The effects of imagery instructions on total congenital blind recall

Abstract

Research on the performance of total congenital blind subjects in imagery tasks is of particular interest because it helps to evaluate the consequences of their lack of visual experience. The present paper examines some points which remained unclear in the preceding research on the effects of imagery instructions on the recall of blind subjects. In Experiment 1 it is shown that, in a free recall task of unrelated nouns, the blind may take advantage of imagery instructions, independently of the particular requirement to form either common or bizarre images. In Experiment 2 the multiple image processing deficit of the blind found by De Beni and Cornoldi (1988) was again observed, but the effect was not found when the same quantity of material had to be processed verbally. Results are interpreted as showing that, although the blind may follow imagery instructions, their visual handicap creates specific difficulties in creating interactive images involving several items at the same time.     

The effects of learning instructions and cueing on free recall

Eighty unrelated high-imagery words were presented for free recall learning in groups of four words each. Learning instructions were varied, with one group told to relate the words in each input group by means of images, another group told to use verbal (sentence) mediators, and the control group not given specific learning instructions. During recall, list items were presented as retrieval cues in some conditions. In comparison with the control condition, imagery and verbal mediation instructions produced greater recall, more clustering, and a largez number of instances per group recalled. When the retrieval cues were selected such that one cue came from each of the input groups and when the strength of within-group organization was quite high, Ss recalled more words and a larger number of input groups. It was concluded that instructions and cueing conditions influenced different aspects of the free recall process. Instructions influenced the organization of individual words into units, and cueing affected the retrieval of specific units.     

The effects of a variety of instructions on human fixed-interval performance

College students were instructed to press a button for points under a single reinforcement schedule or under a variety of reinforcement schedules. Instructions for a single schedule were either specific or minimal. Instructions on a variety of schedules involved specific instructions on eight different schedules of reinforcement. Subsequent to the varied training, responding under a fixed-interval schedule occurred at a low rate. Both the minimal and specific instruction training led to fixed-interval responding that was similar to the responding exhibited during training. These findings suggest that under certain conditions instructed behavior is sensitive to changes in contingencies.     

The influence of extinction and counterconditioning instructions on evaluative conditioning effects

In three experiments, we tested the influence of instructions about an allegedly upcoming extinction or counterconditioning phase on evaluative conditioning (EC) effects. After an acquisition phase in which neutral stimuli were related to positive or negative stimuli via instructions (Experiments 1 and 2a) or actual pairings (Experiment 2b), three different groups of participants were either informed that in the next phase the neutral stimuli would be presented without positive or negative stimuli (extinction instruction), that the neutral stimuli in the next phase would be paired with stimuli of the opposite valence than before (counterconditioning instruction), or received no further instructions. Afterwards, liking of the originally neutral stimuli was measured either with an evaluative rating (Experiment 1) or with an Implicit Association Test (IAT; Experiments 2a and 2b). EC was reduced in the counterconditioning condition of Experiment 1 and in the joint analysis of Experiments 2a and 2b. The extinction instruction led to a reduction of EC only in Experiment 1. Finally, whether the acquisition phase consisted of instructions about CS–US pairings (Experiment 2a) or the actual experience of CS–US pairings (Experiment 2b) did not significantly impact the observed changes in liking. Overall, our results suggest that similar mechanisms might mediate instruction- and experienced-based EC. Our results are in line with propositional models of EC but can be explained also by association formation models and dual process models of EC, provided that certain auxiliary assumptions are made.     

The effects of avoidant instructions on golf putting proficiency and kinematics

ObjectivesAlthough the effects of avoidant or negative instructions on skilled performance in sport has received little research attention, de la Pena, Murray, and Janelle (2008) reported recently that novice golfers who were instructed not to leave a putt short of a circle, overcompensated by leaving their putts significantly longer than at baseline, and vice versa. It is unclear, however, whether athletes' propensity to engage in over-compensatory behaviour is affected by their level of expertise.DesignTo address this unresolved issue, the present study investigated the influence of avoidant instructions on golfers' putting stroke proficiency (i.e., as measured by an index of putting performance and the direction in which putts are missed) and on their putting stroke performance (as measured by motion analysis).Methods14 high-skilled and 14 low-skilled golfers were required to putt from a distance of 2.5 m on a sloped surface which caused the ball to move left-to-right as it approached the hole. All participants performed in a condition in which they were given no instructions and in a condition in which they were instructed not to miss a putt in a specific direction (i.e., left or right of the hole).ResultsHigh-skilled golfers' overall putting proficiency was unaffected by avoidant instructions. In contrast, low-skilled golfers' performance was significantly degraded due to disruption of certain kinematic features of their putting stroke (e.g., putter path and forward-swing times).ConclusionsOver-compensatory behaviour was more prevalent amongst low-skilled than high-skilled golfers. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

The effects of spatial representation on memory for verbal navigation instructions

Three experiments investigated effects of mental spatial representation on memory for verbal navigation instructions. The navigation instructions referred to a grid of stacked matrices displayed on a computer screen or on paper, with or without depth cues, and presented as two-dimensional diagrams or a three-dimensional physical model. Experimental instructions either did or did not promote a three-dimensional mental representation of the space. Subjects heard navigation instructions, immediately repeated them, and then followed them manually on the grid. In all display and experimental instruction conditions, memory for the navigation instructions was reduced when the task required mentally representing a three-dimensional space, with movements across multiple matrices, as compared with a two-dimensional space, with movements within a single matrix, even though the words in the navigation instructions were identical in all cases. The findings demonstrate that the mental representation of the space influences immediate verbatim memory for navigation instructions.     

