Stimulus factors and listening strategies in auditory memory: A theoretical analysis

A theory for the temporal course of perceptual coding during auditory short-term memory tasks is described. A low-level “sensor” and a high-level “identifier” process item and order information from stimulus word-strings. Both word durations and interword pauses are needed for this processing, and if adequate processing time is unavailable, perceptual delays will lead to degraded recall performance. Stimulus parameters and subject strategies interact to determine the quality and the order in which stimulus items are coded. These hypotheses are supported both by experiments using grammatical sentences and those using lists of unrelated words.     

Utilization of groups in training for school consultation

The purpose of the present paper is to describe the utilization of groups over the past six years in our two semester school consultation practicum course. In addition, problems and issues raised by the utilization of groups are considered. Three tensions resulting from the utilization of groups are described and it is concluded that regardless of the complexity of the issues or the instructor's fallibility, the three tensions represent issues around which instructors must make decisions.     

Perception of nonlinguistic auditory rhythms by the speech hemisphere

Two groups of right-handed young adults were tested on a series of handedness measures and on dichotic nonverbal rhythmic sequences. Cross-validated multiple regression analysis revealed that all of the cerebral-lateralization/manual-praxis measures were positively related to the degree of left-hemisphere perceptual asymmetry for nonverbal rhythms (Crawford peg, scissor, handwriting, Crawford screws, tracing, total R = .67). Seventeen of the 52 subjects manifested significant (p < .05) left-hemisphere laterality coefficients for the dichotic stimuli. More complex rhythms elicited greater left-hemisphere perceptual preference. The results are discussed in reference to the concept of cerebral lateralization.     

A critical analysis of the attention hypothesis of Zeaman and House: problems of parameter interactions in multiparameter models

The attention hypothesis of Zeaman and House [in N. R. Ellis (Ed.), Handbook of mental deficiency. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963] was examined through a systematic, computer-simulation analysis of the parameter interactions found in the One-Look model. The hypothesis states that mental retardates and normals differ in their initial attention habits but not in their learning rates in the context of discrimination learning. The analysis showed that possible differences in the learning rates cannot be ruled out. The result was used to suggest how shift designs can unconfound the effect of the attention habits from the effect of the learning rates and maximize chances of observing possible differences in the learning rates between retarded and normal children.     

Cognitive consequences of self-awareness

Recent research stimulated by Duval and Wicklund's self-awareness theory has shown that self-focused attention influences a wide range of attitudes, attributions, and behavior. The cognitive processes that supposedly mediate these effects have not been carefully explored, however. In order to discover whether a manipulation of self-awareness actually activates self-relevant thoughts, two studies were conducted using the Stroop color-word measure of concept activation in memory. The first revealed a pattern of differences between means that was consistent with the hypothesis, although the expected interaction of word content and presence of mirror and camera to produce longer color-naming latencies did not appear. Also, self-relevant words were read faster than neutral words, even though they had been matched for length, frequency, and part of speech. In the second study (a refinement of the first), the expected interaction was significant. The results support one of the central claims of self-awareness theory and suggest an alternative interpretation of classic findings concerning anxiety and memory.     

Sufficient conditions for an ordered-ring isomorphism onto a positive subinterval: A lemma for polynomial measurement

This paper discusses a sufficient set of conditions for a structure to be ordered-ring isomorphic to a positive subinterval of the real numbers. It extends our previous results concerning bounded versions of Hölder's Theorem (Falmagne, 1971). The main result can serve as a basic lemma for establishing representation theorems in polynomial conjoint measurement when the empirical sets contain neither large elements nor ones close to the natural zero.     

Nonverbal discrimination of more and fewer elements by children

Fifty-six prekindergarten and 174 kindergarten children learned to choose either the card with more or the card with fewer elements in simultaneous discrimination problems. Learning was faster when the card with more elements was positive, particularly when a zero-element card was involved. This difference appeared to be attributable in part to an initial preference for “more.” On transfer trials involving all possible pairings of the training cards, subjects generally performed as though their choices were governed by the concept “more” or “fewer”. This tendency increased with age and with experience in the situation, even though conditions made verbal mediation appear unlikely.     

Converging evidence for the functional significance of imagery in problem solving

Two kinds of explanations have been offered for the process by which three-term series problems are solved, one in terms of linguistic principles and the other in terms of visual-spatial imagery. Two experiments are reported in which three different classes of operations are brought to bear on the problem: (1) Manipulation of stimulus attributes (characteristics of problems), (2) manipulation of variables that selectively encourage or inhibit the use of imagery (facilitating instructions; the suppression of visualization by reading), and (3) measurement of relevant individual differences (spatial-reasoning ability). All of the results indicate that imagery plays a functional but not a necessary role in the solution of three-term series problems; it is suggested that imaginal representation is functional because it reduces the load on memory. An adequate explanation of problem-solving will have to address certain general issues, such as the diversity of forms of cognitive representation and differences within and between individuals in the choice of problem-solving strategies.     

Bilateral language: Is the left hemisphere still dominant?

A 13-year-old left-handed boy with a left fronto-parietal vascular malformation evidenced bilateral symmetrical language representation at intracarotid amytal testing. Surgical resection of the parietal motor and frontal premotor area (sparing classical perisylvian language regions) for seizure control resulted in an acute aphasia. Language deficits were still apparent 3 months and to a lesser degree 1 year after surgery. This suggests that when language is bilateral and symmetrical, the left hemisphere may still be dominant or both hemispheres may be necessary to sustain full language competence. Explanations for atypical language localization within the left hemisphere are also discussed.     

