Left hemisphere sensitivity to consonant sounds not displayed by the right hemisphere: electrophysiological correlates

Auditory evoked responses (AER) to a series of consonant-vowel syllables were recorded from frontal, temporal, and parietal scalp locations from 14 right-handed college students. Averaged AERs were submitted to principal components analysis and analysis of variance. Six components of the group's AERs were found to reflect various aspects of the stimulus parameters. One component reflected changes over only the left hemisphere to different consonants. A second component changed systematically over both hemispheres but did not discriminate between all consonants.     

An auditory evoked potential study of consonant perception in different vowel environments

Auditory evoked responses (AER) to series of consonant—vowel syllables were recorded from temporal and parietal scalp locations from 20 right-handed female college students. Averaged AERs were submitted to principal components analysis and analysis of variance. Seven components of the group's AERs were found to reflect various aspects of the stimulus parameters. One component reflected changes over only the left hemisphere to different consonants independent of the following vowel sound. A second component changed systematically over both hemispheres in response to only consonant changes. A third component systematically changed for the different consonants depending on the following vowel.     

Cortical involvement in the semantic processing of coarticulated speech cues

Auditory evoked responses (AER) were recorded from scalp locations over the left and right temporal regions in response to CVC words and nonsense syllables. Various components of the AER were found to vary systematically with changes in stimulus meaning. One such component reflected subcortical involvement in semantic processing. Other components reflected changes in voicing and place of articulation as well as hemisphere differences.     

Hemispheric specialization for temporal information: Implications for the perception of voicing cues during speech perception

Developmental research reporting electrophysiological correlates of voice onset time (VOT) during speech perception is reviewed. By two months of age a right hemisphere mechanism appears which differentiates voiced from voiceless stop consonants. This mechanism was found at 4 years of age and again with adults.A new study is described which represents an attempt to determine a more specific basis for VOT perception. Auditory evoked responses (AER) were recorded over the left and right hemispheres while 16 adults attended to repetitive series of two-tone stimuli. Portions of the AERs were found to vary systematically over the two hemispheres in a manner similar to that previously reported for VOT stimuli. These findings are discussed in terms of a temporal detection mechanism which is involved in speech perception.     

Neuroelectrical correlates of categorical speech perception in adults

Auditory evoked potentials were recorded from the left and right hemispheres of 16 adults during a phoneme identification task. The use of multivariate statistics enabled researchers to identify a number of cortical processes related to categorical speech perception which were common to both hemispheres, as well as several which disinguished between the two hemispheres.     

Electrophysiological correlates of adult decisions made during a conservation of quantity task

Visual evoked responses were recorded from 10 scalp locations over the left and right hemisphere while adults were involved in a conservation of quantity task. Multivariate analyses involving principal components analysis and ANOVA identified bilateral and left hemisphere lateralized components of the visual evoked responses which discriminated between conservation judgments made by subjects.     

Neuroelectrical correlates of hemisphere and handedness factors in a cognitive task

Principal-components analysis was performed on a set of averaged evoked potentials in order to extract components of cerebral activity functionally related to hemisphere, handedness, processing task, and stimulus feature variables. Eight such components were isolated. Degree of dextrality, hemispheric differences, and cognitive operations in processing distinct stimulus characteristics were identified as reflected in functionally distinct components of brain activity.     

Predictors of organizational commitment: The study of part-time army reservists

A predictive model built upon a multiple role conflict/felt responsibility conceptual framework and containing six previously untested predictors and nine previously tested organizational-related predictors of organizational commitment was investigated. The sample consisted of two battalions of U.S. Army Reserve members. Stepwise multiple regression analysis utilizing a double cross-validation design on each battalion was the data analytic technique. Increased job satisfaction and stronger intent to stay consistently entered each equation as the first and second predictors, respectively. Group cohesion also appeared in more than one equation. The variance explained across the four cross-validated samples averaged .46 and the results were very stable. The importance of the investigation of commitment for this part-time, voluntary organization was discussed, as were future research directions regarding organizational commitment.     

