The logical and empirical bases of conservation judgements

It is argued that conservation judgements are based on a particular combination of logical necessity and empirical belief. The empirical belief is that a given transformation will not alter a particular quantity (Elkind's conservation of identity). The logical aspect is a transitive deductive argument containing an initial equivalence of two quantities and the conservation of identity belief as premises which lead to the conclusion of maintained equivalence (Elkind's conservation of equivalence). In two experiments, it is shown that conservation of identity beliefs can be manipulated in subjects who have long since developed the capacity for transitive deductive inference. Untrained 10 year olds were unaware of how sublimation acts to alter certain quantities over particular transformations of shape. And untrained adults incorrectly believed that both the area and perimeter of a closed figure would be conserved over transformations which elongated the figure. Both groups of subjects could be trained in the correct conservation of identity beliefs and this affected their conservation of equivalence judgements in predicted ways. It is suggested that the locical aspect of conservation is developmentally stable and that the empirical aspect varies widely across problems and individuals because of its dependence on relevant experience.     

Preexposure to the CS alone,US alone,or CS and US uncorrelated: Latent inhibition,blocking by context or learned irrelevance?

Three experiments on conditioned suppression in rats examined the extent to which preexposure to the CS, the US, or uncorrelated presentations of both interfere with future conditioning. Experiment 1 suggested that the interference caused by preexposure to the US alone may result from blocking by contextual cues: signaling the US during preexposure attenuated the interference. Experiment 2 demonstrated that signaling the US by another stimulus did not attenuate the interference caused by exposure to uncorrelated presentations of CS and US. Experiment 3 replicated the results of Experiments 1 and 2 and directly compared the magnitude of these deficits. The results of these experiments imply that the effects of exposure to uncorrelated presentations of CS and US are not reducible to the sum of the effects of exposure to CS or US alone.     

Do children use similar processes to read and spell words?

The use of spelling-sound information in both reading and spelling was evaluated by having children read and spell nonwords and five types of words that differed in terms of their regularity for reading and spelling. The subjects were grade 3 children who had been psychometrically defined as good readers and good spellers (“good”), good readers and poor spellers (“mixed”), or poor readers and poor spellers (“poor”). Results indicated that all children attempted to use spelling-sound correspondences in both reading and spelling, although children in both the mixed and the poor groups had weaker knowledge of these correspondences and were less systematic in their use of them. Furthermore, even though the children in the mixed group had been matched with children in the good group on reading comprehension, the number and type of errors made by the mixed subjects on both the reading and spelling tasks were more similar to those of the poor subjects than to those of the good subjects.     

Construct validation of the dependency and self-criticism scales of the depressive experiences questionnaire

S. J. Blatt (Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 1974, 29, 107–157) distinguished between two types of depressive experiences, one characterized by strong dependency needs and the other by self-criticism and guilt. This paper reports a series of validation studies of the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (DEQ), which was developed to measure individuals' vulnerabilities to these types of experiences (S. J. Blatt, J. P. D'Afflitti, & D. M. Quinlan, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1976, 85, 383–389). The Dependency and Self-Criticism scales were shown to be stable in the face of both a 13-week interval and the receipt of midterm grades. Dependency was associated with conflict concerning the expression of hostility and, in males, feelings of helplessness. Self-Criticism was associated with low self-esteem and high levels of morality-conscience guilt. In a study of behavior in dyadic problem-solving tasks, Dependency in males was found to be negatively related to task leadership, and Self-Criticism in females tended to be negatively related to judged likeability. On the other hand, little support was found for the hypotheses that Dependency would be related to field dependent cognitive style and to the use of primitive defense mechanisms. The results were viewed as supporting the utility of Blatt's distinction between the two types of depression, but a number of anomalous findings indicated a need for further study of the DEQ. The question of the developmental level of the two types of depression, possible sex differences in the correlates of the scales, and the possibility of situational specificity in individuals' responses were identified as the areas most in need of study.     

Development of the concepts of energy conservation and entropy

Development of the concepts of energy conservation and entropy was studied in children between 5 and 15 years of age. Energy conservation, as illustrated by the operation of double and colliding pendulums, was not well understood until about 15 years of age. Understanding of entropy was dependent on the particular apparatus used. When illustrated by the gradual mixing of rolling marbles of different colors, entropy was understood by 9- to 15-year-olds. But when illustrated by the eventual equalization of water levels in two interconnected containers, entropy was not well understood until about 15 years of age. Errors on a problem used to illustrate the conservation concept could often be characterized by the misapplication of the entropy concept and vice versa.     

