Cognitive arithmetic: Evidence for right hemispheric mediation in an elementary component stage

Earlier studies involving the lateralization of arithmetic abilities have provided evidence for both right and left hemisphere superiorities. It is argued here that part of this inconsistency could be due to the complexity of the arithmetic computations which have been examined. The present studies examined a subprocess shown to be involved in more complex tasks, such as subtraction. The subprocess is the identification of which of two numbers is greater, and was tested by the flashing of a pair of digits to either the left or right visual field. Errors, reaction-times to make a decision, and examination of hand × visual field interactions all indicated that this subprocess is mediated by the right hemisphere. Correlational analysis was used to identify the operations underlying the observed lateralization of this ability. This analysis indicated that an operation indexed by the spatial order in which the digits were presented was effective in the right hemisphere but not the left hemisphere. Speculations on the nature of these operations were presented.     

Sensitivity of 5- and 7-month-old infants to pictorial depth information

An Ames (1951, Psychological Monographs, 65(1, Whole No. 324)) static trapezoidal window, under monocular view, was used to test young infants' responsiveness to pictorial depth. When adults view this display monocularly with the smaller side of the window rotated toward them, they report that the orientation of the display becomes ambiguous: When the head is moved, the window may appear to be in the fronto-parallel plane or either side may appear closer. The 7-month-olds we tested appeared to experience a similar ambiguity; they reached to the near side of the rotated trapezoidal window with significantly less consistency or directedness than infants in a control group tested with a rotated object that lacked pictorial depth information. When 5-month-olds were tested, however, they reached with equal consistency to the closer side of the trapezoidal window and of the control display, apparently uninfluenced by the pictorial depth information available in the trapezoidal window. Thus, sensitivity to the pictorial information for depth that is present in the trapezoidal window appears to develop after the age of 22 weeks.     

How to deal with your most difficult client—You

Conclusion Therapists are human-and, believe it or not, fallible humans. Ideally, they are supremely well infored, highly confident, minimally disturbed, extremely ethical and rarely under- or overinvolved with their clients/Actually, they are hardly ideal. If you, as a therapist, find yourself seriously blocked in your work, look for the same kind of irrational beliefs, inappropriate feelings, and dysfunctional behaviors that you would investigate in your underachieving clints. When you ferret out the absolutistic philosophies and perfectionist demads that seem to underlie your difficulties, ask yoursell—yes,strongly ask yourself—these trenchant questions: (a) Why do Ihave to be an indubitably great and unconditionally lowed therapist?; (b) Where is it written that my clientsmust follow my teachings and absolutelyshould do what I advise?; (c) Where is the evidence that therapymust be easy and that Ihave to enjoy every minute of it?If you persist in asking important questions like these and insist on thinking them through to what are scientific and logical answers, you may still never become the most accomplished and sanest therapist in the world. But I wager that you will tend to be happier and more effective than many other therapists I could—but charitably will not—name. Try it and see!This article is adapted from an invited address presented at the 91 st Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association at Anaheim, Calif., August 1983.     

Assessment of cognitive control in psychopathic and normal prisoners

It has been suggested that psychopaths exhibit specific deficits in cognitive processes associated with frontal lobe functioning. There is also evidence which indicates that level of intelligence may influence expression of impulse control among psychopaths. The present study investigated these hypotheses by comparing groups of 44 psychopaths and 14 normal controls selected from a sample of incarcerated male felons using Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)-defined criteria. Dependent variables included several measures of cognitive flexibility, perseveration, and impulsiveness. Compared to normal controls, psychopaths showed no greater tendencies to persist in incorrect responding, disregard cues suggesting the need to modify behaviors, or proceed impulsively in problem solving. Level of intelligence was found to be a moderator variable influencing performance for psychopaths and normal controls. Results suggest that deficits in cognitive functioning are not necessarily characteristic of psychopaths across situations.     

