Binocular disparity as a discriminable stimulus parameter for young infants

The ability of 8-week-old infants to discriminate between projected stereograms with and without retinal disparity was tested with an habituation-dishabituation paradigm. Infants in two experimental groups received six trials with either the disparity or the nondisparity stimulus and then were given two trials with the other display. Infants in two control groups viewed the same stimulus, either disparity or nondisparity, on all eight trials. There was a suggestion of some response decrement over time in both cardiac deceleration and sucking suppression, although this effect was not significant. However, significant increment was obtained on the dishabituation trials for heart rate in the group that was shifted from the nondisparity to the disparity stimulus. These results were interpreted as indicating that the infants could discriminate between stimuli when the only difference between them was binocular disparity.     

A disfluency descriptor digest for clinical use

A clinical form to be used in identifying which of a set of fluency eliciting techniques might be used most advantageously in therapy with individual stutterers is described.     

Primary influencers of initial vocational choices for college women

This study of 597 entering college women investigated the characteristics of people they named as the primary influencers for their initial choices of major. College major was considered analogous to vocational field since the sample of students overwhelmingly gave career goals as reasons for choosing a particular major. Characteristics of these primary influencers were compared with those of a sample of individuals influencing male choices. In addition, characteristics of influencers were compared between those influencing females choosing traditional and nontraditional majors. The results indicate that most students, regardless of gender, were influenced by males, particularly fathers. However, a notable percentage of female students, especially those in traditional fields, were influenced by females. Students whose primary influencers were in fields closely related to their own vocational choices reported being more certain of their choices than students citing influencers in unrelated fields. These findings have implications for model-observer similarity, and may necessitate distinguishing between influential people who provide reinforcement for a choice of major and those who provide specific vocational modeling as well as reinforcement for that choice.     

Discriminability of brightness change for infants

Four-month-old human infants who were habituated to a 490-nm stimulus of 3.5 cd · m^?2 luminance did not show recovery when the stimulus was increased or decreased in luminance by a factor of 2 but not changed in hue. A fourfold luminance increase produced a recovery in looking time. When compared with earlier results on simultaneous discrimination of brightness change, the results imply that infants differ from adults more in ability to code or retrieve than in ability to detect intensive differences. The implication is further supported by the differentiating response of infants to changes in hue.     

Procedures for synthesizing ratio judgements

Requirements which seem reasonable for functions synthesizing judgements (quantities or their ratios), in particular separability, associativity or bisymmetry, cancellativity, consensus, reciprocal or homogeneity properties are investigated and all functions satisfying them are determined.     

Critical procedural variables related to the physiological effects of progressive relaxation: a review.

Twenty-five investigations of the physiological effects of progressive relaxation training were classified according to whether relaxation was found to be superior or equivalent to control conditions. The two sets of studies differed significantly on number of training sessions and in the use of taped vs live administration of training, and they tended to differ in the use of normal vs patient samples. The likelihood of producing significant physiological reductions via progressive relaxation appears to be greater when multi-session, subject-controlled training is conducted with subjects for whom physiological activity contributes to a presenting. clinical problem.     

Phonetic disintegration in aphasia: Acoustic analysis of spectral characteristics for place of articulation

In this study, we attempted to determine whether phonetic disintegration of speech in Broca's aphasia affects the spectral characteristics of speech sounds as has been shown for the temporal characteristics of speech. To this end, we investigated the production of place of articulation in Broca's aphasics. Acoustic analysis of the spectral characteristics for stop consonants were conducted. Results indicated that the static aspects of speech production were preserved, as Broca's aphasics seemed to be able to reach the articulatory configuration for the appropriate place of articulation. However, the dynamic aspects of speech production seemed to be impaired, as their productions reflected problems with the source characteristics of speech sounds and with the integration of articulatory movements in the vocal tract. Listener perceptions of the aphasics' productions were compared with acoustic analyses for these same productions. The two measures were related; that is, the spectral characteristics of the utterances provided salient cues for place of articulation perception. An analysis of the occurrences of errors along the dimensions of voicing and place showed that aphasics rarely produce utterances containing both voice and place substitutions.     

A heuristic method for the comparison of related structures

By extending a technique for testing the difference between two dependent correlations developed by Wolfe, a strategy is proposed in a more general matrix context for evaluating a variety of data analysis schemes that are supposed to clarify the structure underlying a set of proximity measures. In the applications considered, a data analysis scheme is assumed to reconstruct in matrix form the given data set (represented as a proximity matrix) based on some specific model or procedure. Thus, an evaluation of the adequacy of reconstruction can be developed by comparing matrices, one containing the original proximities and the second containing the reconstructed values. Possible applications in multidimensional scaling, clustering, and related contexts are emphasized using four broad categories: (a) Given two different reconstructions based on a single data set, does either represent the data significantly better than the other? (b) Given two reconstructions based on a single data set using two different procedures (or possibly, two distinct data sets and a common method), is either reconstruction significantly closer to a particular theoretical structure that is assumed to underlie the data (where the latter is also represented in matrix form)? (c) Given two theoretical structures and one reconstruction based on a single data set, does either represent the reconstruction better than the other? (d) Given a single reconstruction based on one data set, is the information present in the data accounted for satisfactorily by the reconstruction? In all cases, these tasks can be approached by a nonparametric procedure that assesses the similarity in pattern between two appropriately defined matrices. The latter are obtained from the original data, the reconstructions, and/or the theoretical structures. Finally, two numerical examples are given to illustrate the more general discussion.     

