Note on the Psychopathology of Genius

Summary

Twenty male Ss earned money by pulling a knob. Ss also could avoid or escape an aversive tone by pressing a button (a nonaggressive response) or by hitting a padded cushion (aggressive response). Control group Ss worked alone during two 90-minute sessions of an extinction condition in which knob pulling was no longer rewarded after 20 had been earned. Experimental group Ss, who worked alone only during the first session of extinction, were paired with an aggressive model in the second session. Experimental group Ss showed higher magnitudes of punching when the aggressive model was present than when he was absent. Control group Ss showed a reduction in high-magnitude punches across extinction conditions. It was concluded that the mere presence of a nonrewarded aggressive model was sufficient to evoke imitative aggression.     

A developmental comparison of the processing of two types of visual information

Simple geometric forms and spatial position markers were tachistoscopically presented to Ss from four age groups (ranging from five years to adult) who responded by recreating the visual array with magnetic tokens.The basic findings were: (a) Ss remembered item positions better than identities; (b) no asymptote of position recall was reached by any age group when up to five position markers were presented; (c) when required to process identity information, position memory suffered, younger Ss showing the greatest decrement; (d) with unlimited viewing time, the pattern of results relating identity and spatial recall was not altered; (e) recall was better for the locations of position markers than for locations of geometric items.The results supported an hypothesis of separate processing mechanisms for spatial location and identity information. Improvement with age seems to result from an increasing ability to integrate the functioning of these separate mechanisms.     

Factors Determining National Stereotypes

Summary

In order to test various explanations of the fact that perceived competence appears to correlate positively with altruism, Ss were given false feedback as to their competence on a “visual creativity” test and then asked to help with a second task, writing creative color names. Three groups of Ss who were told they were competent were given reduced cost, increased happiness, and increased responsibility as reasons for helping; the other three groups were given no explanations, but were told that their competence was high, or low, or given no information. The three explanation groups helped more than the other three groups, and the reduced cost group helped more than the other five. The three dependent measures of helping (percentage of helpful Ss, duration of help, and magnitude of help) proved differentially sensitive to treatment and sex differences. Only the latter two measures showed greater helping in the reduced cost group; only the magnitude measure showed significantly greater helping for males than females.     

A Pursuit Device for Obtaining both Quantitative and Qualitative Records

Fifth and sixth grade students (N = 87) were divided into High Test Anxious and Low Test Anxious groups on the basis of galvanic skin responses (GSR). Ss identified as High Anxious responded positively to group systematic desensitization procedures, exhibiting significantly (p < .05) lower autonomic indices of test anxiety and significantly (p < .001) improved criterion test scores. Low Anxious Ss exposed to the systematic desensitization program demonstrated no significant change in criterion test scores.     

Tests of Parallel Versus Integrated Structure in Polyrhythmic Tapping

Musically trained subjects tapped three beats with their right hand versus two beats with their left hand in synchrony with two corresponding tones. For independent groups of subjects, the pitch difference of the two tones was either small to encourage an integrated perceptual organization or large to encourage a streamed perceptual organization. Integrated versus parallel motor organization was tested by examining the pattern of covariances among intertap intervals. All subjects exhibited integrated motor organization. An integrated multiplicative hierarchical model of motor organization was superior to a serial chained model and to an independent hierarchical model in describing the pattern of covariances. The subjects who heard tones that encouraged an integrated percept performed with less variability than the subjects who heard tones that encouraged a streamed percept. This superior performance with an integrated motor organization and an integrated rather than a streamed perceptual organization is interpreted as evidence for temporal perceptual-motor compatibility.     

Spouse involvement and a possible long-term follow-up trap in weight loss

The present study was conducted to determine if husband attendance at treatment sessions and participation in behavioral contracting would produce greater weight losses than two other levels of spouse involvement. The three treatment groups investigated did not significantly differ at post-treatment but by 1-yr follow-up female Ss who attended treatment sessions alone and contracted with the counselor (HA) lost significantly more weight than women who attended sessions with their husbands and also contracted with the counselor (HNC). The Ss who attended sessions with their husbands and contracted with them (HC) did not significantly differ from Ss in the other two conditions. The total amount lost by Ss in the HA, HNC and HC conditions by 1-yr follow-up was 16.4, 4.4 and 15.5 lb, respectively. The study was also conducted to collect preliminary data about procedures Ss used during long-term follow-up to ascertain if weight losses during follow-up could be attributed to the behavioral weight-loss techniques learned during the treatment program. At all follow-up periods, many Ss reported using behavioral weight-loss techniques but 4 of the 36 Ss (11.1%) at 1-yr follow-up, 15 of the 23 (65.2%) and 24 of the 25 (96.0%) who responded, respectively, at 3- and 4-yr follow-up had used other weight-loss programs or methods. A possible confound for follow-up data was identified and suggestions for future research were presented.     

