Environmental control and the perception of control

The perception of control may be established if an individual is provided with an opportunity to choose and if the outcome of the choice is moderately uncertain. In turn, perceived control has been shown to enhance motivation and performance. In the present experiment, the effects of uncertainty about environmental control were examined by measuring the speed with which choices were made. When control was implicitly provided, decision latencies were shorter than when control was either explicitly available or not available at all. Paradoxically, providing information about control may reduce uncertainty and thereby diminish the perception of control. The contribution of control and choice to the development of perceived control is discussed.This research is based on a thesis by the first author submitted in partial fulfillment of the master of science degree at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and was supported by a grant from the U.S. Army Research Office to the second author.     

Structured flow of control in a laboratory control language

Seven basic forms of structured flow of control, sequential execution, IF-THEN-ELSE, DO-WHILE, REPEAT-UNTIL, SELECT-CASE, ITERATIVE-DO, and LOOP-EXITIF-ENDLOOP, are described. The application of the forms is illustrated with examples of typical problems from the psychology laboratory. The feasibility of implementing the basic forms is demonstrated by showing how they have been incorporated in a high-level language for controlling human learning, memory, and perception experiments.     

The deliberate control of emotional experience through control of expressions

Recent research suggests that deliberate manipulation of expressive behaviours might self-regulate emotional experiences. Eighty people were first induced to adopt emotional expressions in a successfully disguised procedure that identified whether their feelings were affected by their expressive behaviour when they were unaware of the nature and purpose of that behaviour. They then deliberately attempted to change emotional feelings by adopting or inhibiting emotional behaviours, or by focusing on or being distracted from situational cues for emotion. Participants more responsive to their own behaviour in the disguised procedure felt more intensely when they adopted emotional behaviours, and less intensely when they inhibited those behaviours. In contrast, people identified as unresponsive to their own emotional behaviour were most affected by deliberate focus on or distraction from emotional thoughts. The effectiveness of techniques for emotional self-regulation depends on a match with characteristics of the person.     

Context-specific adjustment of cognitive control: Transfer of adaptive control sets

Cognitive control protects processing of relevant information from interference by irrelevant information. The level of this processing selectivity can be flexibly adjusted to different control demands (e.g., frequency of conflict) associated with a certain context, leading to the formation of specific context–control associations. In the present study we investigated the robustness and transferability of the acquired context–control demands to new situations. In three experiments, we used a version of the context-specific proportion congruence (CSPC) paradigm, in which each context (e.g., location) is associated with a specific conflict frequency, determining high and low control demands. In a learning phase, associations between context and control demands were established. In a subsequent transfer block, stimulus–response mappings, whole task sets, or context–control demands changed. Results showed an impressive robustness of context–control associations, as context-specific adjustments of control from the learning phase were virtually unaffected by new stimuli and tasks in the transfer block. Only a change of the context–control demand eliminated the context-specific adjustment of control. These findings suggest that context–control associations that have proven to be adaptive in the past are continuously applied despite major changes in the task structure as long as the context–control associations remain the same.     

Illusion of control and behavioral control attempts in obsessive-compulsive disorder

The present research used the illusion-of-control paradigm to examine the relationships among obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms, behavioral control attempts, and illusory sense of control. Participants were presented with a preprogrammed sequence of aversive and neutral visual stimuli and were encouraged to attempt to control the sequence with keyboard presses. Participants rated their perceived level of control 3 times during the task. In addition, the authors used the repetitiveness of keyboard presses as a measure of rigid, compulsive-like behavior. In Study 1, this procedure was administered to a sample of 55 students who also completed measures of OCD and depression. In Study 2, the task was administered to 22 participants with OCD and 22 matched participants without OCD. In line with predictions, OCD symptoms were correlated with higher illusory sense of control and with more repetitive behavioral control attempts. The authors discuss the central role of control in OCD and specifically the relationships between need for control and compulsive rituals, which may be conceptualized as means for achieving an illusory sense of control over stressful life events.     

