Effects of a pre-aversive stimulus upon oddity performance in monkeys

Two monkeys (Macaca mulatta) were trained to perform an oddity discrimination using automatically projected patterned stimuli. After criteria for both response and discrimination stability were met, a tone followed by shock was superimposed upon the ongoing behavior. Each 60-sec tone was terminated with the onset of a 0.3-sec, 1 to 1.5-ma electric shock. During the tone, baseline responding was partially suppressed but discrimination performance was little altered from the pre-tone period. When shock was raised to 2 to 3 ma, responding was further suppressed, but discrimination performance was again essentially unaltered.     

Effects of leader sex,subordinate sex,and subordinate performance on the use of influence strategies

The study examined the effects of leader sex, subordinate sex, and subordinate performance on leaders' use of influence strategies. Forty-two male and 42 female engineering undergraduates participated in role-playing situations. Relative to females, males reported a greater likelihood of using such influence strategies as negative sanction, assertiveness, reward, and exchange. In general, subjects tended to employ more of negative sanction and assertiveness and less of reward and exchange when dealing with poorly performing subordinates than with well-performing subordinates. While the subordinate sex had little impact, few interactions were noted. Implications of these findings both for those in leadership roles and for future research are discussed.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Australian Bicentennial Meeting of Social Psychologists at Leura Bluemountains, Australia, August 1988. I thank Managal Dev, S. Pal, A. K. Tripathi, and Sanjay Tripathi for their help in collecting the data. I also extend my gratitude to an anonymous reviewer, and to Bijoy Boruah and Kanika Tandon for helpful comments.     

Effects of age and sex on reciprocal tapping performance

Using a reciprocal tapping task (Fitts's task), the speed and accuracy of small-amplitude motor movements of the hand were measured for 62 men and 84 women, 20 to 89 yr. of age. Men and women in their 20s and 30s performed similarly, although men in their 20s displayed a tendency to trade accuracy in favor of speed. Movement time increased noticeably for both men and women beginning with the 40s decade and continued to increase through the 80s decade. Error rates were lower for women than men and were relatively uniform for both men and women across all age decades past 30 yr. Older subjects of both sexes appeared to sacrifice speed (slowed down) to maintain accuracy on the task. The slope of the linear regression relating movement time to task difficulty was steeper for men than for women and increased more for men than women with advancing age, indicating that older men slowed down relatively more than older women on more difficult tasks.     

Establishing discriminative stimulus control within generalized oddity performance,without reinforcement

In two oddity learning studies with children, subjects were reinforced for oddity (or nonoddity) responding on line-tilt or dot numerosity problems. Interposed form and color problems were not reinforced. No instructions to make oddity choices were given. In Experiment I it was found that reinforcement for oddity or nonoddity responding on tilt and numerosity problems produced the corresponding tendency toward oddity or nonoddity performance on these problems and also on the nonreinforced form and color problems. These results show a generalized oddity phenomenon similar to generalized imitation. In Experiment II a third type of nonreinforced problem was presented in this same format: compound stimuli permitting either a color or a form solution. It was found that immediate prior training with nonreinforced form problems, interpolated among the reinforced tilt and numerosity problems, led to form-oddity choices in the compound problems. Similarily, color pretraining produced color-oddity choices. These results show that selective discriminative stimulus control can be obtained in oddity learning, without reinforcement for choices on either of the two dimensions involved.     

Tactual learning and cross-modal transfer of an oddity problem in young children

The ability to solve tactual oddity problems, and transfer of oddity learning across the visual and the tactual modalities, was studied in 3- to 8-year-old children (N = 294). Oddity tasks consisting of one odd and two equal objects were made from stimuli that were easily discriminated visually and tactually. The results showed that tactual oddity learning increased gradually with age. The growth in tactual performance begins later than visual, suggesting that children are more adept at encoding visual stimulus invariances or relational properties than tactual ones. Bidirectional cross-modal transfer of oddity learning was found, supporting the suggestion that such transfer occurs when training and transfer oddity tasks share a common vehicle dimension. The cross-modal effect also shows that oddity learning is independent of a specific modality-labeled perceptual context. Our results are consistent with the view that development of oddity learning depends on a single rather than a dual process, and that the oddity relation may be treated as an amodal stimulus feature.     

Intelligence, sex and psychomotor performance

This experiment investigated the effect of intelligence and sex on two simple psychomotor performance tests—Backward Figure Writing (BFW) and Backward Alphabet Writing (BAW) in 180 high-school students (90 boys and 90 girls). Three levels of intelligence, high, medium and low were taken. Ss being first matched on Extraversion and Neuroticism. Each S worked for 5 min in pre-test period, rested for 1 min and again worked for 2 min in post-rest period. Results indicated that in pre- and post-rest BFW, increase in speed of response was a direct function of increase in intelligence. Similar results were obtained in pre-rest BAW. In post-rest BAW, however, highest performance scores were obtained by the group, average in intelligence, followed by high and low intelligence groups. Sex did not emerge as a significant determiner of performance in BFW. In BAW, means favoured boys in both pre- and post-rest conditions and the F-ratio for sex emerged significant in post-rest BAW only. None of the interactions emerged as significant. The comparison of effects in two independent variables indicated the task-specific nature of various psychomotor tasks.     