Effects of Different Instructions on Consistency of Personality Inventory Responses

A novel feature of the Edwards Personality Inventory (EPI) is that the S responds to the items as he believes those who know him best would answer if asked to describe him. This study tested Edwards' hypothesis that reliability would be higher for these instructions vs. the more conventional ones to describe yourself directly as you see yourself. 180 Ss were tested with approximately one-third in each of three conditions: Booklet IA (test-retest), Booklet IB (test-retest), and Booklets IA and IB (alternate forms reliability). Within each condition, approximately half responded under Edwards' novel instructions, and half responded under conventional instructions. Directly contrary to Edwards' prediction, it was found that the proportion of conventional instruction correlations which were higher than the corresponding Edwards' instruction correlations was significantly greater than chance (p <.01).     

Menstrual cycle as focus of study and self-reports of moods and behaviors

Retrospective questionnaires show cyclical variations in moods and behaviors across the menstrual cycle. However, results obtained from daily mood questionnaires are inconsistent. In the present study, which ran for 11 weeks, self-report measures of menstrual symptomatology, using the 8-factor Moos (1968, 1969 a,c) Menstrual Distress Questionnaire (MDQ), were investigated. The MDQ was administered under conditions that made the menstrual cycle a salient (retrospective questionnaire) or not a salient (daily questionnaire) part of the study. The study included women who were taking and not taking oral contraceptives. A 2×3 analysis of variance (with the two groups of women and three menstrual cycle phases as independent variables) yielded broad cyclical variations only in the menstrual cycle salient condition. When the menstrual cycle was not a salient part of the study, only the pain factor reached significant cyclical variation (p<.01).A 2×3 analysis of variance (with the two types of questionnaires and three menstrual cycle phases as independent variables) indicated that for women not taking oral contraceptives the two questionnaires differed on pain (p<.01), concentration (p<.01), autonomic reaction (p<.05), and water retention (p<.01). Phase effects were significant on all factors, with largest cyclical variations in the menstrual cycle salient condition. A similar analysis for women taking oral contraceptives yielded fewer significant differences. These results suggest that questionnaires that make the menstrual cycle a salient part of the study may exaggerate possible cyclical variations in moods and behaviors.The authors are grateful to Dawn Christie Burns and Ross Hodges for their help in data reduction.     

O2 consumption,heart rate and subjective ratings under conditions of relaxation and active coping

Oxygen consumption, respiratory rate, minute volume, heart rate (HR) and subjective ratings from 12 graduate students were monitored under conditions of relaxation and active coping. The controlled, within-Ss, cross-over design consisted of the two experimental conditions alternating between three control periods. The relaxation condition consisted of an autogenic procedure which the Ss had practiced daily for more than a week. The active-coping condition involved avoidance of an aversive noise during a reaction-time task. In terms of O₂ consumption, there was a slight (3%) but nonsignificant decrease during relaxation. There was a trend for HR to increase during active coping, although this finding was attenuated by the presence of a subset of Ss who responded with a marked and unexpected decrease in HR under this condition. Subjective ratings obtained at 1-min intervals throughout the experiment indicated that the Ss achieved significant levels of subjective relaxation during the procedure. The results of the study failed to support the presence of a hypometabolic state during relaxation as proposed by Benson.     

Connotative Meaning as a Determinant of Response to Test Item Content

The purpose of this study was to determine if responses of like or dislike to Perceptual Reaction Test (PRT) designs — and thus, its ability to discriminate among criterion groups — were related to the connotative meaning of the designs. Seventy-four Ss were administered the PRT designs to which they responded on the traditional like-dislike alternatives as well as rating each design on a semantic differential. Correlations between the like-dislike dimension of the PRT designs and the semantic differential ratings of those designs indicated that when a S checks like for a design, he is expressing a positive evaluation of that design and probably sees it as less potent than those designs for which he checked dislike. Expression of like or dislike for a design appears to be inconsistently related to the activity dimension of meaning.     