Behavior and personality assessment in men labeled adaptive sociopaths

Few efforts have been made to understand antisocial-prone individuals who maintain adaptive functioning. This study identified a sample of potentially deviant but adaptively functioning persons to determine whether they differed significantly from their more conforming peers. A small sample of men was selected by Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)-defined criteria for sociopathy and compared with MMPI-defined normals of similar ages, backgrounds, and intelligence. Response variables were those cited in the literature as characteristic of sociopathic psychopathology and included measures of abilities to plan ahead and inhibit impulsiveness, sensation seeking, interpersonal performance and style, and behavior conformity. Men labeled adaptive sociopaths showed greater impulsiveness and needs for experience seeking, earned lower scores on measures of socialization and self-control, and admitted greater adolescent behavior deviance. They were not shown to be less empathetic or less able to relate interpersonally in interview. The potential role of socially constructive self-determined goals and tangible vocational rewards as mediators of adaptive behavior are discussed in terms of overcoming antisocial tendencies and attenuation of behavior disinhibition.     

Choice reaction time with a random foreperiod

Choice reaction latencies were measured at three different a priori probabilities for two stimulus alternatives. Unlike the results of some other studies, the mean latency of a given response was nearly the same whether the response was correct or incorrect. The discriminable stimuli were a 1000- or a 1700-Hz tone presented at 70 dB SPL. Latencies and standard deviations, based on about 17,000 observations, are reported for three observers. The data are compared with predictions of the optimum sequential model of Wald and Stone and two modifications of that random-walk model, one proposed by Link and Heath and the other proposed by Laming. Fast-guess analyses were also carried out. The three-parameter version of either the sequential or the modified random-walk models provided reasonably accurate predictions of the mean data for each observer. The parameters estimated by the fast-guess analysis were unrealistic. There are three obvious differences between this experiment and most previous choice reaction-time experiments. First is stimulus modality#x2014;we used an auditory signal, whereas most of the previous studies used a visual signal. Second, the observers practiced more in this experiment than in most previous experiments. Finally, there was a random foreperiod with a heavy penalty for anticipations. One or more of these factors is the probable reason for the discrepancy between our results and those of previous studies.     

Pronoun disambiguation: Accessing potential antecedents

Two general classes of pronoun disambiguation processes are considered. In reading “Jack threw a snowball at Phil, but he missed,” both possible antecedents of “he” (“Jack” and “Phil”) may be accessed initially. Or, the actual antecedent alone may be accessed after sufficient semantic context is encoded. To evaluate these alternatives, a yes-no-probe recognition task was used to measure priming of the potential antecedents in sentence comprehension. Subjects read sentences similar to the example and were presented a test word immediately following each sentence. Response times for the actual antecedent (“Jack”) and nonantecedent (“Phil”) probes were obtained. Results indicated that the nonantecedent as well as the antecedent was activated (accessed) in pronoun disambiguation. This conclusion was not affected by the ordering of the antecedent and nonantecedent in the first clause.     

Dimensions of metaphor

Two rating studies examined several dimensions of metaphorical sentences. A pool of 260 metaphors was constructed, all in the form “(noun phrase) is/are (noun phrase).” In Study 1 all of the items, and in Study 2, 98 of the items were evaluated on ten scales presumed to be important to the comprehension or interpretation of metaphors: semantic relatedness of the subject and predicate, comprehensibility, imageability, imageability of the subject (topic), imageability of the predicate (vehicle), degree of metaphoricity, metaphor goodness, ease of interpretation, number of alternative interpretations, and felt familiarity of the metaphoric ground. Both experiments revealed the rated dimensions to be highly interrelated, but some analyses allowed evaluation of alternative predictions based on current theoretical approaches to metaphor quality and interpretation. The results indicated consistent but mixed support for the general poisitions under consideration as each appeared to have strong and weak areas of applicability. The interrelationships among the scales are discussed, together with implications of the findings for current theories and future metaphor research.     

Mouse killing in rats induced by lesions of the medial hypothalamus or medial accumbens: short-term preoperative exposure to a mouse does not suppress the killing

Rats were either exposed or not exposed to a mouse in their living cage for a 48-hr period. At the end of this time a bilateral lesion was made in the medial accumbens region or in the medial hypothalamus. When tested 2 days postoperatively, the killing frequency among rats that had been exposed to mice preoperatively was not significantly lower than that of rats that were not preoperatively exposed. The ineffectiveness of preoperative experience in suppressing the mouse killing induced by medial accumbens and medial hypothalamic lesions is similar to that found previously with dorsal-median raphe lesions and olfactory bulb lesions and is in contrast to the ease with which preoperative experience prevents mouse killing induced by septal lesions and serotonergic lesions induced by 5,7-dihydroxytryptamine.