Semantic integration in children's reconstruction of narrative sequences

Preschool to fourth grade subjects were required to reconstruct a previously seen logical sequence by selecting old items from a set containing actually seen events and two types of new items, those consistent or inconsistent with the ordered sequence of the story. Older children were more efficient at adopting a consistent choice strategy, at rejecting inconsistent items and at retaining the end-anchor items of the story. When performance on the old anchor items was excluded, however, all grades had difficulty distinguishing the new-consistent items from the actually experienced old items. It is suggested that memory for logical narrative sequences involves the retention of the gist or theme in an integrated unified representation of the meaning rather than a series of discrete events. Further, the underlying processes of integration and inference are stable across ages.     

Reconstruction of arbitrary versus logical sequences by preschool children

The ability of preschool children to construct and reconstruct ordered sequences was examined in a series of four experiments. In Expt. 1, the task was to copy, with the model present or absent, the order of items pegged on a clothesline. In Expts. 2–4, the subjects were required to reconstruct ordered series of pictures from memory. In all experiments, the orders were either logical or arbitrary. Reconstruction of an arbitrary series of events is within the problem solving capacity of 4-yr-old children if (a) reconstruction takes place in the presence of the model or follows immediately upon the removal of the model and (b) the original sequence is presented simultaneously. If, however, the lag between viewing and reconstruction is increased and/or the original set is not viewed simultaneously, as a unit, performance declines. The provision of an inherent order to the items within a set, either by introducing a connective narrative, or a depicted logical sequence, is sufficient to maintain that order over time and to provide a unifying cohesion to the items when viewed successively.     

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.     

Progressive elaboration and memory for order in children

Three experiments were conducted investigating memory for items and order in a progressive elaboration paired-associates task. For all subjects retention of item information was improved by the use of progressively elaborated interactions relative to a no-elaboration control condition. For second and fourth graders, retention of order information depended upon the type of elaboration. If successive interactions were added in a logical temporal order, retention (of order information) was superior to the case where the successive interactions were added in a random order. This effect was not obtained with kindergarten children. In the second and third experiments, kindergarteners were instructed regarding the sequencing of the successive items, and results similar to those obtained with older children ensued. The data were discussed in terms of Tulving's distinction between episodic and semantic memory.     

Incidental learning in preschool children as a function of level of cognitive analysis

Preschool children's recall and clustering of organized lists of pictures were examined under deliberate instructions to remember or in incidental learning situations. The incidental tasks either required comprehension (categorization, or a rating of pleasantness-unpleasantness) or were formal orienting tasks involving processing in terms of physical features.Explicit instruction to remember and formal incidental instructions did not differ, and both lead to poorer performance than the comprehension activities. Categorization, whether accompanied by explicit instructions to recall, or occurring in the context of a meaningful activity, was no more efficient than categorization in and for itself. With children as with adults, it is the activity of the children which determines depth of processing and subsequent retention, not the intent to remember per se.     

Attribution of responsibility: A theoretical note

Research on factors influencing attribution of responsibility has resulted in inconsistent and inconclusive findings. A theoretical analysis suggests that Heider's levels of causality represent two dimensions underlying attribution of responsibility. It is suggested that conflicting findings result from failures to control at least one of these two dimensions.     

Phonemic effects in the silent reading of hearing and deaf children

Twenty-four deaf and hearing children silently read a printed passage while crossing out all detected cases of a pre-specified target letter. Target letters appeared in phonemically modal form, a category loosely analogous to “pronounced” letters (e.g., the g in badge), and in phonemically nonmodal form, a class which included “silent” letters and those pronounced in somewhat atypical fashion (e.g., the g in rough). Hearing children detected significantly more modal than nonmodal forms, an expected pronunciation effect for individuals in whom speech and reading ordinarily are in close functional relationship. The deaf detected exactly as many modal as nonmodal letter forms, provoking the interpretation that deaf children, as a group, do not effectively mediate print with speech. The deaf also were relatively unaffected by grammatical class, while hearing subjects were considerably more likely to detect a target letter if it occured in a content word than a functor term. Questions pertaining to reading instruction in the deaf are discussed.     