The stability of individual differences in behavior across experimental conflict situations

Four experimental conflict situations having theoretical implications have been reported upon with some frequency. The purpose of this study was to compare individual differences on a common measure, response latency, in order to determine the stability of behavior across these four conflict situations using a comparable latency measure. The results of this study do indicate that behavior in experimental conflict studies shows a stability of performance by individual subjects. There are also group mean differences between the four procedures that reflect situational contribution to conflict behavior.     

Vocational behavior and career development, 1983: A review

This article reviews the literature related to vocational behavior and career development published during 1983. Journals in the fields of psychology, sociology, and organizational behavior were examined, and 445 relevant articles published in 42 different journals were identified. The review is organized around issues pertinent to the counseling psychology perspective (i.e., career development, vocational choice, vocational behavior of women, assessment, intervention strategies) and the industrial/organizational psychology perspective (i.e., personnel functions, worker adjustment problems, work adjustment) on vocational behavior.     

The relationships among cognitive development,locus of control,and gender

Research has shown that perhaps 50% of all adults in this country are not able to perform abstract reasoning tasks described as formal opertions in the Piagetian cognitive developmental framework. Abstract reasoning is related to an individual's ability to perceive contingencies between their actions and subsequent outcomes. This pattern is seen as crucial for the development of an internal locus of control. Fifty-eight male and female undergraduates completed the Rotter Internal-External scale and a Cognitive Developmental Level assessment. For women, a highly significant inverse relationship was demonstrated between cognitive developmental level and locus of control. Women with higher levels of cognitive development were more likely to be internal. For men, no such relationship was found. Such results suggest that locus of control develops differently in men and women.     

Sex-role self-concept and attitudes related to occupational daydreams and future fantasies of college women

This study explored the relationship of sex-role self-concept and general attitudes toward women's roles to patterns of career preferences and to career salience among 50 undergraduate women. Sex-role self-concept was measured by the Bem Sex-Role Inventory, and attitudes by the Attitudes Toward Women Scale. Patterns in career preferences were determined by studying the degree of gender dominance in past occupational daydreams as well as in present college major and intended future occupation. Career salience was measured using a content analysis of written future fantasies. Sex-role self-concept was related to past occupational preferences, with masculine-typed women showing a pattern of nontraditional daydreams compared to those of feminine-typed women. Attitude variables were related to present career choices, with liberal women in more male-dominant fields than conservative women. Both self-concept and attitude variables were related to career salience, measured by the proportion of fantasies about the future devoted to work themes. Masculine women showed evidence of more career salience than androgynous or undifferentiated women, and liberal women more than conservative women.     

Recognition memory in hearing-impaired children: A levels-of-processing approach

Eighty-nine hearing-impaired children ranging in age from 6 years to 12 years, 11 months were given a recognition task comprised of items from the Raven Coloured Progressive Matrices and the Raven Learning Potential Test following administration of the Raven Coloured Progressive Matrices. The study was designed to determine whether recognition memory varied as a function of item type. The analysis indicated that performance on items involving analogous reasoning exceeded recognition for items requiring pattern completion through closure, which, in turn, exceeded performance for items involving simple pattern completion. Results are discussed in light of levels-of-processing.     

Sex-role self-concept and persistence in a traditional vs nontraditional college major for women

This article reports a 3-year follow-up study of a sample of women engineering and home economics majors who were previously studied as freshmen. It was hypothesized that persistence in the two curricula would be related to sex roles, with feminine-typed women more likely to leave engineering and masculine-typed women more likely to leave home economics. The findings did not generally support this hypothesis, however. Women in the two majors who persisted were not found to differ significantly from women who changed majors or dropped out on either sex roles or on ratings given as freshmen of their satisfaction with and certainty of college major. Persisters in engineering had higher college entrance SAT math scores than changers or dropouts. Those who changed majors from home economics tended to go into less traditional fields than home economics. Nearly all of the women who changed from engineering chose another nontraditional or male-dominated field as their second major.     

An occupational taxonomy by professional characteristics: Implications for research

Theorists concerned with the nature of professionalism and researchers investigating professionals in the work environment often assume that professional occupations are a unique occupational type. To test this assumption, an occupational taxonomy based on nine dimensions of professionalism was derived empirically. The taxonomy represented expectations only to a moderate degree. Several implications were noted for the use of occupational taxonomies in the generalization of research findings on one occupational group to other occupational groups in the same classification.