairment.     

Visual pattern recognition: Size preprocessing re-examined

Template theories of visual pattern recognition assume the operation of preprocessing routines to deal with irrelevancies such as discrepancies in stimulus size. In three experiments where size was an irrelevant dimension, observers classified pairs of forms as either “same” or “different”. In Experiment I, the classification “different” was required when the stimuli shared the same form but a different orientation, and “same” when the stimuli shared the same form and orientation. Under these conditions RT was an increasing function of the magnitude of the size disparity between stimuli with equal slopes for “same” and “different” judgements. In Experiment II, “different” classifications were made to stimuli that had different forms, and “same” to figures with the same form. This stimulus set produced a size disparity function that interacted with response type; “different” responses had a shallower slope. Experiment III consisted of a mixed stimulus set drawn from both Experiment I and II. Stimuli that produced additive effects of size disparity and response type in Experiment I now produced an interaction between these two factors similar to the one observed in Experiment II. The results of these experiments are interpreted as evidence that previous contradictory results reported in the literature stem from differences in the way the stimulus set is constructed, and that size transformations can not be a necessary operation, at least when “different” judgements are made. The results are problematic for the view that size disparity effects in matching tasks are easily interpretable in terms of a primitive size normalization stage that precedes any comparison operations.     

Discriminability and central intermittency in same-different judgements

Four sets of paired visual stimuli (OO, XX, XO, or OX) were judged by 48 subjects to be either “same” or “different.” Decision latencies of the same and different judgement were studied as a function of the inter-stimulus interval (ISI). In Experiments I and II, in which stimulus durations were 70 millisec., decision latencies showed marked increases when the ISI was reduced to 100 millisec., but in Experiments III and IV, in which the stimulus durations were only 40 millisec., comparable increases did not occur until the ISI was reduced to 50 millisec. These increases were more marked for “same” than for “different” judgements, although overall decision latencies were generally shorter for “same” judgements. The effects of varying ISIs and stimulus durations are interpreted in terms of masking; they fail to support an hypothesis of central intermittency.     

Changes in behaviour associated with a nervous system poison (DDT.)

The main purpose of the investigation was to show that behaviour measures can be used to investigate the effects of those toxic drugs which produce “biochemical lesions” in the nervous system although the nature of the lesions still remains undetermined. The advantages of this approach are twofold. First, a psychological study may help to uncover the initial effects of the drug, and thus provide evidence which may lead to the ultimate understanding of the action of the drug. Second, and of value from the practical point of view, such a method may be used to detect toxicity.

In this study D.D.T. was used. Two experiments were performed on one control and four experimental groups of albino rats. Problem solving behaviour, speed and pattern of locomotion, and reaction to stress involving visual stimuli were observed.

Problem solving behaviour was found to be unaffected by the drug; no changes were found in speed of locomotion, but pattern of locomotion revealed that “ataxia” was one of the initial effects of D.D.T. poisioning. The experimental animals were found to be generally less reactive to “stress”; “hyper-irritability” reported in previous studies being explicable in terms of exaggerated motor responses.

The results obtained on “ataxia” showed that the procedure adopted here could be used to detect chronic D.D.T. toxicity in rats.     

Does it all go together when it goes? The nineteenth Bartlett memorial lecture

As groups of people age, the differences in the cognitive abilities of the most and least able become more extreme. This increase in between-individual variance is accompanied by an increase in within-individual variance: the difference between individuals' levels of performance on their best and least well retained skills. The implications of increasing between-individual variance are discussed in terms of the range of different factors that may affect cognitive ageing. Increases in within-individual variance are discussed in terms of differences betweeen “fluid” and “crystallized” abilities. The usefulness of this distinction and its functional implications are questioned. The hypothesis that age-related declines in “fluid” abilities are best modelled in terms of declines in a single factor is evaluated. Evidence is presented of disparate rates of decline, even of “fluid” cognitive abilities, such as performance on IQ tests, ability on information-processing tasks, and efficiency on memory tasks. Data from large-scale cross-sectional studies suggests that cognitive skills do not “all go together when they go”, but that there may, rather, be characteristic patterns, or syndromes, of cognitive ageing.     

Information processing by performers and observers in a paired associate learning task

The effects of two training procedures on learning and performance are compared. Performers select a response alternative for each stimulus on Trial 1 and receive feedback in terms of “Right” or “Wrong”. Observers receive the same information by listening to the experimenter. Experiment I tests the hypothesis that performers and observers are using a different learning strategy when there are only two response alternatives available for each stimulus on Trial 1. A recognition procedure was used on Trial 2; each stimulus was followed by four alternatives, two of them being the same as presented on Trial 1. Subjects have to recognize the two “old” alternatives. Performers are always better at recognizing the chosen alternative, whereas observers are better at recognizing the correct alternative. Experiment II extends the comparison between performers and observers to a task with four response alternatives on Trial 1. There are no longer differences in performance between the two training procedures.     