The effects of symmetry and contour on recognition memory in children

Children in prekindergarten, kindergarten, and second grade were tested on a delayed match-to-sample task using abstract visual patterns. The patterns varied both in type of visual organization (unstructured, diagonally symmetrical, vertically symmetrical, and horizontally symmetrical) and in amount of contour. Following the initial memory task, we attempted to train half of the children at each grade by directing their attention to axes of symmetry; the other half of the children received a control task. Subsequently, the subjects were given a second delayed match-to-sample test. On both pre- and post-training trials, structure influenced performance, especially in the two younger groups. Vertical and horizontal symmetry generally facilitated performance in the prekindergarteners, while all three types of symmetry facilitated performance in the kindergarteners. In addition, children generally responded more accurately to patterns with lower levels of contour. They also made more like-contour than unlike-contour confusions, indicating that quantitative aspects of patterns were encoded. Group differences suggested that both processing capacity and memory increase during the age range studied. Finally, there was no indication that training improved performance at any age.     

Acquisition and use of spelling-sound correspondences in reading

The acquisition and use of knowledge concerning the spelling-sound correspondences of English were evaluated by having children read words and nonwords that contained regular and homographic spelling patterns. Regular spelling patterns are associated with a single pronunciation (e.g., -UST as in MUST); homographic patterns have multiple pronunciations (e.g., -OSE as in HOSE, DOSE, LOSE). Analyses of errors, latencies, and pronunciations provided evidence for two complementary developmental processes: good beginning readers rapidly learn to recognize high-frequency words from visual input alone, while at the same time they are expanding and consolidating their knowledge of spelling-sound correspondences. Younger and poor readers rely more on phonological information in word decoding, as evidenced by their particular difficulty reading homographic spelling patterns. Poor readers do not appear to use a radically different strategy for reading words: their perfomance is similar to that of younger, good readers.     

Differential cerebral involvement in the cognitive functioning of bilinguals

The cognitive processing strategies of two groups of French-English bilinguals were studied by means of an auditory Stroop test designed to evaluate cerebral hemispheric involvement. An “early bilingual” group were bilingual before the age of 5, and a “late bilingual” group were bilingual after the age of 10. Stimuli were words uttered in pitches that were related to word meanings either congruently (as in the word “high” uttered in a high pitch) or incongruently (the word “haute” uttered in a low pitch). In one condition, subjects were to differentiate low from high pitches, disregarding meaning, while in a second condition, they were to disregard pitch and respond to word meanings. Measures of field independence were also taken. Results of data analyses suggest that male early bilinguals—the most field independent subgroup—process meaning efficiently in both cerebral hemispheres, but process pitch better in the right hemisphere. However, male late bilinguals and female bilinguals, both early and late, process meaning more rapidly in the right cerebral hemisphere and pitch equally rapidly in both hemispheres. The findings are interpreted as reflecting hemisphere-based strategy and sex differences in information-processing by the two bilingual groups.     

Extinction of the context and latent inhibition

The hypothesis that latent inhibition could be reduced by extinguishing the experimental context, that is, exposing the rats to the context between exposure to the conditional stimulus (CS) and conditioning, was tested. All experiments used the conditioned emotional response procedure. In Experiment 1, extinction was not effective when the animals were exposed to the clicker 40 times off the baseline of responding for food and when the clicker CS was partially reinforced with shocks during the test phase. In Experiments 2 and 3, latent inhibition could be reduced by extinction if the animals were exposed to the CS 24 or 16 times on-baseline, and if continuous reinforcement was used during the test. In Experiments 4, 5, and 6, we attempted to determine which variable was responsible for the discrepant results. In Experiment 4, extinction was effective with 20 or 40 on-baseline exposures to the CS, using continuous reinforcement during the test. In Experiment 5, extinction was not effective with exposure on- or off-baseline, using 24 exposures and partial reinforcement. Finally, in Experiment 6, extinction reduced latent inhibition using continuous, but not partial, reinforcement with 40 exposures off-baseline. From these results, we concluded that Wagner's model of habituation was not sufficient to account for latent inhibition and that a hybrid model, using both associative and cognitive representational processes, was necessary.     

