Facilitation of discriminated lever-press avoidance by noncontingent shocks

Two experiments investigated the effect of presenting a brief noncontingent, unsignaled shock prior to warning-signal onset on discriminated lever-press avoidance behavior in rats. The main finding was that noncontingent shock delivered 2 sec but not 16 sec prior to warning-signal onset facilitated avoidance performance and learning. These results were predicted on the basis of shock-elicited response bursting which was expected to increase the operant level of the lever-press response at short shock-warning signal intervals. It was suggested that species-specific limitations on rats' lever-press avoidance are not unconditional, but rather can be overcome with environmental manipulations.     

Effects of fear of success, fear of failure, type of opponent, and feedback on female achievement performance

Female undergraduates (N = 240) assessed for fear of success (FS) and fear of failure (FF) competed against a male, female, or no opponent (norms) on an alpha-numeric substitution task. After completing one set of trials, subjects arbitrarily received success or failure feedback, then performed again. While there were no significant effects when subject's FS classification was based on total scores from the entire set of four cues used, performance effects were found for Horner's original cue: FS-absent females performed better against a male than a female opponent, whereas the reverse was true for the FS-present subjects. Two of the other FS cues interacted with FF: at low levels of FF, FS-absent subjects performed better than FS-present subjects; for high levels of FF, there were no differences between FS groups. A number of postperformance affect ratings were consistent with theoretical expectations that FS-present females would experience more negative effect over success in achievement contexts than would FS-absent females.     

Generality of persistence: The role of stimulus and response factors in persistence to punishment

Previous research has shown that intermittent punishment of a response increases its persistence to continuous punishment and that intermittent punishment training in one situation produces persistence to continuous punishment in other situations. Experiment 1 showed that as long as the instrumental response and punishing stimulus were held constant from intermittent to continuous punishment marked differences between these situations had no decremental effect on persistence. Experiment 2 showed that intermittent punishment training of one response resulted in substantial persistence to continuous punishment of a different and apparently incompatible response and that such response change had no more than a marginal effect on persistence. The results were seen as requiring some revision to the traditional conditioning-model interpretation of persistence to punishment.     

The effect of orthographic structure on word recognition in a visual search task

The effect of the orthographic structure of the stimulus field on the visual search performance of third graders (8-8 years), sixth graders (11-7 years) and adults was investigated in three experiments. In Experiment 1, where the predesignated target was one word, subjects of all ages searched equally fast through fields consisting of words, pseudowords, and nonwords. In contrast, subjects of all ages displayed effects of orthographic structure when searching for instances of a semantic category (Experiment 2) or for three words (Experiment 3). Subjects searched faster through nonwords than through pseudowords and faster through pseudowords than through words. The use of orthographic structure to facilitate search did not increase with age, suggesting that children of the youngest age group were already making maximal use of intraword redundancy.     

Perceptual supports for one-to-one correspondence in the conservation of number

This study compared provoked and spontaneous one-to-one correspondence along with two tasks having more perceptual support for correspondence. These four levels of correspondence appeared in a conservation of number condition and two conservation-related conditions (a partially static array or a static array). There were two sets of stimuli (toy animals or corks) in each condition. In opposition to Piaget's predictions, the four levels of correspondence did not differ in difficulty for kindergarteners. There was a strong order effect (p<.001) in the direction of increasing conservation over the eight trials. There was some evidence that the standard conservation condition was easier than the other two conditions. Implications for Piaget's theory are discussed.     

Kindergarten children's use of category membership

Kindergarten children (N = 70) learned to order 12 photographically presented objects. The objects were well known and either unrelated or categorizable into two, three, four, or six well-known categories. Free recall was assessed. Results indicated that the children used category membership both to learn and to recall the items. However, they processed the list composed of six pairs of items at least as efficiently as lists composed of fewer but larger groups of items (including a list indexed as easiest through previous adult performance).     