Effects of visual familiarity on “same” and “different” decision processes

An experiment was conducted in which subjects matched upper and lower case versions of well-known abbreviations, such as BBC and etc, and meaningless controls. “Same” RT showed a familiarity effect for upper case versions of abbreviations such as BBC and GPO, but not for the lower case versions bbc and gpo. The converse did not occur for abbreviations such as etc, which were thought to occur most frequently in lower case. The “different” RT was inhibited by familiarity, with pairs such as IBM GPO being classified less rapidly than their lower case versions or controls. These effects occurred for subjects instructed to report “No” for “same” displays and “Yes” for “different” displays as well as for subjects given a conventional decision-report assignment. Some implications of these results for an account of the manner in which familiarity affects graphemic comparison processes are considered.     

Recognition and attention

Sternberg has suggested that a possible way of achieving identification of degraded stimuli would be to execute “preprocessing” operations prior to recognition. Such operations would have some parallels with the “filtering” operations, suggested by Broadbent and others, for perceptual selection and attention. But when trying, in this paper, to consider how such operations could be implemented, some rather non-trivial problems emerge. Experimentally, these doubts find support in visual selection tasks of quite general character, in that filtering does not appear to take place. It seems, however, that these problems may be successfully overcome by some simple, though implicative, conceptual changes. The main implication is that effective focal attention is rather likely to be achieved through a process that is best described as “context-sensitive” selection.     

Inducing a Rule in Wason's 2-4-6 Task: A Test of the Information-Quantity and Goal-Complementarity Hypotheses

In the standard 2-4-6 induction task, subjects are instructed to discover the rule generating sequences of three numbers by inventing number triples for which they receive immediate feedback. The rule is “ascending numbers”. Performance is greatly aided with Dual Goal (DG) instructions that ask subjects to discover two rules, one that generates “Dax” triples (equivalent to “yes” instances with Single Goal [SG] instructions) and another that generates “Med” triples (equivalent to “no” instances). The present study eliminates two explanations for this effect suggested by Wharton, Cheng, and Wickens (1993). Experiment 1 tested their Information-Quantity hypothesis that the effect results simply from the DG subjects testing more triples prior to proposing a rule. Our DG subjects were more likely to solve the problem and produced more “negative” triples than SG subjects when both groups generated exactly 15 triples. Two further groups received feedback only after generating all 15 triples, and again DG subjects were more likely to solve the problem and to generate more “negative” triples. Experiment 2 tested Wharton et al.'s Goal-Complementarity hypothesis that success under DG instructions hinges on preserving the complementary representation of the two rules. We compared SG instructions with three types of DG instructions that suggested different types of triples (Dax, Med, both Dax and Med, neither Dax nor Med). DG instructions were more effective in promoting successful rule discovery regardless of differences in rule complementarity. Our analysis of the heterogeneity of the examplars generated with DG instructions in both experiments suggest that success on the 2-4-6 task is as much a consequence of the breadth of hypotheses that subjects entertain as it is a consequence of the testing strategy.     

Moray revisited: High-priority affective stimuli and visual search

Previous research offers conflicting suggestions about whether “high-priority” verbal stimuli such as an individual's own name or emotionally charged words automatically grab attention and/or can be detected without the usual capacity limitations. Nine experiments investigated this issue, using visual search through displays of words. In speeded search tasks, the subject's own name was detected more quickly than other targets, but in no case were search slopes flat enough to suggest parallel search or “pop-out”. Further, names were not found to be unusually potent distractors. Emotionally charged words were neither more readily detected as targets nor more potent as distractors than neutral words. Acomparison of observers' accuracy in searching briefly exposed simultaneous vs. successive displays provided further evidence that search for “high-priority” word targets is subject to the same severe capacity limitations as those that are found with search for neutral words.     

Bigram frequency counts and anagram lists

In the first part of this paper bigram frequency counts are given for the first letter-pairs, last letter-pairs and “other” letter-pairs of words of more than three letters. A short discussion of the use and relevance of such tables is given. In the second part, lists of anagram-pairs of words are given for words of length three or more letters, together with approximate percentages of occurrence of such “anagrammatical” words in the English language.     

A study of position habits induced by reward and “frustration”

Predictions from Maier's theory of “frustration”-instigated behaviour have been tested in an experimental situation differing significantly from that in which the theory was propounded yet containing the central element of “frustration”—the insoluble problem.

A water discrimination unit was employed in which the performance of rats would be observed during attacks on insoluble problems, position problems or symbol problems.

Two groups, each containing ten Wistar albino rats, served as subjects. The research design consisted of the following phases: preliminary training, development of position responses, exposure to a symbol-reward problem with 50 per cent, punishment and exposure to a symbol-reward problem with 100 per cent, punishment. The design differed for the two groups only at the phase in which the position responses were established. During this phase one group was exposed to a position-reward problem and the other to an insoluble problem.