Joint independent random utility models where one of the choice structures satisfies the strict utility model

It is known that one cannot construct an independent joint random utility model for which both the preference and aversion probabilities satisfy the strict utility model. Given this result, it is natural to ask what kind of relations are possible in such contexts. Here, for instance, we demonstrate that if a structure of preference and aversion probabilities are generated by a common independent random utility model, and if the preference probabilities satisfy the strict utility model, then the preference and aversion probabilities are related by what is known as the strong acceptance condition. We also prove an appropriate converse of this result. Finally, an example is given of a process (other than the random utility model) that is compatible with the assumption that a structure of preference and aversion probabilities satisfies a common strict utility model.     

Perceptual categorization in the cerebral hemispheres

The suggestion of a functional hemispheric dissociation in performing perceptual categorization was examined in two tachistoscopic experiments with normal adults. Subjects were required to match physically identical or similar, but nonidentical, pictures of animals. The first experiment showed no hemispheric difference and indicated that both hemispheres could resort to two different types of categorization process as a function of the simultaneous or delayed mode of presentation of the stimuli. In the second experiment, the viewing conditions were manipulated so as to afford a reduced amount of stimulus energy, and a significant left-visual-field advantage was then obtained. The results are discussed with respect to models of information processing in the cerebral hemispheres, and in relation to impairments in object recognition following brain damage.     

Perception of causal relations in humans: Factors affecting judgments of response-outcome contingencies under free-operant procedures

In three experiments, college studients responded to and rated a range of positive, random, and negative response-outcome contingencies presented in free-operant formats. These experiments sought a paradigm that would yield sensitive and unbiased judgments of response-outcome relations and explored the role of time in the judgment of response-outcome covariation. In Experiment 1, the effects of making continuous and discrete responses on subjects' contingency judgments were compared. In Experiment 2, the effects of changing the temporal definition of discrete responses were examined as were the effects of the amount of exposure to contingency problems. In Experiment 3, the effects of temporal regularity in defining response occurrence and nonoccurrence were investigated. In all three experiments, subjects' judgments were strong linear functions of the programmed contingencies between telegraph key operation and the illumination of a brief light. This result shows free-operant scheduling of response-outcome contingencies to be a highly sensitive and unbiased method of investigating causal perception. Additionally, judgment accuracy was found to be higher for males than for females and to improve as the probability of the subject's making a recorded response rose from .00 toward .50. Finally, a correlational analysis of several possible judgment rules supported the conclusion that subjects rated response-outcome relations on the basis of the difference in the probability of an outcome given their having recently made or not made a response.     

Processing of visually presented vowels in the cerebral hemispheres

The respective efficiency of the cerebral hemispheres in processing visually presented vowels is discussed and examined in a tachistoscopic experiment with normal subjects. It is suggested that results from dichotic listening experiments cannot be used to predict performance on the same material in the visual modality. The physical characteristics of the stimulus, in both modalities, contribute to the pattern of hemispheric advantage and cannot be ignored in the interpretation of results from dichotic listening and tachistoscopic experiments.     

Covariation and temporal contiguity as principles of causal inference in young children

Four- to seven-year-old children observed a simple physical effect which could be attributed to either a consistent but noncontiguous covariate or a contiguous but inconsistent covariate. When there was a physical rationale for the temporal delay between covariate and effect, children attributed the effect to the consistent but noncontiguous covariate. In the absence of such a rationale, they attributed the effect to the contiguous but inconsistent covariate. It was concluded that neither consistent covariation nor strict temporal contiguity were essential aspects of causal inference for these children.     

Automatic access of the meanings of ambiguous words in context: Some limitations of knowledge-based processing

Five experiments are described on the processing of ambiguous words in sentences. Two classes of ambiguous words (noun-noun and noun-verb) and two types of context (priming and nonpriming) were investigated using a variable stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) priming paradigm. Noun-noun ambiguities have two semantically unrelated readings that are nouns (e.g., PEN, ORGAN); noun-verb ambiguities have both noun and verb readings that are unrelated (e.g., TIRE, WATCH). Priming contexts contain a word highly semantically or associatively related to one meaning of the ambiguous word; nonpriming contexts favor one meaning of the word through other types of information (e.g., syntactic or pragmatic). In nonpriming contexts, subjects consistently access multiple meanings of words and select one reading within 200 msec. Lexical priming differentially affects the processing of subsequent noun-noun and noun-verb ambiguities, yielding selective access of meaning only in the former case. The results suggest that meaning access is an automatic process which is unaffected by knowledge-based (“top-down”) processing. Whether selective or multiple access of meaning is observed largely depends on the structure of the ambiguous word, not the nature of the context.     