Disagreements and self-esteem: Support for the competence-reinforcement model of attraction

The competence-reinforcement model of attraction (Byrne & Clore, 1967) theorizes that interpersonal disagreements produce negative affect and decrements in personal competence. Subject dislike for disagreeing strangers has been a frequent and reliable finding, but the theoretical issue of whether disagreements elicit negative affect because they threaten one's sense of personal competence has been less thoroughly investigated. The present study examines the relationship between attitude disagreements and self-esteem. On the basis of the competence-reinforcement model of attraction it was hypothesized that disagreements would produce decrements in selfesteem, and that the decrements would be most pronounced among subjects expressing the greatest dislike for the disagreeing stranger. Both hypotheses were supported, and it was concluded that the competence-reinforcement model provides an adequate account of both attraction and self-esteem loss.     

The vocational side of a new start in life: A career model of immigrants

The research tests a career model of immigrants with the following stages: crystallization, vocational retraining, job entry and trial, establishment, and maintenance. Two samples of immigrants, one consisting of 89 newcomers and another consisting of 60 white-collar workers with an average seniority of 5 years in the country, are followed up during a period of 2 years, after initially taking a test battery measuring vocationally relevant traits. Dependent criterion variables are occupational government examinations and adjustment to the job. Smallest space analysis is used to construct the career space of the newcomer cohort, and multiple regression of criterion variables on success predictors was performed. Both methods confirmed the model. The need arose to reconsider the duration of career stages of immigrants and their link to certain ages in comparison to the models in use. The research brought into focus the continuity of the process of career reconstruction after the interruption of vocational activity caused by emigration.     

Some implications of temporal drift in social parameters

Social and political factors often have an effect on the way we perceive and think about particular events. While it is generally acknowledged that these factors are likely to change over time, the implications of such temporal changes for empirical research are not often considered. In this paper, some of these are illustrated by examining data collected from a sequence of studies conducted over a 3-year period (1973–1976). Subjects viewed the same videotaped mock (rape) trial and, prior to experimental manipulations, gave their own personal verdict. An examination of the proportion of mock jurors preferring guilty in each of the studies revealed a drift of 16% (.53 to .69) from 1973–1976. This trend toward harsher judgments was observed for both sexes, with females uniformly more likely than males to favor conviction. Ancillary evidence suggests that the upward drift reflected changes in the perception of rape during that period. The implications of temporal drift in parameter values for empirical research were illustrated by simulating jury size effects using social decision scheme theory (J. H. Davis, Psychological Review, 1973,80, 97–125). The results indicate that the magnitude of theoretical differences due to jury size must have decreased as the probability of an individual guilty vote increased over time. Thus, failures to replicate findings may not be due entirely to sampling error, methodological imprecision, or the like, but to temporal changes in the social phenomenon under investigation.     

The effects of observation on emotional arousal and affiliation

This study assessed the influence of anticipated experimenter surveillance during the performance of a painful or potentially embarrassing act on affiliative preferences before engaging in that act. As predicted, there was an overall preference for isolation when the act to be performed was embarrassing, and this tendency increased with anticipated surveillance. There was an overall preference for affiliation under fear arousal, and this preference also increased with anticipated surveillance. Contrary to previous research, whether or not the potential affiliate was a subject in the experiment (i.e., in a similar or dissimilar emotional state) did not affect these tendencies. Possible ways of accounting for these findings are discussed.     

The use of the cumulative rehearsal strategy: A developmental study

This study was designed to address two issues: (1) At what age do children spontaneously use a cumulative rehearsal strategy; and (2) What effect does the use of the strategy have on their performance?Twenty-eight children at each of five grade levels (nursery, kindergarten, 1, 3, and 5) were tested in a serial-position recall task. Stimuli were pictures of common objects and animals whose labels were one or two syllables in length. Following testing, the children were asked to report the memory strategy they had used.The assumption was made that children who were using a cumulative rehearsal strategy would perform better on series of one-syllable items than on series of two-syllable items. As predicted, nursery, kindergarten, and first-grade subjects correctly recalled as many two-syllable as one-syllable items: Both third- and fifth-graders recalled significantly more one-syllable than two-syllable items. Results indicated that (1) young children do not spontaneously use a cumulative rehearsal strategy until after first grade, and (2) the use of rehearsal did not facilitate overall performance of the rehearsers relative to the nonrehearsers at any grade level. Results are discussed in terms of their theoretical implications for the study of memory development.     

