Comparison of stimulus control and reinforcement control effects on imitative behavior

An attempt was made to evaluate reinforcement and stimulus control of imitative and non-imitative behavior. The imitative response required the subject to duplicate the experimenter's response by matching blocks that varied in color. The factor designed to evaluate stimulus control was fading, a procedure that systematically varies the differences between the imitative and non-imitative stimuli. The topography and duration of the non-imitative stimuli were faded in. The factors designed to evaluate reinforcement control were differential reinforcement of non-imitative behavior and time out from positive reinforcement. The results showed stimulus control of non-imitation to be more important than reinforcement control, and that reinforcing events were not sufficient to control non-imitation; while the arrangement of stimulus events was sufficient to control non-imitation. These results were related to studies providing evidence for the processes of discrimination and generalization.     

Evidence of a detrimental effect of extrinsic incentives on breaking a mental set

College students were either rewarded ($1.50) or not for solving a series of 10 water-jar problems. The first 9 of these were designed to establish a set for a relatively complicated, three-jar solution (B ? A ? 2C). The 10th problem was a set breaker which required that subjects discover a simple (A-C) solution. The mental activities needed to produce a solution to the two types of problems (Problems 1 to 9 and Problem 10) were, therefore, different and one interest was in seeing whether reward would be detrimental for performance on both types of problems. It was not. Poorer reward group performance was obtained only on Problem 10. This result was not due to between-group differences in mathematical ability, and explanations in terms of differences in time taken to check answers or concern over quality of performance were considered and discounted. Measures of intrinsic interest (subject evaluations of the task and a measure of willingness to volunteer for future research) failed to support the belief that interest differences account for performance differences.     

The use of modeling to increase independent behavior

Three experiments were conducted aimed at increasing independence via use of modeling procedures in, respectively, two samples of neurotic outpatients and a sample of psychiatric inpatients. Significant gains in independence emerged in all three investigations. Subsidiary findings are reported regarding the operation in clinical contexts of ‘modeling-enhancers’ of demonstrated effectiveness in laboratory settings.     

The effects of behavior rehearsal and feedback on the acquisition of problem-solving skills in distressed and nondistressed couples

Couples who were paid to participate in an experimental marital enrichment program were randomly assigned to one of four treatment conditions or to a control group. All groups received training in solving marital problems, but the groups differed according to how they were trained; some received feedback (FB) on their previous taped performances, some had the opportunity to practice the skills suggested by the therapist (BR), some had both (complete treatment), and some simply were presented with instructions. Changes in problem-solving skills were assessed by behavioral observations of the frequency of positive problem-solving behavior before and after treatment, and global ratings of problem-solving effectiveness made by trained raters. In general, the complete treatment condition produced greater changes from pre- to post-test than any other condition. Couples in this condition showed significantly greater increases in positive behavior than any other group, and on global ratings of problem-solving skills they evidenced the greatest improvement, although on this measure they did not improve significantly more than BR couples.     

The effects of humor-induced arousal upon aggressive behavior

The present experiment attempted to reconcile previous results in the area of humor and aggression. It was hypothesized that humor serves two functions, arousal and attentional shift, with regard to its influence on the relation of prior anger arousal and aggression. As a test of this assumption, subjects in the present experiment were subjected to three forms of humor (high arousing, low arousing, nonhumor) after being angered or treated in a neutral manner by a confederate. In an analysis on subsequent aggression toward the confederate, it was found that female subjects reduced their aggression after exposure to low arousing humor while maintaining aggression at a high level for high arousing stimuli. Male subjects were not influenced by humor exposure. Possible reasons for this sex difference are examined in light of the arousal and attentional shift properties of humorous stimuli.     

Developmental changes in memory: The effects of processing time and rehearsal instructions

An overt rehearsal procedure was used to investigate the relationship between children's rehearsal strategies and free recall performance. Previous work has shown that developmental differences in rehearsal content, rather than rehearsal frequency, affect recall performance. This experiment investigated the effects of increased processing time and rehearsal training upon recall. Third-grade girls (age 8) were able to use additional processing time to increase the activity of their rehearsal, and they showed corresponding improvement in recall. In contrast, third-grade boys (age 8) and sixth-grade boys and girls (age 12) did not take advantage of a slower presentation rate to rehearse more actively, and their recall did not change. Further, even without additional processing time, both the third-grade boys and girls were able to use an instructed active rehearsal strategy to facilitate their recall. The direct manipulation of rehearsal activity and the resulting improvement in recall provide experimental support for the proposed relationship between rehearsal content and recall from long-term memory store.     

