Two experiments on the relation between psychoticism and response uncertainty in normal subjects

Previous studies have suggested that schizophrenics are affected by response uncertainty to a greater degree than normals or other psychiatric groups. Two studies examined whether a similar pattern of performance would be produced in normal Ss scoring high on questionnaire measures presumed to measure psychotic predisposition. The Psychoticism (P) scales from the EPQ and the unpublished PEN Inventory were employed; and response uncertainty was varied using a card-sorting procedure. In Experiment 1 males were more affected by increases in response uncertainty than females, but there was no difference between Ss scoring high and low on the P scales. Experiment 2 included a condition in which guide-cards were randomly reordered between trials. There was a highly significant tendency for Ss scoring high on the PEN P scale to be more affected by response uncertainty in this experiment. Again males were more influenced by uncertainty than females, but this was due largely to their performance under the condition where guide-cards were varied. Ss high on EPQ P also showed decremental performance under this condition. The data provided partial support for the validity of the P scales, particularly the PEN version of the scale, as indices of schizophrenic predisposition.     

The accuracy of self-administration and scoring on Holland's Self-Directed Search

This study assesed the extent to which Ss commit various types of errors when completing Holland's Self-Directed Search (SDS) entirely on their own. Nearly all Ss made some type of error and approximately half of the Ss made errors which affected their final three-letter summary codes. Almost one-fifth of the Ss made errors resulting in an incorrect high-point code. Whether or not Ss made errors that affected their summary codes was unrelated to the extent to which they were interested in knowing more about occupations or academic majors they might like. Neither were such errors related to whether Ss felt the occupations suggested by their summary codes seemed reasonable. Only slightly over one-third the Ss actually did feel that the occupations seemed reasonable.     

On the relationship between personality and time estimation

The influence of basic dimensions of personality, such as extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism, on estimation of time still appears to be unclear. Therefore, in the present study the relationship between Eysenck's basic dimensions of personality and time estimation was investigated in 34 male Ss. After filling in the short version of a German adaptation of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised, Ss were required to reproduce target durations ranging from 5 to 40 sec. As a measure of performance, reproduction ratio scores, representing directional errors, and absolute error scores were computed. Correlational analyses revealed no indication of a linear relationship between neuroticism and time estimation. However, there was a tendency for extraverts to overestimate time and to make less accurate time judgments relative to introverts. Furthermore, Ss with higher psychoticism scores were less prone to overestimation of time intervals and showed better accuracy of temporal reproductions than Ss with lower psychoticism scores.     

A developmental study of pronouncing responses in the discrimination learning of words and pictures

Subjects at three age levels were administered picture pair or word pair discrimination lists. They pronounced or pointed as a method of choice, and they pronounced or pointed at the correct item (or remained silent) during rehearsal. The results indicated that with picture pairs, pronunciation facilitated learning as a method of choice and a type of rehearsal in nursery school Ss. For fifth grade and college Ss, there was no significant difference between pronouncing and pointing as a method of choice. However, spoken rehearsal was superior to control performance for fifth grade Ss. College Ss performed equally well in the control and pronouncing conditions, but pointing during rehearsal produced significantly more errors than pronouncing. Word pairs produced no significant pronunciation effects. These results were discussed within an internalization of speech perspective.     

Development of relational learning: Effects of instruction and delay of transfer

Preschool children were trained on a color relevant oddity problem by one of three methods: increased salience of the oddity relationship, instruction on the solution rule, or a combination of increased salience and rule instruction. The youngest Ss solved the training problem when the solution rule was provided but not under the salience procedure. The two older groups solved in all conditions and errors decreased with age. The generality of the solution was determined by performance on a form relevant transfer task. The youngest Ss made fewer errors on the transfer problem following rule instruction training than following training in the combined procedure. The intermediate age group made fewer errors when the transfer task was administered one week after training than one minute after training. The transfer problem was easily solved by the oldest Ss and performance was independent of training procedure and amount of delay. These results were interpreted as reflecting developmental differences in relational concept learning.     

Effects of the temporal relationship of feedback and stimulus information upon discrimination-learning strategies

Second grade Ss and college students were tested under three conditions of the temporal relationship of feedback and stimulus information. In one condition (/+3) feedback was delivered immediately upon S's response while the stimuli were still in view. In another (/0) feedback was also immediate but stimuli were extinguished immediately upon S's response. In the third condition (/?3), stimuli were extinguished immediately upon response and feedback was delayed 3 sec. Major findings among the children were (a) Ss of all conditions coded information at the same (high) average efficiency, (b) Ss of conditions /0 and /?3 recoded with significantly less efficiency than those of /+3, and (c) Ss in condition /+3 manifested primarily efficient information-processing strategies, those in condition /0 showed intermediate performance, and those of condition /?3 showed relatively primitive stereotyped behavior. Among adult Ss performance was uniformly high with little effect on any response measure investigated.     