Linguistic and Semantic Factors in the Psychodynamics of War

Summary

The present study reports questionnaire data obtained from undergraduate students enrolled in introductory psychology (50 males, 52 females) with regard to opinions concerning President Nixon's possible involvement in the Watergate scandal of 1973. In addition, Ss completed Byrne's Repression-Sensitization Scale and the Hogan-Dickstein Moral Judgment Scale. As predicted from cognitive consistency theory, Ss who had voted for Nixon in the 1972 Presidential election minimized the likelihood of Nixon's possible guilt more so than did those who no longer supported him (p < .05). Furthermore, repression-sensitization and moral judgment maturity were found to be related (both p < .05) to formation of Watergate-related attitudes.     

Cognition of Being in the Peak Experiences

Two samples, one gifted, the other “normal,” of 30 children each (11 to 13 years of age) were matched on age, sex, race, and father's occupation. A parent of each child completed the Children's Behavioral Classification Project instrument, and a profile of 30 scaled scores was obtained for each protocol. A discriminant analysis on the basis of the profiles classified 50 of the 60 Ss correctly into their respective sample category, either gifted or normal. Though the results of a multivariate analysis of variance showed no significant differences between the groups when the 30 profile factors were viewed as a whole, univariate analyses on the separate factors yielded significant group differences on several related factors. These were interpreted with caution. Additional factors displayed significant sex differences and one demonstrated a group-by-sex interaction effect.

Coefficients of pattern similarity (the r_p ) were computed among all pairs of the 60 Ss. An unweighted average linkage cluster analysis grouped 34 of the 60 Ss into six clusters which accounted for 26 of 30 possible gifted children.

After an item analysis was performed on the original data, a 42 item subscale of the CBCP questionnaire was constructed which correctly classified 31 of 40 individuals in a cross-validation sample.     

The Induction of Color Blindness by a Technique of Hypnotic Suggestion

The relative efficacy of auditory feedback, varying in the amount of information contained in the feedback signal, for the self-control of heart rate (HR) was determined by comparing groups of 10 Ss who received either: (a) continuous proportional feedback, (b) discontinuous proportional feedback, (c) binary feedback, (d) heart sounds, or (e) no feedback. At each of two sessions Ss were given eight trials in each direction on which they were to raise or lower their HR.

Without regard to the amount of information contained in the signal, presentation of auditory feedback aided Ss in raising HR relative to Ss who received no feedback; however, feedback did not yield an advantage in lowering it. These results suggest that perhaps the informing quality of feedback is multidimensional and also that perhaps the mechanisms involved in acceleration and deceleration of HR may be different.     

Knowledge despite falsehood

I examine the claim, made by some authors, that we sometimes acquire knowledge from falsehood. I focus on two representative cases in which a subject S infers a proposition q from a false proposition p. If S knows that q, I argue, S's false belief that p is not essential to S's cognition. S's knowledge is instead due to S's belief that p′, a proposition in the neighbourhood of p that S (dispositionally) believes (and knows). S thus knows despite her false belief. The widely accepted and plausible principle that inferential knowledge requires known premises is unscathed.     

Differentiation between vicarious instigation and classical conditioning of electrodermal responses

In past research of vicarious conditioning when a conditioned stimulus (CS) was repeatedly presented both to a model and an observer, the observer's reaction to the CS may have been the result of a vicariously conditioned reaction to the CS, as well as a vicariously instigated reaction to the inferred emotional state of the model who anticipates the reception of a noxious stimulus when the CS is presented. In order to partial out these two reactions, the present experiment employed 32 subjects of both sexes who took part in a two-group study of differential, vicarious classical conditioning of skin conductance responses. In one of the group, the tones serving as CS+ and CS- and which preceded the aversive and non aversive events to the mode, were presented over earphones to both the confederate model and the observer subject. In the second group, only the subjects had earphones on and were led to believe that the model was not aware of the CS presentations. This eliminated the possibility of vicariously instigated reactions. Although the conditioning effects produced in the present study were somewhat weak, results clearly showed equal levels of vicarious instigation and conditioning in the two groups. These results indicate that the potential confounding of these two reactions studies has not significantly affected result or conclusions from previous studies.     

