Hemisphere functioning and motor imitation in autistic persons

Previous research has found that a high proportion of autistic individuals exhibit an atypical pattern of hemispheric specialization suggestive of impaired left hemisphere functioning: namely, right hemisphere dominance for both verbal and visual-spatial processing. Studies of brain-damaged persons have suggested that the left hemisphere is specialized for the use of nonverbal gesture. Since a major characteristic of autism is an impairment in the use of gesture, it was predicted that autistic persons would also show atypical hemispheric specialization for motor imitation. To test this hypothesis, hemispheric activation was measured using EEG recordings of alpha rhythm in autistic and matched normal control subjects during four motor imitation tasks. Autistic subjects showed significantly greater right hemisphere activation during the imitation tasks, than normal subjects. This pattern was particularly evident in younger autistic subjects and during oral, rather than manual, imitation tasks.     

The expression of memorization in early childhood

This experiment examined the expression and effectiveness of memorization in young children. Sixty children at each of the ages 4, 5, and 6 were randomly assigned to a memory group or to one of two control groups. All of the children were told that they could play with a group of toys during a brief activity period; the children in the memory condition were also instructed to memorize a specified subset of the toys. Mnemonic mediators were identified on the basis of differences in the activity period behaviors of children given memory and play instructions. Relative to the children in the play groups, the children in the memory conditions played with the toys less; further, their use of naming and visual examination as mnemonic mediators differentiated the groups at all ages and increased with age. Only the oldest subjects given memory instructions, however, demonstrated superior recall. The relationships between activity period behavior and recall among the different conditions were explored with regression techniques. Although previous research has focused on identifying the earliest use of memory strategies, the present findings underscore the importance of examining the development of these skills.     

Determinants of reduction in intended effort as a strategy for coping with anticipated failure

The present study investigated the use of reduction in intended effort as a strategy for protecting self-esteem from the threat of anticipated failure. It was hypothesized that people reduce the amount of effort they intend to exert when they expect a low probability of success on a highly ego-relevant task. Female subjects anticipated taking an easy (high probability of success) or difficult (low probability of success) test that was either high or low in ego relevance. Subjects' levels of intended effort and other task-relevant cognitions were assessed. It was found that subjects in the low-probability condition intended to exert less effort on the highly ego-relevant test than did subjects in the high-probability condition; probability of success had no effect on intended effort level on the low ego-relevance test. Subjects also reported that it was a worse day for a test in the low-probability condition than in the high-probability condition. The relevance of these findings to the egotism explanation of learned helplessness effects and general theories of motivation was discussed.     

Cerebral lateralization and reading dysfunction

The laterality preference patterns and types of oral reading errors were examined for 90 seventh-grade males. Specifically, scores on a self-report measure of lateral preference for 30 readers with adequate decoding skills but low comprehension and 30 readers who lacked decoding skills were compared with each other and with 30 good readers. As predicted, poor readers with grade appropriate word recognition scores were found to be generally more confused in their lateral preference than were good readers or poor readers who lacked decoding skills. Results of oral reading errors confirmed a visual integration problem for the more bilateral reader. Poor comprehenders with word recognition skills also reported significantly greater mixed lateral patterns for their fathers than did other readers. The results were interpreted as supporting the initial argument that difference-poor readers fail to comprehend because of problems in organizing visual input, which seems intimately tied to a bilateralization of functions.     

Preference for modes of dispute resolution as a function of process and decision control

Research on procedural justice has suggested that the distribution of control among participants can be used to classify dispute-resolution procedures and may be an important determinant of preference for such procedures. This experiment demonstrates that control can be meaningfully divided into two components: control over the presentation of evidence and control over the final decision. The experiment placed subjects (law students and undergraduates) in a situation of conflict and varied two between-subjects factors: (1) Role, whether subjects expected to role-play third parties (law students) or litigants (undergraduates), and (2) Orientation, whether individuals focused on equity claims (appeals to a norm of fairness) or legal claims (appeals to a strict, legal interpretation of events). As a control, a third-party neutral-orientation condition was included. In addition, subjects were presented with four dispute-resolution procedures which varied in third-party control over the presentation of evidence (Process Control) and third-party control over the final decision (Decision Control) as within-subjects factors. Results revealed that both litigants and third parties preferred high rather than low third-party decision control. Litigants with an equity orientation preferred low third-party control over the presentation of evidence, particularly when third parties had high rather than low decision control. Third parties and litigants with a legal orientation preferred low rather than high third-party process control only when there was high third-party decision control. Litigant preferences were more affected by variation in process control than variation in decision control while third-party preferences were more affected by variation in decision control than in process control. As a check on external validity, military judges given a neutral orientation were asked to evaluate and express preferences for the four dispute-resolution procedures. Their results were not detectably different from those of the law students who role-played third parties in the main portion of the study.     