The effects of prolonged exposure to phobic situations upon agoraphobic patients treated in groups

Nineteen female agoraphobic patients were treated by exposure to imaginal and real phobic stimulation in groups. There were three groups, including 7, 5 and 6 patients respectively, and each group received 9 hr of treatment spread over three sessions. The first two treatment hours of the first two sessions were arranged as a crossover design, patients being randomly allocated at the first session to imaginal or reality treatment for an hour followed by the other treatment for an hour, and receiving the treatments in reverse order at the second session. On both occasions there was a third hour of treatment after 1 hr unstructured group discussion over lunch. Psychological and behavioural measures were made before and after each part of treatment, and at follow-up 5 months after treatment.

Patients were significantly helped by this procedure. Practice sessions were associated with much more improvement than imaginal ones, and there was also an order effect, the first treatment received on each treatment day being more effective than the second. Group discussion over lunch did not improve the patient's phobias. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

The effects of incentives and instructions on children's allocation of study time

So far, research on children's allocation of study time has shown that, even though most young children can distinguish between easy and hard learning materials, they do not use this knowledge for further regulation of study time. To explore possible underlying mechanisms, we examined whether task characteristics can be created that facilitate children's appropriate use of study time. We investigated the effects of incentives and instructions (accuracy vs. speed emphasized) in 69 seven-year-old and 79 nine-year-old children's self-paced study times for easy (highly associated) and hard (unrelated) item pairs. Overall, the results confirm the findings obtained in previous studies, with older children differentiating more between easy and difficult learning materials in their study time. Regarding the effects of instructions, the study revealed that only 9-year-olds studied significantly longer when accuracy was emphasized. In contrast to our expectations, this increase in study time was not accompanied by an increase in subsequent recall. No differences in the study times were found as a function of presence/absence of incentives. The results are discussed both in terms of developmental progression taking place and in terms of the general theory of self-paced study time.     

The effects of teacher attention on following instructions in a kindergarten class

A kindergarten class, composed of five girls ages 4.8 to 6 yr, participated in the study. In each of 20 daily sessions a sequence of 10 simple instructions was given to the class, In baseline sessions, the teacher did not interact with the students, other than to give instructions. During these sessions, the children followed the teacher's instructions 60% of the time. When the teacher began attending to each child if she followed an instruction, the mean percentage of instructions followed increased to 78%. Subsequently, the teacher again employed the baseline procedures and the percentage of instructions followed decreased to 68.7%. When the teacher again provided attention dependent on the children's following the instructions, the percentage of instructions followed increased to 83.7%. The results are consistent with research that has treated instructions as discriminative stimuli. The general findings are that consequences of instructed behavior determine the extent to which the instructions are followed.     

The effects on speeded classification of implicit and explicit instructions regarding redundant dimensions

Two experiments were run in which speed of sorting decks of stimulus cards was measured. Stimuli were constructed from two dichotomous dimensions, used either alone or perfectly correlated. The lack of evidence for a selective serial processing (SSP) strategy (in which S sorts by his most preferred dimension whenever the dimensions are correlated) in a similar study by Garner and Felfoldy (1970) was thought to be due to Ss’ failure to notice that the dimensions were correlated, and thus that SSP would be effective. Ss in the present experiment therefore received either implicit instructions concerning the existence of the correlated deck (by seeing only decks in which there were just two different stimuli), or explicit instructions that on some trials the two dimensions would be correlated and S could sort by any means he preferred. When dimensions of size of circle and angle of diameter were of unequal discriminability, implicit instructions produced partial use of the SSP strategy, while explicit instructions produced nearly total use of SSP by all Ss. When the Munsell dimensions of value and chroma were varied in two separate color chips and were equally discriminable on the average, evidence for a small amount of SSP was found in both the implicit and explicit conditions. With neither pair of dimensions did implicit or explicit instructions regarding the correlated task produce integration of information.     

Influence of instructions on expectancy effects in Rorschach testing

Videotaped Rorschach instructions from a previous study in which two experimenters had biased subjects for high productivity and two experimenters had biased subjects for low productivity were played (audio or combined audio-visual channels) to matched subjects who then took the free association portion of the test. Biased results were obtained for one experimenter only. These did not interact with communication channels. It was concluded that experimenter-expectancy effects in Rorschach testing are not transmitted simply by exposing subjects to biased experimenters' instructions, but instead depend upon experimenter attributes which may or may not manifest themselves during the instructional phase. Limited evidence suggesting that expectancies are transmitted as effectively by audio as by a combination of audio and visual cues was obtained.     

