A twin study of personality and temperament during middle childhood

In a study of 105 same-sex twin pairs, ages 7 to 10 years, maternal ratings on 23 bipolar scales yielded six factors designated as compliant morality, applied cognitive, sociability, emotionality, tough-mindedness, and activity-distractibility. Analyses by twin pairs (68 identical, 37 fraternal) indicated that correlations for identical pairs were significantly higher than fraternal pairs on all but one factor: tough-mindedness. Profile analyses for the six factors indicated that the profiles of scores across the factors were more concordant for the identical twin pairs. Correlations obtained from the individual scales produced differences between the identical and fraternal twin pairs as well. Overall, the data suggested that several components and the total organization of those components of personality and temperament are genetically influenced.     

A CPI comparison of engineers and managers

Seventy-one male employees of three high-technology content product industries in northern Utah were divided into three contrast groups: engineers, engineering-trained managers, and non-engineering-trained managers. The California Psychological Inventory was administered and multivariate analysis of variance performed on seven preselected CPI scales. Results revealed that nonengineering managers scored significantly higher than engineers on scales Dominance, Capacity for Status, Social Presence, and approached significance on Sociability. Engineering-managers also scored significantly higher than engineers on Dominance, and significantly higher than other managers on Psychological Mindedness. A multivariate main-effect significant p < .001 to predict group membership was found. Engineering-managers share with other managers a confident, persuasive, and aggressive self-presentation combined with a preference for leadership roles. Their elevation on Psychological Mindedness, however, suggests a more pragmatic analytical and less intuitive approach to management situations.     

Children's use of semantic analysis in the interpretation of missing subjects: Further evidence against the MDP

Preschool and many older children often have difficulty understanding who carries out the complement action (e.g., to go in sentences such asMary promised John to go; this is so, even though they easily understand this information in sentences such asJohn told Mary to go. C. Chomsky (1969) proposed that children's errors arise from the overgeneral application of a purely structural Minimal Distance Principle. Maratsos (1974), however, hypothesized that children err by overgeneralizing a different principle which he called the Semantic Role Principle. According to this principle, the Goal-Recipient of the spoken message, not the closest noun phrase, is understood as the person who carries out the act referred to by the infinitival complement. The two studies reported here were designed to determine which of these principles children use. Preschool children were taught to understand a specially designed novel construction. The children then acted out sentences containing related but novel uses of the construction such that they would respond differentially according to which interpretive principle they used. The results strongly favored the Semantic Role Principle, rather than the MDP described by Chomsky (1969), or a related, more complex MDP described by Rosenbaum (1967). It is further discussed how children's formulation of the Semantic Role Principle, rather than the MDP, might arise from their prior analyses of related constructions, such as the imperative construction, rather than following from an innate preference, as suggested in Maratsos (1974).This research was supported by the NICHD under Grant #5 R01 HD09112-02 given to M. P. Maratsos.     

Control of CRT intensity via Apple II software

An inexpensive, easy-to-build device for the Apple II microprocessor is described. The modification permits software control of four levels of relative screen intensity (contrast) settings for any video monitor. The relationship of the technology to choice reaction time and perception research is briefly indicated. Principles governing operation of the modification are also discussed. Finally, a set of step-by-step instructions for building the device is provided.     

Feature-positive effect in adults and attention to portion of stimulus array

In three experiments, adult humans were tested in a feature-positive or feature-negative simultaneous symbol task. In Experiment 1, some persons focused on the correct side of the stimulus cards, whereas other persons focused on the not-correct side of the stimulus cards. The feature-positive group learned faster than the feature-negative group did in the correct side condition; the feature-negative group learned faster than the feature-positive group did in the not-correct side condition. In Experiments 2 and 3, all persons focused on both the correct and not-correct sides of the stimulus cards. Under these circumstances, feature-positive and feature-negative performances were comparable. These results indicated that the usual superiority of feature-positive over feature-negative learning results from a tendency to attend to only a portion of the stimulus array.     

A review of the tip-of-the-tongue experience

The tip-of-the-tongue experience (TOT) has intrigued psychologists for nearly a century. R. Brown and McNeil (1966) provided the first systematic exploration of the phenomenon, and the findings since their seminal study suggest that TOTs (a) are a nearly universal experience, (b) occur about once a week, (c) increase with age, (d) are frequently elicited by proper names, (e) often enable access to the target word's first letter, (f) are often accompanied by words related to the target, and (g) are resolved during the experience about half of the time. Important questions remain concerning TOTs: (a) Are emotional reactions necessary, (b) do only low frequency targets elicit TOTs, (c) do TOTs reflect incomplete target word activation or interference from related words, and (d) do spontaneous retrievals really occur? A more precise definition of the TOT experience is needed, as well as greater uniformity in the information gathered during TOTs.     

Reducing the effects of adjacent distractors by narrowing attention.

Three experiments explored the gradual narrowing of visual attention to a letter target when other letters were positioned close by. The method by which attention was narrowed involved presenting a digit target immediately prior to the latter target and in the same location for progressively shorter durations and requiring the subject to identify both the digit target and the letter target before responding. The response time data from the first 2 experiments indicated that shorter durations of the digit reduced the amount of information processed from noise letters positioned on either side of the letter target. In the third experiment, in which separation of letters was increased slightly, the response times indicated that the information from flanking noise letters may have been virtually eliminated.