Cue selection in verbal discrimination learning of retarded subjects.

A series of experiments was conducted to examine cue function in trigram verbal discrimination learning by retarded subjects. The issue was to determine the factors that control attention in this type of learning situation. The two variables of chief interest were trigram meaningfulness and reinforcement history. The major general conclusion was that retarded subjects employ complex cue selection strategies in solving a verbal discrimination involving compound verbal stimuli. Major findings were as follows: (a) Retarded subjects exhibit a response bias in favor of words over nonsense trigrams; (b) relatively little active cue selection based on meaningfulness was observed; (c) a compound stimulus discrimination was more difficult to learn than a discrimination involving single verbal stimuli; (d) compound and single stimuli may be processed differently in original discrimination learning; (e) cue position probably controls attention in compound discrimination learning; and (f) a frequency theory of verbal discrimination learning is supported by these data.     

Expectation theories of decision making for duplex gambles

Complete tests of subjectively expected utility (SEU), subjectively expected value (SEV), expected utility (EU) and expected value (EV) theories were made for duplex gambles without measuring subjective probability or subjective utility. All gambles were hypothetical and offered on booklets. The duplex gambles consisted of winning gambles, which offered a chance to win a certain amount of money or to break even; and losing gambles, which offered a chance to lose a certain amount of money or break even.The results indicated that SEU, SEV and EU theories could not account for the strategies of 33%, 53% and 86% of the Ss respectively in the losing form of gambles, while EV theory accounted for 78% of the behavior of Ss.In the winning form of gambles, SEU, SEV and EU theory held for 77%, 65%, and 54% of the Ss respectively, while EV theory held for only 40% of the Ss. Suggestions for further research were made.     

Choice behavior of rats searching for food

The experiments reported here were designed to determine if several general principles drawn from appetitively motivated discrimination experiments in standard laboratory apparatus might also apply to food-searching behavior under more naturalistic conditions. Food-deprived rats searched for food in an open observation area. Choice behavior after finding food and after not finding food was analyzed. In all cases, not finding food in a possible food location was sufficient to direct subsequent search behavior away from that location for the remainder of the day's test. Finding food had variable effects on subsequent choice behavior, depending on the number of locations that actually contained food and the number of days food was in one location before being shifted to another. The results indicate that the rat's search strategy was influenced by food availability and distribution in ways that are predicted by discrimination learning experiments.     

Relationship with people as the underlying dimension for Roe's classification of occupations

One hundred eleven subjects were asked to indicate how much relationship with people is involved in 48 occupational titles. The results support Roe's (1956) classification of occupations: differences within occupational fields were found to be smaller than differences between occupational fields (F = 8.53, P < .01). The homogeneity of Arts and Entertainment is discussed.     

Testing for developmental continuity or discontinuity: Class inclusion and reversal shifts

Often the data in cognitive development consist of continuous cross-sectional increases in the proportion of children who respond in one of two ways to a diagnostic task. Such developmental trends are, however, ambiguous with reference to the course of individual, longitudinal development because they could be the result of either saltatory or gradual ontogenetic change. The present research tested a nonlongitudinal procedure for discriminating between these two alternatives. This procedure involves the administration of several equivalent versions of the diagnostic task at weekly intervals to children within a given age level in order to obtain a frequency distribution of the number of “successes” produced by each child. A bimodal distribution is interpreted as indicating saltatory ontogenetic change, while a unimodal distribution is taken to indicate gradual change. This method was applied to Piaget's class-inclusion problem and to the optional-shift task by administering four versions of each task to a range of different age-level samples. The optional-shift task produced clearly unimodal, bell-shaped distributions at all tested age levels, results which were interpreted to indicate a gradual ontogenetic increase in the probability of making reversal shifts. On the other hand, the frequency distributions for the class-inclusion task, at the appropriate age levels, were distinctly bimodal, and therefore consistent with a discontinuous ontogenetic transition. The capacity of the repeated-measures method to produce reliable within-task results and to differentiate between tasks was thus demonstrated.     

The consequences of noncooperation for the target of third party instigated aggression

Consequences for a new target as a function of noncooperation was investigated in the instigative aggression paradigm. Subjects instigated partners to aggress against an opponent by suggesting what shock intensity to deliver. The partner was either cooperative (i.e., complied with the suggestion) or noncooperative (i.e., refused to set high shocks). Subsequently, subjects were given the opportunity to be directly aggressive by actually setting the shocks themselves. During this phase a new target who was nonprovocative was introduced. Subjects aggressed alone, in the presence of their partner, or in the presence of a new person. Results revealed that noncooperation reduced the level of instigative aggression and carried over to the second phase of the experiment. Subjects who had had cooperative partners were more aggressive toward the new target than were subjects who had had noncooperative partners. The presence or absence of the partner was not significant.     

Infants and I scales: Inferring change from the ordinal stimulus selections of infants for configural stimuli

The analysis of I-scale preference orders of 71 infants 2 to 9 months old to four face-like stimuli suggested a common J-scale stimulus ordering for each of the four age groups. Changes in I-scale frequencies were used as a measure of age-related changes in preference orders. Results revealed no change in preference for the age period studied. Together with other data these results suggest an ageinvariant preference for organized face-like forms from at least as early as five weeks through 9 months. This finding is at variance with some theoretical expectations. A Thurstone analysis is provided as a contrast to the J-scale analysis. Assumptions of different data analyses are considered as the basis for varying results reported in the literature.