The effects of different instructions for preparatory muscle tension on simple reaction time

The effects of preparatory weak muscular contraction (pre-tension) have been investigated in a number of previous studies using tasks with either simple or choice responses to measure the reaction time (RT). These studies suggested that optimal pre-tension performed prior to a motor response tends to shorten the RTs. Using a simple RT task in which participants performed a grip response to a visual stimulus, the present study compared the RTs between two pre-tension conditions (self-selection and constraint) to investigate the effects of different instructions for pre-tension. Under the self-selection condition, participants were asked to determine their optimal pre-tension levels while attempting to give responses as fast as possible. Under the constraint condition, the participants developed a pre-tension at a target force determined by the experimenter. The target force was set at the same level as the pre-tension level maintained under the self-selection. Despite the fact that the pre-tension level manipulated was the same for both conditions, the RTs were significantly shorter under self-selection than under constraint. Moreover, the present study showed a positive correlation coefficient between the proportion of shortening in RT and the variation of pre-tension level. This indicated a performance trade-off between the stability of pre-tension and RTs. The result suggests that shorter RTs that occur under self-selection are primarily mediated by mental factors, such as attention allocation, rather than by the effects of peripheral muscular preparation.     

One-trial conditioned suppression: effects of instructions on extinction

Two experimental groups of undergraduate volunteers received a single Pavlovian conditioning trial consisting of a paired presentation of a tone conditioned stimulus (CS) and a shock unconditioned stimulus (UCS). Control groups received either the CS alone or the UCS alone. Subjects from one experimental group were subsequently instructed that they would not receive further shocks, while the other experimental group received no such instructions. The CS alone was then presented once to all four groups while subjects were engaged in a button-pressing task maintained by slide reinforcement. During the latter phase, rate of button-pressing was measured. Classically conditioned suppression of button-pressing was obtained in the noninstructed experimental group but not in the instructed group. The results demonstrate that suppression can be a sensitive index of Pavlovian conditioning in humans but question the use of conditioned suppression as an adequate experimental analog of clinically observed anxiety-motivated behavior.     

Automatic effects of instructions do not require the intention to execute these instructions

Prior research established that newly instructed stimulus-response mappings, which have never been executed overtly before, can lead to automatic response-congruency effects. Such instruction-based congruency effects have been taken as evidence for the hypothesis that the intention to execute stimulus-response mappings results into functional associations that serve future execution. The present study challenges this hypothesis by demonstrating in a series of four experiments that maintaining instructed stimulus-response mappings for future recognition, rather than for future execution, can also lead to an instruction-based congruency effect. These findings indicate that the instruction-based congruency effect emerges even when it is very unlikely that participants form the intention to execute instructions. Alternative interpretations of the instruction-based congruency effect are discussed.     

The effects of relaxation instructions on drinking behavior in the presence of stress.

Previous research indicates that antecedent stress is associated with increased alcohol consumption. The present study examined the influence of different treatments following threatened exposure to a public speaking situation on both drinking style measures and amount consumed in an ad lib drinking assessment session. The treatments included relaxation instructions, a sensitization or stress-enhancing treatment, and an attention-refocusing or neutral control. Significant differences in poststress drinking rates and amount consumed between the stress-relaxation and stress-sensitization groups were found. The data indicate that relaxation is an effective procedure for attenuating the impact of stress on quantity and style of drinking.     

The effects of instructions to subjects on the programming of visually directed reaching movements

Numerous studies of human motor control have examined the effects of constraints on the programming and execution of visually directed limb movements. Only a few studies, however, have explored how the subject's objective in making the movement affects the coordinated sequence of eye and limb movements that unfolds as the subject points to or grasps an object in space. In the present study, the characteristics of the targets and the environment remained constant while the demands for speed and accuracy were varied across blocks of trials by changing the instructions to the subject. In other words, the constraints operating in the situation were kept constant, but the objective of the movement was systematically varied by changing the relative demands for speed and accuracy. All subjects were required to point to visual targets presented on a screen in front of them. Eye position was monitored by infrared reflection. The position of each subject's hand in three-dimensional space was reconstructed by a computer-assisted analysis of the images provided by two rotary-shutter video cameras. The speed and accuracy demands of the task were varied in blocks of trials by requiring the subjects to point to the target "as quickly as you can" (speed condition); "as accurately as you can" (accuracy condition); or both "quickly and accurately" (speed/accuracy condition). The time to initiate an eye movement to the target was found to be reduced by increasing either the speed or accuracy demands of the task although the time to initiate the hand movement was reduced only in the speed condition. While the duration of the acceleration phase of the reach remained constant in real time, the duration of the deceleration phase was increased with increased demands for accuracy. As expected, both variable and absolute errors were largest in the speed condition. The findings indicated that the programming of the limb movement and its coordination with the associated eye movements were affected by varying the objective of the task.