Measures of timed performance and intelligence

The question of an association between IQ and measures of timed performance derived from inspection time and reaction time was examined in a sample of 182 adults and by reanalyzing data involving 48 adults from a previously published study. Multiple regression analysis found that measures of timed performance accounted for as much as 25% of IQ variance in the normal population, but that the inclusion of borderline and mildly retarded subjects resulted in much higher correlation coefficients because of the markedly less efficient performance of these persons in tasks of this kind. This outcome raised doubts about the validity of combining data from retarded and nonretarded subjects. Results ran counter to claims that tasks of the kind used are largely uninfluenced by cognitive variables, so that findings are not necessarily explained satisfactorily in terms of a mental speed factor. It was concluded that these measures of timed performance do not, at this time, provide a basis from which a reliable culture-fair measure of intelligence might be devised.     

Planning units and syntax in sentence production

The study was conducted to determine, first, whether it is the deep or the surface clause that is more important as a speech planning unit, and second, whether syntactic decisions are made during sentence production. Subjects, while talking, heard tones to which they had to respond by pressing a button; reaction times to these tones were taken as an index of processing load during production. It was found that there were increased RTs at the ends compared with the beginnings of deep structure clauses. No difference was found between RTs at the beginnings and ends of surface clauses not corresponding to a deep clause. The results were interpreted as showing that deep clauses are major planning units and that some planning for clauses occurs at the end of the preceding clause. Differences were found between RTs during clauses of different syntactic structure. These results were interpreted as indicating that syntax influences production and were discussed in relation to previous studies of pausing and speech disruption.     

Syntactic presupposition in sentence comprehension

Two experiments investigated the role of syntactic presupposition in sentence comprehension. In Experiment I subjects verified cleft, pseudocleft and factive complement sentences with respect to preceding context paragraphs, which contradicted either the assertion or the presupposition of the target sentence. Subjects took significantly longer to verify sentences with false presuppositions than sentences with false assertions. In Experiment II subjects verified cleft and pseudocleft sentences with respect to subsequently presented pictures. Once again, verification times for sentences with false presuppositions were significantly longer than verification times for sentences with false assertions. It was argued that these findings are more adequately explained by a “structural” hypothesis, than in terms of strategies designed to locate given and new information.     

A factorization procedure for finite algebras

A procedure is developed for decomposing any finite algebra into a minimal set of maximally independent simple homomorphic images, or factors, of the algebra. The definition of admissible sets of factors is made in relation to the congruence lattice of the algebra, and generalises the notion of an irredundant reduction in a modular lattice. An algorithm for determining all possible sets of factors of a given finite algebra is derived and an index for measuring the degree of independence of factors is defined. Applications of the technique to finite algebraic models within the social psychological domain are presented and include factorizations for certain semigroups of binary relations and for a class of finite semilattices.     

A revision of the psychological refractory period

A brief review of the major psychological refractory period (PRP) theories reveals that they have lost their original objective, i.e., to explain human information processing under rapid sequential stimulation. Conventional data interpretation has restricted attention to delay of reaction times as a result of interstimulus interval (ISI) variation. This form of data interpretation fails to capture important performance aspects under double-stimulation, e.g., the phenomenon that stimulus complexity affects the processing rate. Effects of stimulus rate and complexity are better analyzed in terms of reaction times as well as interresponse intervals (IRI). If this is done, behavioral phenomena emerge that cannot be explained within the frame of any of the existing PRP theories. To account for these newly revealed phenomena a processing interrupt model is introduced which is based on three major hypotheses: single-channel processor, additive stages, and perceptual interrupt facility.     

How a thing is called—A study of mothers' and children's naming

Mothers' selections of category names in object-naming tasks were examined using the levels of categorization defined by Eleanor Rosch (E. Rosch. In T. Moore (Ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language, New York: Academic Press, 1973. E. Rosch. In E. Rosch & B. Lloyd (Eds.), Cognition and categorization. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1978. E. Rosch, C. Mervis, W. Gray, D. Johnson, & P. Boyes-Braem. Cognitive Psychology, 1976, 8, 382–439). The effect of three variables—Presentation Context, Taxonomy, and Age (of person for whom mother was naming the items)—on mothers' choice of category names, was also investigated. The stimuli were 36 photographs of common concrete objects representative of four taxonomies. Forty mothers named the stimulus items for their 2-year-olds (N = 20), for their 4-year-olds (N = 20), and for the Experimenter. The category labels that children of both ages used when naming the same items, and mothers' independent predictions of the names their children would use in the naming task, were recorded. Contextual factors were found to have a primary role in determining mothers' selections of category names and the three independent variables had a complex and dynamic effect on mothers' naming practices.     