Memory for prenominal adjectives in ordinary English sentences

Ss have been found to remember the gist of English sentences quite well while having little or no memory for structural features unrelated to the basic meaning. This research examines the representation of meaning in memory using adjective-noun phrases embedded in ordinary sentences. Ss studied a long series of sentences and were later tested for memory of certain of the adjectives in these sentences. Tested with a specially constructed forced-choice recognition procedure, Ss made significantly more recognition errors to distractors from the same predicative class as the correct choice than they did to distractors from different classes. This effect was highly significant when the correct choice was a nonpolar adjective but was not different from chance when a polar was correct. Data from a recall test procedure suggested this difference was due to Ss remembering the denotative or referential meaning of the adjective. The results showed that Ss remember abstract aspects of the predicative meaning of adjectival modification.     

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.     

Effects of stimulus differentiation training upon hypotheses,strategies, and stereotypes in discrimination learning among kindergarten children

Two groups of kindergarten children received stimulus differentiation training either with feedback (experimental Ss) or without (controls), prior to presentation of a series of discrimination-learning problems using blanktrial probes. Results were as follows: Performance of both groups was virtually perfect during differentiation training (less than one error per 1000 trials). In transfer, however, experimental Ss solved more problems, generated more consistent Ss during blank-trial probes, manifested fewer response sets, were more likely to abandon a disconfirmed H, sampled more locally consistent Ss following errors, and retained a confirmed H more frequently than control Ss. Experimental Ss also manifested strategy Sys (hypothesis sampling systems) predominately, while controls generated only stereotypes. Findings were discussed in relation to theoretical perspectives derived from Piagetian theory and developmental learning theory.     

A two-phase model account of aversive classical conditioning performance in humans and rabbits

A two-phase model was applied to classical conditioning performance in man and rabbits. During phase 1, response probability remained constant. During phase 2, response probability generally increased, although one operator was sufficient for a majority of Ss and two operators were required for a minority of Ss. The latter Ss exhibited increases in responding after a CR trial and decreases in responding after a non-CR trial. The pattern of parameters was similar for man and rabbits. In man, increases in UCS intensity resulted in a decrease in the duration of phase 1 and an increase in the limit of the operators for those Ss requiring more than a single operator to describe performance during phase 2. The value of employing a model to describe the data and understand the effects of independent variable manipulation was discussed.     

The effects of perceptual pretraining on concept identification and preference

The effects of perceptual pretraining on preferences and concept identification performance in five- and eight-year-old Ss were investigated. The results indicated that perceptual pretraining facilitated performance on a concept identification task with a non-preferred relevant cue for the five-year-olds, but not for the eight-year-olds. However, perceptual pretraining did not affect preference in either age group and Ss were as consistent in their preference responding before and after perceptual pretraining as was a control group that had not received perceptual pretraining. Preferences were highly consistent in both age groups over a one week period. Perceptual pretraining was interpreted to increase the usability of the less preferred dimensions for the younger Ss, and to leave the affective preference response unaltered in both groups.     

Age differences in organization and recall: The effects of training in categorization

An alternating sort/recall task was employed to train fourth graders and college students in organizational strategies. Free-sorting Ss, at both age levels, sorted a group of words into two to seven categories. Analyses of final sorting patterns indicated reliable differences between the children and adults. The organizational schemes thus developed by the free-sorting Ss were taught, by means of a yoking procedure, to other Ss. Results indicated that the recall of fourth graders was improved when they were forced to learn the sorting patterns developed by the older Ss. Similarly, impairment in the recall of college students was observed when they were required to sort according to the organization employed by the fourth graders. These findings imply that changes in organization can result in changes in recall performance.     

A Psychometric Comparison of Narcotic Addicts With Hospital Attendants

This study sought to determine the effect of a single intraperitoneal injection of methylchloroethamine on the long-term activity response of immature, male, Holtzmann albino rats. The 10 experimental Ss showed a significant progressive decline in activity up to 110 days after injection. The activity of the control Ss over the same period showed random variation. A subsidiary finding was a significantly faster weight gain for the experimental Ss than for the control Ss.     

Differential recall of successes and failures: Its relationship to defensiveness,achievement motivation,and anxiety

Differential recall of completed and incompleted tasks under high and low stress was studied in 157 Ss. On the basis of repression, it would be expected that Ss identified as hysterics would recall fewer incompletions (ego threatening failures) under high than low stress. The results indicated that hysteria was not related to recall. On the other hand, Ss with high achievement motivation or low anxiety recalled more incompletions under high than low stress while there were no differences in their recall of completions under high and low stress. These results offered no support for repression. Furthermore, the relationships between recall and achievement motivation and anxiety suggest that the differential recall is due to differences in the original learning of the completed and incompleted tasks.     