Response-outcome contingency: Behavioral and judgmental effects of appetitive and aversive outcomes with college students

In two experiments, positive, negative, and zero response-outcome contingencies were responded to and rated by college students under a free-operant procedure. In Experiment 1, outcomes were either neutral or were associated with point gain. In Experiment 2, subjects were administered different outcome treatments: neutral outcomes, outcomes associated with money gain, or outcomes associated with money loss. In both experiments, subjects' judgments of response-outcome contingency and their operant responses were each strong linear functions of ΔP, the difference between the probability of an outcome given a response and the probability of an outcome given no response. Appetitive and aversive outcomes produced opposite and symmetrical response patterns. In Experiment 1, no differences in ratings occurred with neutral or appetitive outcomes; however, in Experiment 2, more potent appetitve outcomes led to somewhat more extreme ratings than either neutral or aversive outcomes. Increasing outcome probability produced only a slight bias in ratings of noncontingent problems in Experiment 1 and no bias in Experiment 2. Contrary to predictions derived from an analysis of superstitious behavior, increasing outcome probability in noncontingent problems decreased operant responding when outcomes were appetitive and increased operant responding when outcomes were aversive. Trend analyses revealed that Δ P was superior to several other metrics in predicting subjects' estimates of contingency and the behavioral effects of contingency. Operant responding was in closer accord with matching predictions than with maximizing predictions.     

Noticing and responding in a discrimination based on a distinguishing element

In learning a successive go/no-go discrimination between a positive display consisting of the elements A and B, and negative display consisting of A-alone, pigeons first trained to peck A shift to pecking the distinguishing B element. In order to learn whether or not the shift to B is facilitated by B's function as a signal of the reinforcer, apart from the direct reinforcement of B responses, six arrangements of the elements with respect to the food reinforcer were used. Discrete trials were terminated by a single peck or after 4 sec. The A and B elements were dots of different color. The most critical comparison was between two groups, both of which received no reinforcement for a response directed to B. In one case, B signaled the reinforcer: An A response was reinforced when B was present but not when A appeared alone. In the other, B signaled the absence of a reinforcer: An A response was nonreinforced when B was present, while the response to A-alone was reinforced. During training and in extinction many more reponses were made to B when it signaled the reinforcer than when it signaled its absence. It is concluded that in a discrimination between AB positive and A negative the shift from pecking A to pecking B is facilitated by B's role as a signal for the reinforcer even on trials in which the peck is not made to B. Results from certain other groups showed that, unless pecks shifted to B within the positive display, pecks to A continued on the negative, A-alone trials as well as on the positive AB trials.     

Gradients of attraction as a function of the fit between social setting and stimulus person characteristics: Studies of the differentiation of attitude

Two experiments compared three alternative hypotheses concerning differences in attraction to a person across interaction settings: A compartmentalization hypothesis assumes that a person's (A's) intimate and nonintimate characteristics only affect attraction to him in intimate and nonintimate interactions, respectively, and that there is no generalization of attraction across levels of intimacy. An intimacy dominance hypothesis assumes that a person's intimacy-related characteristics determine attraction to him at all levels of interaction. Finally, an intimacy threshold hypothesis assumes that a person's intimacy-related characteristics become increasingly relevant to attraction as the intimacy of interaction increases, but that these characteristics need not influence attraction at nonintimate levels of interaction. Experiment 1 supported the compartmentalization hypothesis. Attraction to a formal teacher decreased as the intimacy of the anticipated setting increased, while attraction to an informal teacher increased with increasing setting intimacy. In Experiment 2, agreement on intimate topics promoted liking for a peer while no effect was found for agreement on superficial topics. This effect only emerged for intimate interaction settings, supporting the intimacy threshold hypothesis. High positive correlations between distance preference and attraction were obtained in Experiment 1, while analogous data obtained in Experiment 2 had less clear implications.