The analysis of semigroups of multirelational systems

A finite family of binary relations on a finite set, termed here a relational system, generates a finite semigroup under the operation of relational composition. The relationship between simplifications of the semigroup of a relational system in the form of homomorphic images, and simplifications of the relational system itself is examined. First of all, the list of relational conditions establishing a relationship between a homomorphic image of the semigroup of a relational system and a simplified, or derived, version of that relational system, is reviewed and extended. Then a definition of empirical relationship is introduced (the Correspondence Definition) and it is shown how, in conjunction with a factorization procedure for finite semigroups (P. E. Pattison & W. K. Bartlett, Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 1982, in press), it leads to a systematic and efficient analysis for a relational system. Applications of the procedure to an empirical blockmodel and to a class of simple relational systems are presented.     

Interpretation of instructions: A source of individual differences in analogical reasoning

Two studies were conducted to identify individual differences in the effect of instruction on strategies used to solve figural/numerical analogies. In Study 1, students aged 9, 11, 13, and 19 years were given incomplete instructions and then were assessed for (a) consistent use of an appropriate rule for solving analogies and (b) the type and number of stimulus attributes that are incorporated in those analogical rules. Use of an analogical rule increased with age and corresponded to higher scores on a psychometric test of reasoning within each age group. In Study 2, analysis of verbal protocols was used to identify the strategies of some 9- and 11-year-olds who showed a peculiar pattern of responding in Study 1. These children attended to relevant attributes but used systematic nonanalogical rules to solve problems. When provided with more specific instructions, most of these children adopted an analogical rule but failed to incorporate relevant attributes. Results indicate that selection or construction of task-relevant solution strategies from incomplete instructions may partially account for differential performance on tests of analogical reasoning.     

Reaction times and speed-of-processing: Their relationship to timed and untimed measures of intelligence

Eighty-one university students were given a battery of reaction time tests, measuring the speed with which they performed various elementary cognitive processes, and a group test of intelligence which yielded timed and untimed scores. Multiple regression analyses indicated that speed of information-processing was an equally good predictor of timed and untimed intelligence test performance, and that various combinations of speed-of-processing variables accounted for as much as 48% of the variance in intelligence test scores. Different speed-of-processing variables varied relatively systematically in the extent to which they correlated with the individual subtests and scales of the intelligence test.     

Concepts of present self,expected self,and ideal self in vocational preferences and expectations

This study investigated the hypotheses that similarity of ideal self and occupational stereotypes are important in determining the vocational preferences of adolescents, while similarity between expected self and occupational stereotypes is important in determining their occupational expectations. Subjects were 97 male and 88 female high school students. Findings were consistent with the view that ideal self played an important role in determining vocational preferences for males and females. However, contrary to expectations, ideal self was more strongly associated than expected self with vocational expectations for females, though not for males.     

The relationship of novelty preferences during infancy to later intelligence and later recognition memory

In the present study, a group of children originally tested for visual novelty preferences at 7 months and seen for estimates of intelligence at 3 years were revisited and tested for intellectual functioning and for visual recognition performance at 5 years. Prediction from performance at 7 months to intellectual functioning at 5 years was significant and remained at the same level as prediction from 7 months to 3 years (r = .42 at each point). In addition, it was shown that data on early novelty preferences could be combined with information on birth-order and parental education to achieve good prediction (R = .65) of five-year IQ scores. A further goal of the present study was to discover if infants' preferences for visual novelty, assumed to be an early measure of visual recognition memory would be more highly associated with later visual recognition performance or with later intellectual level. The results indicate that novelty preferences were more highly related to later intelligence quotients than to later recognition performance and such a pattern of relationships did not to be artificial.     

The lexicon and sentence generation in aphasia

The experiment tested a prediction, derived from the lexicalist model of grammar (J. Bresnan 1978, in M. Halle, J. Bresnan, & G. A. Miller (Eds.), Linguistic theory and psychological reality, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, pp. 1–59), that difficulty in accessing a verb from the lexicon should impair the generation of the associated to-complement clause while not significantly affecting the generation of word-independent constructions such as questions. Four aphasic subjects with word-finding difficulties but relatively high BDAE ratings on grammatical ability were examined. A modified story completion paradigm was used to elicit the favored constructions. Consistent with the hypothesis, all subjects showed greater difficulty in generating to-complements.     

Eye-fixation patterns during reading confirm theories of language comprehension

Eye-movement patterns during reading are consistent with proposition-by-proposition models of speech comprehension. (1) Fixation times are least affected by word length at ends of clauses: this confirms the theory based on the study of speech comprehension that, at such points, attention is directed inward to text integration. (2) Fixation time for words at the end of clauses is longer for canonical sequences which conform to the pattern, “N-V-N = actor-action-object”; this confirms the view that complete semantic integration of such sequences is routinely delayed until their completion. A two-variable model based on principles of exhaustive visual search and speech comprehension accounts for 80% of the fixation durations in a sample paragraph from Just and Carpenter (1980) and Thibodeou, Just ond Carpenter (1982). This comprehension-based model compares favorably with their models constructed within a production-system framework. This result clarifies the relationship between reading and listening.     