Injury control

Injuries are now the cause of more deaths in children than the next six most frequent causes combined. It is estimated that 8.7 million injuries occur each year. Together with noninjury motor vehicle accidents and fires, these accidents cost the nation an estimated $107.3 billion. The major approaches to injury control have involved legislation, health education, and behavioral strategies. In this article, the research evidence on the effectiveness of these strategies is reviewed, and suggestions for additional research are proposed.     

Sperm control

Evidence is accumulating that in many species, males deliver more sperm to some females and fewer to others depending on how valuable they perceive the copulation. Do humans have any control over the number of sperm they ejaculate?     

Perceived control

Permitting subjects to choose materials to be learned on a task enhances performance on that task. These results support the idea that choice increases the learner's perception of control, thereby enhancing motivation and performance. The purpose of the present experiments was to determine whether choosing responses to be learned on a paired-associate task would also benefit performance on a reaction-time task. Half of the subjects selected their responses to be learned on a paired-associate task while the remaining subjects were assigned responses. In one experiment, subjects then performed both the PA and RT tasks simultaneously, while in the second experiment the RT task was performed following the choice/force procedure. Providing the learner with the opportunity to choose produced a generalized increase in motivation, which resulted in significantly faster responding on the nonchosen RT task. Also discussed are the limitations of the effects of perceived control.     

Parental control in child rearing and multidimensional locus of control.

272 French-Canadian adolescent boys and 286 girls took part in a study of the association between parental control in child-rearing and Levenson's locus of control dimensions. Analysis showed relations between parental control and the two external dimensions but not with the internal one. Age and gender did not contribute to the various relationships.     

Comparison of stimulus control and reinforcement control effects on imitative behavior

An attempt was made to evaluate reinforcement and stimulus control of imitative and non-imitative behavior. The imitative response required the subject to duplicate the experimenter's response by matching blocks that varied in color. The factor designed to evaluate stimulus control was fading, a procedure that systematically varies the differences between the imitative and non-imitative stimuli. The topography and duration of the non-imitative stimuli were faded in. The factors designed to evaluate reinforcement control were differential reinforcement of non-imitative behavior and time out from positive reinforcement. The results showed stimulus control of non-imitation to be more important than reinforcement control, and that reinforcing events were not sufficient to control non-imitation; while the arrangement of stimulus events was sufficient to control non-imitation. These results were related to studies providing evidence for the processes of discrimination and generalization.     

Motivational control of blocking

Hungry and thirsty rats lever pressed for food pellets in 1 visual stimulus (V1) and for a saline solution in another stimulus (V2). In a 2nd phase, the rats were made either hungry or thirsty and pressed for a starch solution in 2 stimulus compounds, each containing 1 of the visual cues and an auditory cue, that is, V1A1 and V2A2. On test, rats responded less to A1 than to A2 when hungry but less to A2 than to A1 when thirsty. Two further experiments replicated this selective blocking effect when the rats were both hungry and thirsty during Phase 2 and demonstrated that the magnitude of blocking was comparable to that observed when the reinforcer identity was held constant across the 2 phases.     

The desirability of control

The psychological construct of desirability of control was related to several theoretical statements (e.g., Kelley, 1971; White, 1959) and areas of current research (e.g., Glass & Singer, 1972; Deci, 1975) in psychology. A scale designed to measure individual differences in the general level of motivation to control the events in one's life was presented. The Desirability of Control Scale was found to have substantial internal consistency (.80) and test-retest reliability (.75), as well as discriminant validity from measures of locus of control (Rotter, 1966) and social desirability (Crowne & Marlowe, 1960). The results of an illusion of control study (cf. Langer, 1975) provided construct validation: only subjects high in the desire for control displayed a belief in personal control over chance outcomes. Construct validation was also provided from studies on learned helplessness and hypnosis. The practical, as well as theoretical, value of the instrument was discussed.This research was facilitated by National Science Foundation grant BNS78-08834 to Harris Cooper.