On construct validity: A critique of Miniard and Cohen's paper

Miniard and Cohen's conclusion that our measures of attitudes and subjective norms lack construct validity is rejected. It is shown that the data from their study are entirely consistent with data from previous investigations and that the data provide additional evidence for the predictive validity of our theory and for the construct validity of our operations.     

The effect of context on the structure of categories

Three experiments examined the effect of context on the representativeness ordering of exemplars of a category. Experiments 1 and 2 employed an online reading time paradigm to examine the effect of context on the time it takes to establish an anaphoric reference between an exemplar and a category term. Experiment 1 demonstrated that context can change the relation between a category term and an exemplar at the time of comprehension. Experiment 2 showed that category terms presented in context generate graded goodness-of-example distributions of exemplars that are different from the distributions generated in the absence of explicit context. These distributions cannot be derived by assuming that the exemplar most strongly suggested by the context serves as the category representation. Experiment 3 employed a membership verification paradigm. Response time was found to be a function of degree of relatedness to the contextdependent category representation. Typicality, as determined in the absence of explicit context, had no effect on decision time. Several models, including some extensions of current semantic memory theories, are developed to account for the results of these experiments.     

Knowing,feeling, and liking a psychophysiological study of attraction

Skin conductance and heart rate were recorded during verbal exchanges in which subjects were either agreed or disagreed with on a variety of issues. The manipulation of attitude similarity had significant effects on interpersonal attraction, perceived competence, and skin conductance, but not on heart rate. Disagreement produced higher skin conductance than agreement, and speaking was more arousing than listening. The correlations between arousal and attraction showed that heightened arousal was associated with both attraction toward agreers and dislike toward disagreers. As predicted, the linear relationship between attitude similarity and attraction increased in slope (0.00, 3.75, 8.75) with increasing levels of conductance (low, medium, high). The failure of subjects to prefer agreers to disagreers under conditions of low arousal suggests that information without affect does not influence attraction.     

Self-punitive behavior with changing percentages of reinforcement: The proper role of discrimination

Past research on self-punitive behavior has been interpreted as supporting a theoretical éxplanation based on a vicious circle rather than a discrimination hypothesis. Using rats, Melvin (1964) found that self-punitive behavior is not reduced when discrimination is aided by changing the percentage of shock trials from acquisition to extinction. This past research is inconclusive because it is based on a misinterpretation of what is the critical discrimination for extinction, namely the new response-punishment contingency. Using humans, the present study provides evidence that subjects can and do discriminate the change in percentage, but continue to show self-punitive behavior until they make the discrimination that responding results in shock rather than escape.     

Judgments of recency for long sequences of pictures: the absence of a developmental trend

Recency judgments were examined for four groups (N = 40 per group) aged 7, 8, 10, and 18 years. The Ss were required to choose either the near or far item on a series of test pairs embedded within a long sequence of single inspection items. No age effects were found. Performance was more accurate the longer the separation between the original presentation of the two test items and the shorter the lag from the most recently presented item to the test. Implications for general and developmental theories of memory were discussed. The data supported the hypothesis that tasks, which do not require deliberate mnemonic strategies, are not developmentally sensitive.     

Measuring the importance of cues in judgment for individuals: Subjective theories of IQ as a function of heredity and environment

To measure the relative subjective importance attached to heredity and environment, undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty were asked to predict the IQ scores of hypothetical adopted children based on the IQs of the biological mother and father, the IQs of the adoptive parents, and the socioeconomic status of the adoptive parents. Intuitive predictions of IQ were inconsistent with additive, multiple regression models. Rather, the data for individual subjects were consistent with a configural-weight averaging model. Weights derived from this model were correlated with ratings of the relative importance of cues. Judges who rated the environment more important not only had greater weights for the environmental variables, but also placed greater weight on high rather than low scores. The judges who rated heredity more important than environment had greater estimated weights for heredity information and for lower-valued information. Results were thus consistent with the hypothesis that model-derived relative weights and individuals ratings of the relative importance of cues are both measures of the importance that individuals attach to these cues.