Conceptual preference for thematic or taxonomic relations: A nonmonotonic age trend from preschool to old age

Two experiments examined the development of conceptual preference for either thematic (functional) or taxonomic relationships in a match-to sample task. In Experiment 1 twenty subjects from each of five age groups—preschool to old age—completed a method of triads preference test where they were forced to choose a thematic or taxonomic match. Young and old individuals preferred the thematic parings while school age and college adults preferred the taxonomic matches. Although the Age × Preference relation was pronounced, the majority of subjects at all ages could provide adequate justification of both the preferred and nonpreferred relationship. In addition, kindergarten subjects in Experiment 2 could readily be trained to respond on the basis of the nonpreferred mode. These data suggest that the pervasive shift in conceptual responding from syntagmatic to paradigmatic, thematic to taxonomic, etc., represents a change in preference rather than a shift to a fundamentally new way of organizing knowledge.     

Marijuana Revisited

This review examines recent research on the psychological effects of marijuana. The article contains material on potency, research problems, use patterns in the United States, and expectancy, as well as a review of research on acute effects, including psychosis, toxic delerium, acute anxiety, and brain damage. Nonacute effects are also examined, with material on studies of amotivational syndrome, intellectual functioning, memory, sexual activity, and driving. Research on marijuana's relationship to other drugs and to criminal behavior is also evaluated. Implications for counselors are discussed. Counselors are urged to help provide accurate information to users and to encourage an informed-decision approach. The significance of marijuana use to value and life-style choice and the counselor's role in considering marijuana law changes are evaluated.     

Adaptation in distance perception with head-movement parallax serving as the veridical cue

When head-movement parallax functioned as the sole veridical distance cue during exposure to spectacles that altered the eyes’ oculomotor adjustments, sizable adaptation was obtained. This result showed that a discrimination of the distances of 60 and 30 cm can be based on head-movement parallax. Using adaptation in demonstrating that head-movement parallax can serve as a distance cue circumvents the problem that the presence of accommodation normally presents when such a demonstration is attempted. The usual contamination of head-movement parallax with accommodation is avoided, because accommodation is altered by the spectacles and does pot function as a veridical cue along with head-movement parallax.     

Children's strategies in producing three-dimensional relationships on a two-dimensional surface

It is a common task to give children a picture containing implicit depth cues and to require them to extract depth information from it. The cues are always selected from the adult repertoire; little is known about children's production of their own cues. In this experiment, 5- to 10-year-old children were required to draw one object behind another in a situation in which adults invariably produce the further object partially occluded by the nearer. The results were an age-related decline in the tendency to segregate the objects and an increase in the tendency to group the objects using partial occlusion, with a cross-over at 8 years. At all ages some children drew one object inside the boundary of the other. It is argued that the results are composed of two tendencies, a gradual mastery of discrete scaling phenomena (e.g., “up” on the page means “further”) within a given style, and a set of decisions to be made between incompatible styles.     

Perceived objectivity and the effects of evaluative reinforcement upon compliance and self-evaluation in blacks

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of positive and negative reinforcements upon black college students. In the first experiment subjects received either positive or negative reinforcement from a black or a white Evaluator. Behavioral change (compliance) was greater in response to negative reinforcement from a black Evaluator than in response to negative reinforcement from a white Evaluator, while there were no divergent effects of Evaluator's Race upon compliance with positive reinforcement. The same pattern obtained in subjects' self-evaluations. The second experiment offered a test of the hypothesis that the objectivity of black Evaluators was perceived as greater than that of white Evaluators, and that a manipulation aimed at equating the Evaluators on objectivity would attenuate the effects of Evaluator's Race upon compliance and self-evaluation in response to negative reinforcement. These hypotheses were generally supported by the results.     

Handedness and stuttering: A dead horse?

A handedness questionnaire was administered to 446 stutterers and a control group. No significant male/female or stutterer/control effects were found, although both males and stutterers tended to be less right handed. The slight sex effect in handedness is consistent with previously reported studies and with cerebral structural and functional asymmetries.     

INTERACTIONS BETWEEN TEACHER GUIDANCE AND CONTINGENT ACCESS TO PLAY IN DEVELOPING PREACADEMIC SKILLS OF DEVIANT PRESCHOOL CHILDREN1

Token-mediated access to play and snacks was made contingent on completion of academic tasks in the Baseline Experiment. This contingency produced stable completion rates that were subsequently doubled, and then tripled, for four deviant children in a special preschool. A reversal design demonstrated that the contingency was functional in maintaining the children's rates of task completion. The Guidance Experiment examined the role of a social event, teacher guidance, in the acquisition of task-completion skills, in a multiple-baseline-across-tasks design (with reversals). The analysis demonstrated that teacher guidance was an important supplement to the token-mediated contingency in establishing significant increases in task completions for a second group of three deviant children in the special class. The importance of teacher guidance was related to the difficulty level of the children's tasks.     

Extinction of a phobia of physical examination in a seven-year-old mentally retarded boy—A case study

Counterconditioning is a process in which aversive stimuli that ordinarily evoke emotional or avoidance responses are paired with positive stimuli which evoke incompatible activities. Several sets of operations have been employed to induce these incompatible activities (e.g. food, Jones, 1924; relaxation. Grossberg, 1964; positive imagery, Lazarus and Abramowitz, 1962; pharmacological agents, Friedman, 1966; laughter, Ventis, 1973).Although the Counterconditioning process has been successfully applied to a wide variety of emotional disorders, special problems arise when the procedure is applied to the mentally retarded. First, because of the limitations in cognitive abilities, it is generally impossible to train the subject in either relaxation or positive imagery processes. Consequently, it is necessary to place the child in direct contact with the anxiety-inducing situation. Secondly, it is often difficult to find an anxiety-free situation which is incompatible with the anxiety-arousing situation and which can be practically implemented, particularly when the phobia involved is complex.The purpose of this paper is to describe a case whereby a phobic response of physical examination by male doctors in a 7–yr-old mentally retarded boy was extinguished by pairing the examination with an anxiety-free situation, i.e. an extremely comfortable relationship between the patient and a nurse on the ward. Previous research had indicated that parents and people who have positive relationships with a person might possibly serve as effective anxiety reducers in fear-provoking situations (Jersild and Holmes, 1935).     

A further note on freeman's measure of association

This note extends and elaborates Hubert's attempt to provide an interpretation of Freeman's measure of association,. The measure is used in a a contingency table when observations are ordered on one variable and unordered on the other. No attempt is made explore the distribution of.     

Reversible effects of ambient housing stimulation upon stimulation-seeking in rats

Two types of housing condition, low and high ambient stimulation, were alternated. The effects of this treatment upon rats' subsequent stimulation-seeking behaviour were assessed in a multiple-choice head-input apparatus. The aim of the experiment was to determine whether adult animals would adapt and re-adapt to varying periods of upward and downward shifts in the levels of housing stimulation. A given housing-stimulation had a lawfully cumulative effect which could be completely reversed when housing conditions altered. The most sensitive measures were latency and response rate in the first 5 min of the test. One measure, relative preference for illuminated stimuli over a dark stimulus, gave an indication of the time-lag involved in adaptation to a new housing condition.