The cognitive implications of asymmetric color generalization in honeybees

Generalization occurs when a conditioned response formed to one stimulus is also elicited by other stimuli which have not been used in the course of conditioning. Here, we studied color generalization in honeybees Apis mellifera trained to two rewarded colors, S₁+ and S₂+. After training, bees were tested with non-rewarded novel stimuli, which lay between the trained stimuli in a honeybee color space (Int) or outside the range defined by the trained stimuli (E ₁ and E ₂). We analyzed whether bees interpolated their choice to Int and/or extrapolated it to E ₁ and E ₂. We compared the performances of the group trained with S₁+ and S₂+ to those of control groups trained only with S₁+ or S₂+. Bees trained with S₁+ and S₂+ responded similarly and highly to all test stimuli. These results do not allow discerning between generalization models based on the presence of interpolation and/or extrapolation. Nevertheless, bee’s performance was consistent with a linear summation of the two generalization gradients generated by S₁+ and S₂+, respectively. These gradients were asymmetric because control bees responded to the test stimuli as if these belonged to different similarity classes in spite of the fact that they had similar perceptual distances separating them. Stimuli treated as similar were located in the same half of the color spaces, whereas stimuli treated as different were located in opposite halves. Our results suggest that color categories could exist in honeybees and may underlie the performance of the control groups. Under this assumption, color categories would be also present in simpler nervous systems, and would not require factors such as language to be expressed.     

The Rosenzweig picture-frustration study as a measure of reaction to personal Evaluation

The P-F Study was given to three groups of incarcerated delinquents categorized as to parole evaluation status. The hypothesis tested was that those Ss who were being evaluated for parole would give significantly fewer extrapunitive (E) responses than matched Ss who were not being evaluated for parole. Statistical analyses of the data supported the hypothesis.

It was suggested that the probability of external reinforcement may be a basic determinant of responses to the P-F Study and perhaps to projective tests generally.     

Psychoticism and arousal: Possible evidence for a linkage of p and psychopathy

A study is described in which two postural conditions (standing, reclining) were used to induced high and low activation levels in normal Ss divided into high and low P groups ( (HP and LP). Electrodermal and heart rate (HR) measures were recorded during each of these activation conditions which included instructions, an initial rest period, a series of tones, a rtwo-flash threshold task and a final rest period. It was found that HP Ss tended to display significantly lower automatic arousability and poorer two-flash performance while undergoing the low activation (Recline) condition. There was a reliable tendency for HP Ss to evidence significantly slower recovery and rise times and to manifest significantly lower response criterion and sensory sensitivity. They also manifested a near significantly lower mean HR than LP Ss. The performance of HP and LP groups was compared to findings reported previously for schizophrenics and psychopaths for these tasks. It was posited that the performance of the HP Ss suggests that psychoticism may be more nearly akin to psychopathy than to schizophrenia.     

The effects of language conditioning on various aspects of anxiety

Staats' three-function learning theory provides the basis for investigating the effects of emotionally-relevant self-verbalizations (SV) on the physiological, subjective-affective and behavioural aspects of anxiety. Using aversive electric UCSs and slides of snakes (CS), anxiety was classically conditioned in 88 volunteer Ss. In 20 subsequent language-conditioning trials (without aversive electric UCSs), the same snakes slides were paired with UCS verbalizations having either positive or negative connotative meanings. Half of the Ss were exposed to a living snake prior to language conditioning. The results show a complete extinction of the conditioned anxiety response in groups with positive SV whereas negative SV impeded extinction; the latter effect could only be found in groups without exposure to snakes prior to language conditioning. In general, the affective evaluation of snakes improved in groups with positive SV and deteriorated in groups with negative SV. However, these effects were more pronounced in groups without exposure to snakes. Although the results indicate that Ss in all groups with positive SV exhibited more approach behaviours than Ss with negative SV, this trend was not statistically significant. The possible relevance of the results for a language-conditioning approach to anxiety reduction is briefly discussed.     

Emotion in man as Tested by the Delta Index of the Electroencephalogram: II. Simultaneous Records from Cortex and from a Region Near the Hypothalamus

Five male undergraduates could earn 4¢ for every 200 knob-pulls. In addition, they could avoid or terminate an aversive tone by pressing a button with a force of 1.5 lbs (nonaggressive response) or by hitting a cushion with at least 20 lbs force (aggressive response). Rates of aggression tended to be higher during sessions where money was taken from the Ss at the rate of 1¢ per 12 seconds than during sessions when taking was not in effect. Rates of nonaggressive responses were constant across conditions.