Effects of threatening and reassuring components of fear appeals on physiological and verbal measures of emotion and attitudes

Physiological processes are integral components of (a) many conceptualizations of emotion, (b) the emotion of fear, and (c) the fear-as-acquired-drive model of attitude change. Nevertheless, few studies of fear and persuasion have simultaneously measured self-reports of fear and autonomic activity. The present factorial experiment manipulated high versus low fear and high versus low reassurance and monitored self-reports and cardiovascular and electrodermal activity. The results disclosed that heart rate (HR) and skin conductance (SC) were highly correlated (r = .70). Although the multiple correlation among HR, SC, and a self-report measure of fear was a modest .44 (p < .05), additional evidence suggested that self-reports were the most sensitive measure of the construct of fear. The fear-film manipulation, which is typical of many fear-arousing communications, had identical effects upon the autonomic and self-report measures of fear. These data support the construct validity of the self-report measure of fear and increase our confidence that “fear” has been aroused in previous studies of fear and persuasion. Neither the fear-film manipulation nor the autonomic components of fear were associated with attitude change. The reassurance variable facilitated attitude change. Overall, the findings emphasized the importance of cognitive mediational processes rather than an emotional state of fear.     

Developmental differences in cognitive mapping: Configurational knowledge of familiar large-scale environments

In order to investigate the development of cognitive mapping of familiar large-scale environments. First-, fifth-, and eighth-grade children were asked to make bearing and distance estimates to six targets from three sighting locations in their school. Correlations between estimated and actual bearings and distances were extremely high at all grade levels, indicating that (a) children at all grade levels could reliably make such estimates, and (b) route knowledge of even the youngest children was quite high. Bearing accuracy increased between first- and fifth-grade and showed little improvement thereafter. Increases in a measure of configurational accuracy were found between first- and fifth-grade and between fifth- and eighth-grade. Differential accuracy as a function of the demands of particular sighting locations was found only for the younger children.     

Effects of wage inequities on work attitudes and performance

A replication and extension of the Adams and Jacobsen (1964) investigation of inequity theory was carried out using a 3 × 2 experimental design with three levels of compensation and two levels of qualifiedness. This design included an overcompensated condition in which the overpayment was not confounded with unqualifiedness, thereby allowing a comparison of differential predictions from inequity and expectancy theory. Comparisons of over and underpayment conditions were also made to test the differential threshold hypothesis of inequity theory. Attitudinal as well as performance data were collected to investigate the possibility of differing modes of inequity reduction.The major finding in the present study was that variations in manipulated perceptions of qualifiedness produced significant effects upon both quality and quantity measures of work behavior while induced variations in the amount of anticipated compensation only affected quality of work. The qualified conditions produced fewer pieces of higher quality. This finding was discussed from the point of view of inequity theory as well as an alternative “self-esteem” explanation.Differences in work performance across pay levels were nonsignificant with the exception of a work quality measure in which the overpaid qualified group produced significantly more errors than the standard pay-qualified group. Possible interpretations of these findings were discussed and a range of conditions which may affect perceptions of inequity were considered.     

Utilization of context for word identification decisions in children

The use of context was investigated with subjects from fourth- and sixth-grade populations. A Word Boundary task was used that requires subjects to make word-identification decisions both with and without contextual information. Results indicated that context was utilized effectively by the sixth-grade students, while the fourth-grade students showed small context-use effects. These findings are consistent with performance models that emphasize the role of predictive behavior in language analysis.     

Recognition memory for objects in very young children: The effect of shape and label similarity on preference for novel stimuli

In two studies, 88 children 12 to 38 months of age were briefly shown 24 common objects on familiarization trials. On subsequent test trials, these objects reappeared paired with novel objects. On one-third of the test trials pairs were similar in shape, on another third of the test trials pairs shared a common label, and on the remaining test trials pairs were unrelated. Looking times for each of the two objects on test trials were measured. All but the youngest age group showed significantly longer looking times for novel than for familiar objects for all three kinds of test pairs. However, for 19- to 31-month-olds preference for novel stimuli in the common Label Condition, although significant, was less than preference for novel stimuli when shape was similar or when unrelated stimuli were paired. Recognition in the oldest group was unaffected by condition. The results suggest a developmental period during which label or conceptual similarity has a special significance for recognition, and are discussed within theoretical frameworks concerning the very young child's developing semantic and categorization skills.