Effects of stimulus color, pattern, and practice on sex differences in mental rotations task performance.

Redundant color information improved performance for both sexes on the Shepard Mental Rotations Task (MRT; Shepard & Metzler, 1971). Absolute score gains for women were larger than those for men; therefore, relative improvement was greater. Substantial practice effects, also favoring women, were apparent in both studies. Study 1 showed that redundant color improved performance by 0.25 SD. Study 2 demonstrated that redundant black-and-white pattern information did not have any effect; a second visuospatial channel, redundant color, was a critical factor in improving scores of men and women on difficult mental rotations tasks.     

Effects of fixed-ratio sample and choice response requirements upon oddity matching

Three pigeons were trained on oddity matching in which either 1, 4, 8, 16, or 32 sample-key observing responses were required to turn off the sample stimuli and turn on the comparison stimuli. Oddity accuracy increased when the observing-response requirement was raised and decreased when the requirement was lowered. Next, while the observing requirement was maintained at one response, the number of responses required to the comparison stimuli was either 1, 4, 8, 16, or 32. Under these conditions, choice was defined as the comparison that first accumulated the required number of responses. In general, increasing the comparison-response requirement decreased accuracy and lowering the comparison requirement increased accuracy. The fixed-ratio observing requirements appeared to facilitate control by stimuli serving an instructional function.     

Effects of sex role stereotyping among European American students on domestic violence culpability attributions

Effects of European American students' sex role stereotyping and domestic violence participants' race and relationship intimacy were examined for culpability attributions. In addition to a man's responsibility rating and a sentencing measure, five factors were identified from the dependent measures; these were Sympathy with Man, Incident as Abusive, Generalness of Incident, Seriousness of Incident, and Man as Abuser. Results indicated that sex role stereotyping was influential in culpability attributions, as those with traditional orientations showed a favorable bias toward the man, particularly a married man. Traditionalists provided a shorter sentence for the man and thought the incident less abusive when the woman was African American, in comparison to egalitarians. Both egalitarians and traditionalists expressed more sympathy toward the man when the woman was African American and married. Although we had anticipated higher culpability ratings for women involved in interracial relationships, we found that the European American man was thought less responsible when the woman was African American, but no differences emerged when the woman was European American. It is suggested future research examine the specific content of various stereotypic subtypes of actors involved in domestic violence and how these stereotypic subtypes bias culpability attributions.Appreciation is extended to an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.Portions of this research were presented at the 1994 biennial meeting of the American Psychology-Law Society, Santa Fe, NM.     

Effects of counselor sex,student sex,and student attractiveness on counselors' judgments

Thirty-two male and thirty-two female high school counselors in a large metropolitan school district were provided with routine student profile data and asked to make predictions about the student's potential for post-high school education and to suggest occupations for the student to explore. All data reviewed by the counselors were identical except for a photograph of the student attached to the profile. Within counselor sex groups, counselors were randomly assigned to one of the following four photograph conditions: (a) attractive female; (b) unattractive female; (c) attractive male; and (d) unattractive male. Male subjects were found to discriminate on the basis of student sex when they suggested occupations for the student to explore. Predictions of post-high school education and the social status of suggested occupations were not found to be related to counselor sex, student sex, or student attractiveness.     

Academic achievement and attributions among college students: Effects of gender and sex typing

Attribution questionnaires were completed by 137 students in an introductory economics course immediately preceding the first exam in their class and immediately after their exams were returned. Results indicate that males and females used attributions differently, although not as a function of perceived outcome. In contrast, sex-typing groups varied their attribution as a function of perceived outcome. Self-esteem is proposed as a possible mediating variable. It was concluded that sex typing in relation to perceived successful and unsuccessful performance is an important variable in attributional research.     

Rigidity,instability and dimensionality

The paper takes a detailed look at a surprising new aspect of the dynamics of rigid bodies. Far from the usual consideration of rigid body theory as a merely technical chapter of classical physics, I demonstrate here that there are solutions to the conservation equations of mechanics that imply the spontaneous, unpredictable splitting of a rigid body in free rotation, something that has direct implications for the problem of causality. The paper also shows that the instability revealed in indeterminist splitting processes does not depend solely on the bodies’ inertial properties but also on the number of dimensions of the physical space they inhabit. The paper concludes with a conjecture on the behavior of rigid bodies in four-dimensional space.     

Cognitive engagement variations among students of different ability level and sex in a computer problem solving game

The study investigated the cognitive engagement processes used by more and less successful learners in a computer problem solving game. These engagement variations were also related to sex and ability differences among students. Performance and engagement were monitored interactively as students learned a computer problem solving game; student comments and notes were also recorded. Results showed the records of more and less successful students to be distinguished by the spontaneous use of self-regulated learning processes — a sophisticated form of cognitive engagement. More successful students also appeared to shift cognitive engagement levels in response to computer game feedback. Success on the computer task and cognitive engagement variations were correlated with student differences in both ability and sex in this sample.This study was funded by the National Institute of Education, Grant No. 400-83-0017. Opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this study do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Institute of Education. The authors wish to thank Marcia Linn and Charles Fisher for their helpful advice, and Susanne Lajoie who served as second rater. Mary Rohrkemper and the Education and Child Development doctoral students at Bryn Mawr College also provided critical suggestions.