Guilty knowledge versus innocent associations: Effects of trait anxiety and stimulus context on skin conductance

A simulated lie detection procedure was used to investigate skin conductance responsivity among self-reported skin responders. Subjects were grouped according to reported trait anxiety as measured by Lykken's Activity Preference Questionnaire and then engaged in either a mock crime or a neutral activity. The “crime” gave subjects “guilty knowledge,” and the neutral task provided “innocent associations” to relevant stimuli imbedded in each scenario. Subjects were then interrogated using Lykken's Guilty Knowledge technique. Anxiety classification, guilty vs. innocent treatment, and type of stimulus were manipulated in a 2 × 2 × (2) factorial design. Results for differential responsivity scores showed significant main and interaction effects. Low-anxiety subjects showed almost no effects, but highly anxious subjects responded strongly in the “guilty” rather than the “innocent” treatment. Contrary to previous findings, results showed a substantial—but qualified—relationship between self-reported anxiety and electrodermal responsivity. Also, the Guilty Knowledge technique with rank scoring yielded 97.5% correct classification.     

The effects of suggestion structure and hypnotic vs task-motivation instructions on response to hallucination suggestions

Hypnotic and task-motivated subjects were given both auditory and visual hallucination suggestions that were either Brief, Long, or provided an imaginary Context. The Long and Context suggestions were equated for length. Task-motivated subjects scored higher than hypnotic subjects on both auditory and visual hallucination suggestions. Suggestion-type (Brief, Long, Context) affected response to the auditory but not the visual suggestion. Hypnotic and task-motivated hallucinators were equally likely to describe their images as being transparent. Theoretical implications are discussed.     

A developmental study of the role of word order in comprehending Hebrew

Monolingual Hebrew-speaking subjects, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 11 years old, as well as adults, were asked to interpret utterances consisting of two nouns and a verb. Some utterances included only word order cues while others included direct object marker and subject-verb gender agreement cues. Even though Hebrew word order is relatively free, when subjects used word order as an interpretive cue they generally assigned sentence relations according to the dominant SVO order of modern Hebrew. This trend was less strong for the interpretations of NNV utterances than of NVN and VNN utterances. There was no evidence of a developmental sequence for word order strategies. In addition, there was no evidence that word order, for any age group, was necessarily a dominant cue for assigning sentence relations when other linguistic information was available.     

The effects of alternatives on the salience of reward allocation norms

In a dyadic bargaining situation there is considerable evidence that the alternative outcomes of the bargainers (if they cannot reach agreement) have important effects on bargaining outcomes. Under the assumption that situational factors affect the nature of the relation between the alternatives of the bargainers and bargaining outcomes, the effects of two factors were assessed: the relative size of the reward to be negotiated (excess of prize minus alternatives) and the magnitude of the difference in the alternatives of the two bargainers. Using college students as subjects, the predictions of two models were also contrasted: the equal excess model and Shapley-w. The relative size of the prize did not have a significant effect on the accuracy of the two models, but the magnitude of the difference in alternatives had marked effects. The results also suggest that the Shapley-w model may be more accurate when the bargainers are relatively inexperienced and cooperatively oriented, whereas the equal excess model may be more accurate when the bargainers are relatively sophisticated and competitively oriented.     

The effect of training procedures on the overlearning reversal effect in young children

The performance of 80 preschool children on a reversal problem was studied as a function of amount of training and type of training procedure used during acquisition and reversal. In the extinction phase of reversal learning, subjects given a correction procedure during the reversal problem made fewer perseverative errors than subjects given noncorrection. In the reversal midplateau phase of reversal learning, overtraining facilitated reversal learning for subjects receiving noncorrection during the acquistion problem, but not for subjects receiving correction. A shift in training procedure between acquisition and reversal increased the number of subjects who reached criterion immediately after perseveration. Since these results are difficult to explain in terms of traditional learning theories, an alternative response-switching strategy explanation was proposed.     

Generality of persistence: The role of stimulus and response factors in persistence to punishment

Previous research has shown that intermittent punishment of a response increases its persistence to continuous punishment and that intermittent punishment training in one situation produces persistence to continuous punishment in other situations. Experiment 1 showed that as long as the instrumental response and punishing stimulus were held constant from intermittent to continuous punishment marked differences between these situations had no decremental effect on persistence. Experiment 2 showed that intermittent punishment training of one response resulted in substantial persistence to continuous punishment of a different and apparently incompatible response and that such response change had no more than a marginal effect on persistence. The results were seen as requiring some revision to the traditional conditioning-model interpretation of persistence to punishment.