The dimensions of career and work orientation in college women

The purpose of this study was to clarify the meaning of the construct, career orientation. Fourteen presumed measures of career orientation as well as Super's Work Values Inventory were administered to college women. Analysis of the relationships among these variables identified two relatively independent clusters. The first cluster most closely approximated the usual definition of career orientation. Career-oriented women were found to be highly career motivated and perceived the career role as primary in their adult lives. The second cluster was called work orientation. This orientation characterized women with well-defined occupational aspirations who placed a high value on both the career role and marriage-family responsibilities in their future. Work-oriented women tended to choose traditionally feminine occupations in contrast to the career-oriented women whose aspirations included higher level and less traditional occupations.     

Characteristics of consultants and consultees and success in mental health consultation

Selected attitudinal and value characteristics of high and low successful consultants were considered. Twelve consultants and 15 consultees completed six measures. Consultants were categorized as high or low success consultants based on the coding of consultants' logs. Results indicate high and low success consultants do not differ on the selected characteristics. Also, the results indicate that more successful consultants have consultees who are more authoritarian and dogmatic and are more dissimilar to their consultees in level of dogmatism and reported need for assistance. Future investigations will indicate whether the results can be replicated on a more representative consultee sample.     

Semantic organization in the young child: Evidence for the development of semantic feature systems

In two experiments, 5-, 7-, 9-, and 11-year-old children and college students were presented on each trial with a sentence followed by a probe word. Their task was to indicate whether the probe was in the sentence or not. Of primary interest were the false recognitions and the correct latencies that occurred when the probe word was a synonym or antonym of one of the words in the sentence (Experiment I) or when the probe was a subordinate, superordinate, part, or whole (Experiment II). The younger children were more affected by synonymy than antonymy, although the older children and adults were not. At all ages, the categorical relationships caused more recognition confusion than the partwhole relationships. Subjects were more affected when the probe was a superordinate than when it was a subordinate, and somewhat more affected when the probe was the whole than when it was the part. These results suggest that children as young as 5 years of age have well-organized conceptual systems based on shared meaning components.     

The development of communication: Attribute variation leads to contrast failure

Groups of 5-year-olds in two experiments described multidimensional triangles for a listener. The attribute differentiating referent triangles from nonreferent triangles in Experiment I was constant across trials for the simple condition group, while any one of three attributes was distinctive on a given trial for the complex condition group. One-adjective messages by subjects in the simple condition were virtually always informative; in the complex group, such messages were predominantly ambiguous. The boundaries of the variation effect were assessed in Experiment II. In addition to the simple-complex variation of the relevant attributes, the values of the irrelevant attributes either varied across trials in the diverse groups or remained constant in the constant groups. One-adjective messages were informative only in the simple-constant group; in the other groups, such messages were predominantly ambiguous. Thus, young children can base their communications on a comparative analysis of stimulus arrays, but performance deteriorates when there is any variation in relevant or irrelevant attributes. These results were discussed in relation to various theories of the development of meaning and communication: the cognitive overload theory, the broad context theory, and the perceptual saliency theory.     

Stimulus factors and listening strategies in auditory memory: An experimental demonstration

Three experiments are reported in which digits spoken at different rates were recalled and monitored. In Experiment I, digits to be recalled were embedded in varying levels of noise. In Experiment II noise was presented only during the inter-digit intervals, either to the same or to the opposite ear as the digits. In Experiment III Ss monitored these sequences for a specified digit and reported its successor. Stimulus rate and signal-to-noise ratio affected perceptual processing time, as evidenced by the frequency and relative proportion of item and order errors. These stimulus factors induce listening strategies that influence the shape of the serial position curve and that persist after stimulus conditions are changed. The data are consistent with a two-stage processing model for the temporal course of speech perception and the nature of listening strategies.     

Strategies in the recall of clusterable lists

The present study assessed the effectiveness of a multi-session training aproach intended to teach mildly retarded adolescents to discover and utilize categorical list structure. The performance of a group of trained retarded individuals was compared with that of another group of retarded individuals who had simply received practice with the training materials. The performance of both retarded groups was evaluated relative to that of a group of equivalent-CA normal adolescents. Recall transfer with a new word list was indicated by the finding that trained retarded subjects achieved a criterion of perfect recall in fewer trials than untrained retarded subjects. Differences in the use of categorization strategies by normal and retarded subjects were interpreted in the light of the automatic-controlled processing distinction of Schneider and Shiffrin (1977).     

Avoidance extinction in goldfish

Independent groups of goldfish trained to avoid shock in a shuttlebox situation were presented with several extinction procedures in which the relationships between the conditioned stimulus and shock were altered and/or response contingencies removed. Random shock presentations, equivalent to the number of shocks received during avoidance acquisition, resulted in response decrements similar to those obtained when the conditioned stimulus was presented alone. Pairing the conditioned stimulus with shock on every trial, however, served to maintain response levels. When response-contingent punishment was superimposed upon these Pavlovian pairings, performance was facilitated slightly although punishment alone resulted in somewhat faster response reduction than that produced by exposure only to the conditioned stimulus. Extinction of avoidance responding produced by exposure to the conditioned stimulus alone was dependent on the total duration of exposure and independent of both number of stimulus onsets and response prevention. These experiments demonstrated that, in general, the procedures used to reduce avoidance responding in rats were equally effective for goldfish, with one exception: the introduction of a Pavlovian contingency following avoidance acquisition, making the previously avoidable shock unavoidable, maintained response probabilities near previously established levels.