Relationship of Ocular Latency and Speed to Intellectual Performance

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relative effectiveness of specific media attributes (visual) on S performance on criterion tests measuring different levels of understanding. One hundred seventy-one Ss were assigned to one of three entering behavior groups (high, middle, and low) as a result of their performance on a pretest designed for this purpose. Ss participated in their respective presentations and received two criterion tests. Analyses indicated that (a) there was a significant relationship between entering behavior and performance on the criterion tests; (b) no significant relationship was found to exist between the level of stimulus explicitness and achievement on the criterion tests; and (c) no significant interactions were found to exist between entering behavior and type of visualization.     

Shaping of three-man teams on a multiple DRL-DRH schedule using collective reinforcement

Five three-man teams were conditioned to a multiple DRL-DRH schedule during five daily sessions of 3 hr each. The teams were conditioned on the basis of their cumulative response rate regardless of the contributions of individual members. Two individually conditioned Ss were run under a similar schedule for comparison. Although all teams demonstrated some differentiation of response rate under the two legs of the schedule, this difference was not achieved as rapidly, nor was it as stable, as the differentiation in rates achieved in individually conditioned Ss. Team members displayed a variety of response rates as a result of collective team conditioning. Often, individual response rates interfered with obtainment of team reinforcement. The individual team members displayed little S^D control in comparison with the individually conditioned Ss. In general the results suggest that collective reinforcement is highly inefficient in comparison with procedures employing individual feedback.     

Perfectionism and efficiency: Accuracy,response bias,and invested time in proof-reading performance

Investigating problem-solving performance, Ishida, H. (2005). College students’ perfectionism and task-strategy inefficience: Why their efforts go unrewarded? Japanese Journal of Social Psychology, 20, 208–215. Found high levels of perfectionism were associated with lower efficiency. Aiming to replicate and further explore this finding, the present study investigated how two dimensions of perfectionism (high standards, discrepancy between expectations and performance) predicted efficiency in proof-reading performance. N = 96 students completed a proof-reading task involving the detection of spelling, grammar, and format errors. When error-detection performance was subjected to signal detection analysis, high standards correlated positively with the number of incorrectly detected errors (false alarms). Moreover, when task-completion time was taken into account, high standards were negatively correlated with efficiency (accuracy/time). In comparison, discrepancy correlated negatively with the number of correctly detected errors (hits) and positively with a conservative response bias. The findings show that perfectionistic standards are associated with reduced efficiency demonstrating the importance of considering invested time, errors, and response bias when investigating the relationship between perfectionism and performance.     

A sequential response method of studying complex behavior in animals and its application to the measurement of drug effects

A behavioral testing method was demonstrated to be applicable to the study of detrimental drug effects on complex behavior in rats. The method required the subject (S) to respond in a certain sequence to four identical response sites spaced 90° apart within a cylindrical test compartment. After each S was shaped to perform its one particular sequence within this quadrilaterally symmetrical environment, and its performance was brought to a stable level, drug effects were then studied on a battery of such Ss whose sequential response habits were representative of a continuum of sequence complexity. Experiments with a drug which induces hallucinatory and confusional states in man showed that the method yields in the rat quantitative measures of detrimental behavioral effects in terms of dose-response and dose-time relationships in addition to providing an estimate of the interactive effect between drug dose and behavioral complexity. It was found that for a given magnitude of behavioral detriment, drug dose and behavioral complexity of sequence were inversely related. That is, a S required to perform a simple sequence needed a larger drug dose to interfere with its habit a unit amount that did a S with a more complex one; or, expressed another way, a given drug dose had a greater behavioral effect the more complex the sequence. Finally, an empirical ranking of response sequences along a functional behavioral complexity dimension was presented.     

The generality of word-association hierarchies: I. Production and recall of association responses

Ss responded to a stimuluslist in a free word association session (AS) and tried to recall their response to each stimulus in a recall session (RS). There was a significant positive correlation between commonality score (Co) in AS and number of correct reproductions in RS. All Ss tended to gain in Co, but LC (i.e., Ss of low Co in AS) more than HC (i.e., Ss of high Co in AS).     

Decision processes in children's recognition memory

Kindergarteners and third graders were given a continuous recognition memory task involving two-digit numbers. In addition, a rating scale consisting of photographs of various facial expressions was used to obtain confidence judgments from the Ss. Conventional analyses as well as signal detection analyses of the data revealed the following results: (a) the overall performance of the third graders was superior to that of the kindergarteners; (b) memory strength decreased as the number of intervening items increased; (c) there was no difference in the forgetting rates of the two grade levels; (d) the third graders exhibited a more liberal response bias than the kindergarteners; (e) both the hit rate (probability of correctly labeling an old stimulus as old) and the false-alarm rate (probability of incorrectly labeling a new stimulus as old) increased across blocks of items; (f) the increases in the hit rate and the false-alarm rate over blocks were due to a change in criterion from a relatively conservative level to a more lenient one; (g) the lower the S's level of confidence in judging an item as old, the lower was the probability of that item actually being old; (h) the third graders were better than the kindergarteners at gauging the accuracy of their recognition responses. It was concluded that with respect to recognition memory, chidren as young as $\text{5}\text{1}\text{2}$ years old are capable, to some extent, of monitoring their own memory states.