Recognition memory and intelligence

The assumption that individual differences in recognition memory are associated with individual differences in intelligence was explored by administering intelligence tests and tests of immediate visual recognition memory to a sample of 52 5-year-old children expected to vary widely from one another in intelligence. Each child was given the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (Form L) and two tests of immediate recognition memory: one test for 27 abstract patterns and one test for 27 unfamiliar cartoon faces. The mean PPVT-IQ for the sample was in the average range at 98.1. Interindividual variability in IQ proved to be high as reflected in the group SD of 22.6, with scores ranging from 40 to 136. The recognition tasks proved to be of moderate difficulty. Individual differences in memory for patterns were highly related to memory for faces (r = .76), indicating that the overall recognition test was reliable. The most important result of the present study was the strong association between recognition memory performance and PPVT-IQ of .70. The relation between recognition memory and IQ could not be accounted for by the inclusion of a few very low IQ children, since the association remained high at .61 when children with IQs below 75 were omitted from analysis. In short, the present results indicate that immediate recognition memory is highly associated with intelligence.     

Jensen's reaction-time investigations of intelligence: A critique

Jensen has reported a series of reaction-time studies which lead him to conclude that various parameters correlate significantly with IQ. Certain of these parameters are especially emphasized because of their theoretical background and the resulting theoretical light they shed upon the nature of intelligence. Two of the lime-lighted parameters are slope of RT across set size and increasing correlations of RT with IQ as set size increases. I review these studies in detail. I conclude that Jensen's claims are unwarranted. There are many difficulties in his approach that cover the entire gamut from method to data to theory. Some original reseach of my own is reported to illustrate the methodological problems with Jensen's procedure. The data that he alludes to often do not support his claims. The theory that he applies does not fit his paradigm. My conclusion: such research is not easy.     

Inspection time and its relation to intelligence

Inspection time, defined as the minimum duration for which two different stimuli must be presented if they are to be perceived as different, was measured for both auditory and visual stimuli. The minimum durations were determined by means of a two- alternative forced-choice task for 50 children whose average age was 12 years 2 months. The times were correlated with the children's verbal (Mill-Hill vocabulary) and nonverbal (Raven matrices) intelligence. The Kendall correlation coefficients were ?.3188 and ?.0929 for the auditory and visual inspection times with verbal intelligence, and ?.2322 and ?.2676 for those times with nonverbal intelligence. Auditory and visual inspection times were correlated .1721 with each other. These results do not support earlier claims that inspection time is closely related to conventional measures of intelligence.     

Economic deprivation and the quality of parent-child relations: A trickle-down framework

The trickle-down model of economic activity proposes that changes in economic activity permeate downwards from incentives or disincentives to business, which affect business income, investment, employment, and the absolute and relative economic deprivation of the poor. Within an extended trickle-down framework, this paper examines how these effects trickle further downwards to influence the quality of parent-child relations. Two cases are examined. First, deprivation is discussed as it trickles down to affect the parental image conveyed to children, and in turn perceptions od parents are examined as these predict children's problem behavior. Second, deprivation is discussed as it trickles down to affect parents' psychological well-being and child-rearing capabilities, particularly as manifested by the incidence of child abuse and neglect. The evidence to date converges to indicate that children in general are not necessarily aware of or sympathetic to the plight of those under economic strain. Economic deprivation may exacerbate conflict in the family, diminish children's perceptions of parents, and give rise to problem behavior in boys. Evidence also suggests that deprivation may be an antecedent of poor psychological well-being in adults and child abuse. Possibilities for a “bubble up” model of economic activity are explored together with directions for further research.     

The more things change…: Metamorphoses and conceptual structure

Given that mythmakers must construct stories that are comprehensible to their audience, it is reasonable to expect stories to be conceptually natural even when their topics deal with the supernatural. Thus, as stories are adapted to human conceptual structure, they should reflect characteristics of that structure. An examination of the types of magical transformations in Ovid's Metamorphoses and Grimms' Fairy Tales suggests that this is the case. It was possible to predict the patterns of transformations on the basis of structural properties of ontological knowledge, which is knowledge of the basic categories of existence (e.g., conscious beings, animals, plants, events). Other characteristics of the transformations seem to reflect the conceptual distinction between animates and inanimates as well as the relative prototypicality of various taxonomic classes of animals. It appears that aspects of conceptual structure can constrain patterns of thinking even during “the willing suspension of disbelief.”