Relevance of genotype and its environmental counterpart to the theory,interpretation, and nomenclature of ability measures

While the constructs of aplitude and achievement, which are here defined as genotypic and environmental constructs, are potentially useful in psychological theory and in the development of predictors and weights for predictors, the use of these terms for psychological tests is highly misleading. When used for tests, the terms lead to invalid inferences concerning the constructs and to erroneous predictions of later criteria. All psychological tests measure current performance levels which are phenotypic characteristics. Practically all such tests can be used to estimate both genotypic and environmental constructs with nonzero accuracy. The basic error is to use a term which denotes a genetic or an environmental construct for a phenotypic measure. Implications of this position for inferences concerning group differences in aptitude and for construct validity of tests are briefly discussed.     

A model of fixed activation time scheduling

A model for the fixed activation time scheduling of events is presented. Activation time is defined as the time needed for an event to regain dominance in the stream of events measured from the point in time at which it lost dominance. The fixed activation time scheduling rule states that some event must be ongoing at all times, that an ongoing event will continue until interrupted by another event, that every event has a predetermined activation time and that fulfilling the activation time requirement is the necessary and sufficient condition for an event to interrupt an ongoing event. The last condition sets this rule apart from those employed in quequeing theory since it does not allow events to be completed or queues to form. Derivations from the model concerning the dynamic organization of the stream of events, written in terms of the frequency and duration of events and the transitions between pairs of events, are given. Special attention is paid to issues that arise in deciding on the coding of events. It is suggested that the fixed activation time scheduling rule will apply to a wide variety of settings, environmental and behavioral, and this is illustrated by a detailed application of the model to observations on the stream of free behavior.     

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.     

Remembering,understanding, and representation

Starting with the facts that not everything that is understood is remembered, and that not everything that is remembered is understood. this paper urges that models of language processing should be able to make a distinction between comprehension and memory. To this end. a case is made for a spreading activation process as being the essential ingredient of the comprehension process. It is argued that concepts activated during comprehension not only restrict the search set for candidate concepts to be used in a top-down fashion, they also constitute part of an episodic representation that can come to be p e of long-term memory. The way in which these representations atrophy is discussed, as is the way in which their idiosyncratic components are eliminated in producing representations in semantic memory. Some observations on the comprehension and memory of text are made and arguments are presented to show how intrusions and omissions in recall can be handled. Some existing experimental data is reanalyzed in terms of the proposed model and alternative interpretations consistent with the model are shown to be possible.     

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.     

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.     

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 role of logical and nonlogical factors in making inferences about category membership

Three postulates are proposed concerning the manner in which persons infer the validity of propositions that do not necessarily follow logically from the information available. These postulates assume that subjects first attempt to identify the propositions that are most and least likely to follow from the information given. They then use their beliefs in these propositions as anchors, relative to which the validity of other propositions is evaluated on the basis of both logical and nonlogical criteria. Two experiments are reported in which these postulates are used successfully to diagnose the logical and nonlogical factors that underlie inferences based upon both single statements and sets of syllogistically related propositions. The implications of the proposed postulates for existing formulations of social inference and cognitive organization are discussed.     

Predicting social behavior from personality traits

The classic view of traits as dispositions was examined and a number of ambiguities noted. When clarified, implications for predicting social behaviors from personality variables were derived. Two types of behavioral criterion were delineated, and it was argued that personality measures should be systematically related to multiple act criteria, but not necessarily to single act criteria. It was suggested that behaviors could be treated as items on a behavioral measure of personality and that standard scaling criteria be applied in identifying behaviors that should be related to a given trait dimension. In attempting to identify behaviors which are linearly related to a personality trait, the application of Bayes theorem was shown to be of theoretical interest. Two indices, a validity index and a linearity index, were derived from Bayes theorem and it was shown that validity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for linearity.     

Habituation,memory, and the evaluative dimension of meaning

Two groups of subjects were exposed to a series of 20 either positively evaluated words (E⁺ group) or negatively evaluated words (E^? group). On the twenty-first trial, half the subjects in E⁺ group (the E^+? group) received a negatively evaluated word while the other half of the subjects received a further positively evaluated word (E⁺⁺ group). A similar subdivision was made with the E^? group to yield E^?+ and E^?? groups. Skin conductance responses to all stimulus words were measured. The responses of the E^+? and E^?+ groups were compared to those of their control groups (E⁺⁺ and E^??) for stimulus words 21 and 22. The results of these analyses, and the data concerning responses prior to stimulus word 21, indicated that subjects habituated to semantic stimuli of the same evaluative meaning. Memory for the words was assessed postexperimentally and its relationship to the orienting response in discussed.     

The effects of alternatives on the salience of reward allocation norms

In a dyadic bargaining situation there is considerable evidence that the alternative outcomes of the bargainers (if they cannot reach agreement) have important effects on bargaining outcomes. Under the assumption that situational factors affect the nature of the relation between the alternatives of the bargainers and bargaining outcomes, the effects of two factors were assessed: the relative size of the reward to be negotiated (excess of prize minus alternatives) and the magnitude of the difference in the alternatives of the two bargainers. Using college students as subjects, the predictions of two models were also contrasted: the equal excess model and Shapley-w. The relative size of the prize did not have a significant effect on the accuracy of the two models, but the magnitude of the difference in alternatives had marked effects. The results also suggest that the Shapley-w model may be more accurate when the bargainers are relatively inexperienced and cooperatively oriented, whereas the equal excess model may be more accurate when the bargainers are relatively sophisticated and competitively oriented.     

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.