Social comparison after success and failure: Biased search for information consistent with a self-serving conclusion

Based on the traditional and attributional perspectives on social comparison, it was hypothesized that the search for social comparison information after performance outcomes is biased so as to provide evidence consistent with a favorable self-evaluation. In Experiment 1, subjects were led to believe that they obtained 16 or 8 out of 20 items correct on a bogus social sensitivity test and were then led to expect that most other students performed either well or poorly on the test. They were then given the opportunity to inspect up to 50 scored answer sheets from previous subjects. Consistent with the hypothesis, failure subjects requested more information when they expected it to reveal that most students performed poorly than when they expected it to reveal that most students performed well; success subjects showed little interest in this additional information, regardless of their expectancies as to what it would reveal. Experiment 2 employed a different approach to manipulating performance outcomes and led subjects to expect that most other subjects performed better, the same, or worse than themselves. Regardless of their own performance, subjects showed the least interest in additional information in the higher score expectancy condition and the most interest in additional information in the lower score expectancy condition. The role that this information search bias may play in producing self-serving attributions for success and failure and maintaining positive self-evaluations was discussed.     

Ability factors and cognitive processes

Several measures of the speed of information processing were related to ability factors derived from the Cattell-Horn theory of fluid and crystallized intelligence. Ninety-one college students took a battery of paper and pencil tests designed to measure four ability factors: fluid intelligence (Gf), crystallized intelligence (Gc), spatial visualization (Gv), and clerical perceptual speed (CPS). They also performed paper and pencil and computerized versions of three information processing tasks: mental rotations, letter matching, and sentence verification. Correlations among the ability measures, among the information processing measures, and between the two domains were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis. The four ability factors were found to be largely independent in this college population. Speed of letter-matching and sentence verification were highly correlated, but neither was related to speed of mental rotation. Mental rotation speed was strongly correlated with Gv; letter matching speed was correlated with CPS; and sentence verification speed was correlated with both Gc and CPS.     

Individual differences in the ability to focus and divide attention

This research deals with individual differences in the ability to focus and divide attention. Eighty-five subjects performed visual search and auditory detection tasks in three conditions: single channel, focused attention, and divided attention. Reaction time (RT) was fastest in the single channel condition, intermediate in the focused attention condition, and longest in the divided attention condition, and these effects were much stronger in the auditory than the visual task. Correlations among RTs in the three conditions were very high within modality (>.88), and lower between modalities (.5 to .6). The correlational data was well fit by a model that included separate factors for the visual and auditory tasks. Measures from the three attentional conditions within each modality loaded equally on these factors. The data provided no evidence for distinct abilities to divide or focus attention.     

Interpersonal attraction and person perception: Two tests of three balance models

Two experiments tested the adequacy of three balance models (equal-weights tetrahedron model, unequal-weights tetrahedron model, Feather model) for the p?o?x triad. In the first experiment, involving a variation of Byrne's anonymous-stranger technique, a PDP-11 computer was used to provide feedback on five attitude issues for each of the cells of a design created by five levels of the p?x variable (?2, ?1, 0, +1, +2) and five levels of the o?x variable (?2, ?1, 0, +1, +2). The dependent variable was p?o, interpersonal attraction. In the second experiment there were five-level manipulations of both p?x and o?p with an o-x (person perception) dependent variable. The correlations between obtained results and the predicted values for each of the three models were quite high (.64, .65, .61, respectively, in the first experiment and .60, .59, and .58, respectively, in the second), but the Feather model was judged least adequate. The data in the first experiment were best described by the unequal-weights tetrahedron model, and the data in the second experiment were best described by the equal-weights tetrahedron model. It was argued that avoidance of mutual dislike was responsible for the relatively greater support for the unequal-weights than equal-weights tetrahedron model in the first experiment.     

