SELF-MONITORING AND WORK PRODUCTIVITY WITH MENTALLY RETARDED ADULTS

We examined the use of self-monitoring to increase the productivity of five mentally retarded adults in a sheltered workshop. Data were collected daily during a 30-minute intervention and 30-minute generalization period. Following baseline, verbal praise, prompts, and physical encouragement were administered contingent on productive behavior on a specific task during the intervention period. In the next phase, self-monitoring was trained during the intervention period. During both phases, baseline conditions prevailed in the generalization periods. In the final phase, self-monitoring was extended across the intervention and generalization periods. Results showed that increased productivity levels, evident when praise and prompting were being administered, maintained with self-monitoring alone. Minimal generalization across time was observed until self-monitoring was begun in the generalization period.     

Conflict and the Stochastic-Dominance Principle of Decision Making

One of the key principles underlying rational models of decision making is the idea that the decision maker should never choose an action that is stochastically dominated by another action. In the study reported in this article, violations of stochastic dominance frequently occurred when the payoffs produced by two actions were negatively correlated (in conflict), but no violations occurred when the payoffs were positively correlated (no conflict). This finding is contrary to models which assume that choice probability depends on the utility of each action, and the utility for an action depends solely on its own payoffs and probabilities. This article also reports, for the first time ever, the distribution of response times observed in a risky decision task. Both the violations of stochastic dominance and the response time distributions are explained in terms of a dynamic theory of decision making called multiattribute decision field theory.     

Book reviews

DIAMOND, S. J. The Social Behaviour of Animals. London: Baqtsford. 1970. Pp. 256. £2.50.

JARRARD, L. E. (Ed.). Cognitive Processes in Non-human Primates. New York: Academic Press. 1971. Pp. 188.

BROZEK, J. and SLOBIN, D. I. (Eds). Psychology in the USSER: An Historical Perspective. New York: International Arts and Sciences Press. 1972. Pp. x + 30.1. $ 15.00.

A. R. JENSEN. Genetics and Education. London: Methuen. 1972. Pp. Vii + 379. £ 3.50.

OATLEY, K. Brain Mechanisms and Mind. London: Thames and Husdson. 1972. Pp. 216. £2.25.

BOAKES, R. A. and HALLIDAY, M. S., (Eds). Inhibition and Learning. London: Academic Press 1972. Pp. 568. £7.25.

TOBACH, E., ARONSON, L. R. and SHAW, E. (Eds). The Biopsychology of Development. New York: Academic Press. 1971. Pp.xix + 593. dollar 22.50.

MOLTZ, H. (Ed.). The Ontogeny of Vertebrate Behavior. New York and London: Academic Press. 1971. Pp. 500. $ 22.50.

SOKOLOV, A. N. Inner Speech and Thought. London: Plenum Publishment Co. 1972. Pp. 283. £ 10.50

SHOUKSMITH, G. Intelligence, Creativity and Cognivity and Cognitive Style. LOndon: Batsford. 1970.Pp. 240. £ 2.30,

BOLTON, N. The psychology of Thinking. Lond Methuuen. 1972. Pp. 291. £3.20.

JOHNSON, D. M. Systematic Introduction to The Psychology of Thinking. New York: Harper and Row, 1972. Pp. 498. £ 5.10.

LLOYD, B. Preception and Cognition. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. 1972. Pp. 190. £ 0.80.     

Recognition memory for active and passive sentences

Data from three experiments are reported in which recognition memory for active and passive sentences is compared. The results consistently show no difference, a result taken to invalidate syntactic memory hypotheses (e.g., the kernel plus tag and markedness hypotheses) which assume that the stored representation of passive sentences is more complex than that of active sentences. Previous reports of superior recall of active sentences are attributed to a reconstructive bias. One form of propositional hypothesis and a verbatim hypothesis are consistent with the data.This research was supported by Grant MH 19859 from NIMH to the first author, and by Rutgers University Research Council grants to both authors.     

Visual working memory in young children

Five experiments investigated immediate memory for drawings of familiar objects in children of different ages. The aims were to demonstrate younger children’s greater dependence on visual working memory and to explore the nature of this memory system. Experiment 1 showed that visual similarity of drawings impaired recall in young (5-year-old) children but not in older (10-year-old) children. Experiment 2 showed that younger and older children were affected in contrasting ways when the temporal order of recall was manipulated. Experiment 3 explored a recency effect found in backward recall and investigated its sensitivity to the presentation modality of materials used to produce retroactive interference (RI). For younger children, recency was reduced by visual but not by auditory-verbal RI; for older children, recency was more sensitive to auditoryverbal RI. Experiment 4 confirmed the effect of visual RI on visual recency in young children and showed that the same RI had little effect on their recall of spoken words. These results confirm younger children’s dependence on visual working memory. A final experiment showed that the effects of visual similarity and visual RI are additive, suggesting that they reflect different modes of accessing stored visuospatial information. Implications of these findings for developmental issues and for the nature of visual working memory are discussed.     

Not quite as grown-up as we like to think: parallels between cognition in childhood and adulthood

Greater continuity in cognition between children and adults may exist than is usually appreciated. It was thought that after 3 to 4 years of age, the problem in switching on the dimensional-change card-sort task disappears. We show here, however, that if speed is used as the dependent measure, the effect of the first dimension is evident even in adults. Adults, like preschoolers, show difficulty in switching from a block of sorting by color or shape to a block of sorting by the other dimension. Notably, performance throughout the session was affected by the first dimension by which stimuli were sorted. We hypothesize that perhaps adults never fully outgrow any of the cognitive and perceptual biases of infancy and early childhood. Other examples of such biases that appear to still be present in adults are discussed. Conversely, the assumption that the optimal dependent measure for adults is the most sensitive measure for children is questioned.     

Cheshire Cat supervenience

Conclusion Supervenience therefore is a concept with little to offer. It lacks conceptual clarity and is unable to explain the dependency relation without relying on it too heavily. Its mechanism of operation is unclear unless a projectivist analysis is used, but serious problems remain with such an account, and, even if it does apply to aesthetic or moral properties, and even secondary properties, we cannot see how it might apply to the chemical and physical world and to the mind/brain problem. Whatever characteristics make it plausible in one realm debar it from the other, and even if it is restricted to the ethical realm we cannot see how supervenience applies to our prudential values, the basic attitudes that orient our moral and aesthetic outlook.This is the second aspect to the Cheshire Catness of supervenience; the harder you look at it the more insubstantial it becomes. It fades away into the background, leaving just its smile. But, like any smile, there is more gap than substance, and supervenience does nothing to fill that gap. Still the smile lingers, the haunting question of the connection between natural and moral-aesthetic properties. This is an important question and needs to be addressed, but supervenience does not address it. It merely labels it, and, by labelling it confers a spurious air of lucidity without shedding any but the most fractured light.