Position responses were established as frequently under position-“frustration” (position stereotypes) as under position-reward (position habits) conditions. Position stereotypes were more rigid—more resistant to extinction—than position habits under conditions of 50 per cent, punishment. Position stereotypes were as readily extinguished under 100 per cent, punishment as were position habits under 30 per cent, punishment.

The first two observations conform to predictions made from Maier's theory. The third does not. That is to say, not all situations containing the basic elements of “frustration” give rise to stereotyped behaviour patterns which are as rigid or “fixated” as Maier's theory would predict. It is a reasonable hypothesis that the characteristics of stereotyped responses established in certain “frustration” situations may be described adequately in terms of conventional learning principles without the necessity of resorting to a distinction between “goal-motivated” and “frustration-instigated” behaviour.     

Theory of mind for learning and teaching: the nature and role of explanation

The relationship between “theory of mind” and teaching is deep and complex. We focus on one particularly powerful link that is based on the role of children's psychological explanations in their learning. Psychological explanations involve explaining persons’ actions and lives as the causes and consequences of their mental states. We begin by showing that psychological explanations are central to children's developing theories of mind—they are part of the mechanism for development in this domain. We then review theory and data suggesting that psychological explanations are also critically important for learning and being taught more generally.     

The role of two types of outcome on storage and retrieval processes in memory

Two experiments are reported which demonstrate the typical finding of better performance on responses given positive outcomes as compared to performance on resiponses given negative and neutral outcomes. These effects of reinforcement are studied in more detail in the context of storage and retrieval processes. “Right” or “wrong” and monetary gain or loss were used as outcomes in the experiments. Both these types of outcome were found to have similar effects on storage, while the former tended to affect retrieval more than the latter outcomes did. The results clearly reject the notion that an outcome is stored along with the response to facilitate retrieval. A prerequisite for such a facilitation is a presentation of cues for retrieval at the time of test.     

Nonstutterers'' perceptions of stuttering and speech difficulty

Two versions of Woolf's (1967) Perception of Stuttering Inventory (PSI) were administered to nonstuttering college students in three experiments. In one (Woolf's published version) the word “stuttering” appeared and in another [a version developed by Daly, Oakes, Breen, and Mishler (1981)] “stuttering” was replaced by “speech difficulty.” Nonstutterers' scores on the PSI were found to be affected by knowledge of—or attention to—“stuttering” or “stutterers” as well as orientation toward speech or speech pathology. It was concluded that a total PSI score of 5 is presently a more defensible criterion of normality for stutterers than the more commonly used score of 10.     

MizarMode—an integrated proof assistance tool for the Mizar way of formalizing mathematics

The Emacs authoring environment for Mizar (MizarMode) is today the authoring tool of choice for many (probably the majority of) Mizar authors. This article describes the MizarMode and focuses on the proof assistance functions and tools available in it.

We start with the explanation of the design principles behind the Mizar system, and show how these design principles—mainly the concentration on simple and intuitive human-oriented proofs—have helped Mizar in developing and maintaining a very large body of formalized mathematics.

Mizar is a non-programmable and non-tactical verifier: the proofs are developed in the traditional “write—compile—correct” software programming loop. While this method is in the beginning more laborious than the methods employed in tactical and programmable proof assistants, it makes the “proof code” in the long-run more readable, maintainable and reusable. This seems to be a crucial factor for a long-term and large-scale formalization effort.

MizarMode has been designed with the aim to facilitate this kind of proof development by a number of “code-generating”, “code-browsing” and “code-searching” methods, and tools programmed or integrated within it. These methods and tools now include, e.g., the automated generation of proof skeletons, semantic browsing of the articles and abstracts, structured viewing, proof advice using trained machine learning tools like the Mizar Proof Advisor, deductive tools like MoMM, etc. We give an overview of these proof-assistance tools and their integration in the MizarMode, and also discuss some emerging and future extensions such as integration of external theorem proving assistance.     

Reward, novelty and spontaneous alternation

It has been suggested that rats' propensity for “win-shift” behaviour in spatial memory and spontaneous alternation tests reflects a species-specific foraging strategy which leads them to avoid places where they have recently found food. An alternative explanation is that they avoid places which are familiar. In three experiments using a T-maze, we evaluated these accounts by comparing the probability of avoiding or re-entering a recently visited arm, as a function of whether food had or had not been found on the previous visit. Each rat received a series of 16 exposure-test trial pairs over 8 days. Neither alternation nor repetition of the previous choice was differentially reinforced. Experiments I and II forced rats to enter a specific arm before a subsequent choice, and differed in the overall probability of reward; in Experiment III all choices were free. In all three experiments the probability of alternating was greater after nonreward than after reward. This effect occurred more reliably on later tests within a day, little difference appearing on earlier tests. It was concluded that there was no evidence for a spontaneous “win-shift” tendency as such, and that these and other results can be adequately accounted for by a combination of exploratory tendencies (spontaneous alternation) and the conventional effects of reward.