The effects of control on perceived fairness of procedures and outcomes

On the basis of Thibaut and Walker's theory of procedural justice, it was predicted that subjects who experienced control through choosing a trial decision rule would be more satisfied with the outcome of a dispute and the conflict resolution procedure than would yoked subjects who were not given control. Two additional conditions were added to the design in order to investigate the extent to which control had an influence on trial evaluations independent of being allowed to discuss the rules and obtaining a preferred rule in the absence of actual choice. Regardless of role in the dispute (accuser, accused, or no knowledge) and the nature of the rule adopted, those subjects who exercised control through rule choice evaluated all aspects of the trial experience more positively than subjects who did not exercise control through rule choice. The results also revealed that discussion of the rules and obtaining the preferred rule without choice contributed positively to evaluations of the trial procedure and verdict.     

Motivational bases in mixed-motive interactions: The effects of comparison levels

The relationship between reward level and the basic motives which underlie strategic choices (competitive and noncompetitive) in a mixed-motive game was examined from two theoretical perspectives. The “regret” interpretation proposed by McClintock and McNeel was compared to an approach based upon Thibout and Kelley's concept of comparison level (CL). Two independent variables, CL and Reward, were manipulated by varying the payoff rates in two playing series of the MDG. Initially, 50 iterations were played for high (4¢ per point) or low ($\text{1}\text{5¢}$ per point) incentive to provide subjects with outcomes upon which to base their CL's. The Reward manipulation was introduced in 150 subsequent trials of the game with subjects playing for 8¢ or 1¢ per point. The results show that the absolute magnitude of reward did not influence the extent of cooperative or competitive behavior. On the other hand, the magnitude of reward relative to CL was significantly associated with the degree of cooperative behavior—supra-CL outcomes yielding a higher frequency of cooperative behavior than infra-CL outcomes.     

The effects of censorship and attractiveness of the censor on attitude change

The effects of censoring a communication, overriding the censor, and the attractiveness of the censor on the potential audience's attitude and desire to hear the communication were studied. Subjects were told that a speech which they were to have heard had been censored by a positively, negatively, or neutrally evaluated group. Some subjects were told that the experimenter had decided to override the censor and that they would hear the communication. Other subjects were told they would not hear the censored communication. The results indicated that censorship, regardless of the attractiveness of the censor, caused the potential audience to change their attitudes toward the position to be advocated by the communication and to increase their desire to hear that communication. These effects were interpreted as resulting from the arousal of psychological reactance. When the censor was overriden and the audience felt that they would hear the communication, their desire to hear it decreased. Further, subjects who had been told that a positively evaluated group had censored the speech changed their attitudes away from the position to be advocated by the communication while subjects who believed that a negative group had censored the speech changed their attitudes toward the position of the communication. These results were interpreted as evidence of cognitive balancing.     

The effect of combined arousal states on attitude change

An experiment was devised in which subjects either were given a choice or were given no choice to listen to a counter-attitudinal communication. For half the subjects (Interrupt condition) the tape of the communication broke during the concluding sentence of the speech. The other half of the subjects (No Interrupt condition) heard the speech in its entirety. A recall measure indicated that subjects in the Interrupt condition recalled significantly more arguments made in the communication than subjects who heard the complete speech. This was interpreted as being a Zeigarnik effect caused by arousal created by the interruption. The choice manipulation should have created dissonance and motivated attitude change. Consistent with dissonance theory, measures of attitude change showed that greater attitude change toward the position of the speech occurred in the Choice condition than in the No Choice condition. In addition, an interaction in which significantly greater change occurred in the Choice-Interrupt condition than any of the other conditions was obtained. Since both the choice and interruption manipulations were hypothesized to be arousing, it was speculated that, in the Choice-Interrupt condition, the arousal created by the cognitive inconsistency and by the interrupted task may have combined to yield the increased attitude change. The conditions under which arousal states might combine were discussed.