TEACHING COIN EQUIVALENCE TO THE MENTALLY RETARDED1

A program was designed to teach coin equivalence to mentally retarded adolescents. Coin equivalence was defined as choosing several different combinations of coins to equal specified target values. A pretest-posttest matched-groups design was employed with an experimental group receiving the monetary training, and a no-training control group. A multiple baseline across coin-counting responses was also incorporated in the experimental group. Training was divided into six stages, each teaching one specific method of combining coins to equal 10 target values from 5¢ through 50¢. A three-component response chain was used, requiring (a) naming, (b) selecting and counting, and (c) depositing target monetary values into a coin machine. Experimental subjects improved significantly in coin equivalence performance and maintained their skill on follow up tests; control subjects did not.     

Third party instigation of aggression as a function of noncooperation and veto power

The purpose of the present study was to test the validity of three hypotheses previously offered to explain the attenuating effects of pacifistic noncooperation on instigative aggression. During part one of the experiment all subjects served as instigators; in the second part they actually set shocks for the target. Subjects instigated either a cooperative or noncooperative confederate, and either did or did not have veto power over the confederate's shock selections. Results of the study indicated that all hypotheses, norm-conformity, compliance, and maintenance of power, were viable for subgroups of subjects. Results were discussed in terms of individual differences and the temporarily inhibiting effects of passive resistance.     

The effect of aversive consequences upon persistent behavior

It was hypothesized that if a behavior is freely engaged in with the expectancy that an aversive consequence will follow, the intrinsic motivation to perform that behavior will increase when the aversive consequence is no longer present. Subjects either worked on a list of anagrams while receiving electric shock on a VR schedule, while being threatened by electric shock, or in the absence of shock. The experimenter then left the subject alone for 10 minutes with a new list of anagrams. Subjects in the shock condition solved more anagrams on the posttest than subjects in the threat-of-shock and noshock conditions. Subjects in both the shock condition and the threat-of-shock condition reported that they spent more of their free time on the anagrams than subjects in the no-shock condition.     

The acquisition of conditioned emotional response as a function of intertrial interval

The effects of intertrial interval (ITI) and foreperiod duration on the acquisition of a conditioned emotional response were investigated using a four-trial conditioning procedure. The optimum ITI was found to be 60 s with a bidirectional gradient for conditioned suppression above and below 60 s. Conditioned supression was found to be directly related to foreperiod duration.     

Alcohol-induced changes in contrast sensitivity following high-intensity light exposure

Relatively low doses of alcohol produced large, significant, dose-related increases in the time required to recover foveal contrast sensitivity following bright light exposure. Nine subjects participated in a double-blind experiment involving three dose levels of alcohol (including placebo). The luminance parameters of the test were comparable to those encountered in practical situations such as driving. The alcohol-induced delay in glare recovery is probably retinal and lasts for several hours after drinking.     

Repetition Priming Follows Spontaneous but not Prompted Recognition of Familiar Faces

Reaction times to make a familiarity decision to the faces of famous people were measured after recognition of the faces in a pre-training phase had occurred spontaneously or following prompting with a name or other cue. At test, reaction times to familiar faces that had been recognized spontaneously in the pre-training phase were significantly facilitated relative to an unprimed comparison condition. Reaction times to familiar faces recognized only after prompting in the pre-training phase were not significantly facilitated. This was demonstrated both when a name prompt was used (Experiments 1 and 3) and when subjects were cued with brief semantic information (Experiment 2).

Repetition priming was not found to depend on prior spontaneous recognition per se. In Experiment 3, spontaneously recognizing a familiar face did not prime subsequent familiarity judgements when the same face had only been identified following prompting on a prior encounter. In Experiment 4, recognition memory for faces recognized after cueing was found to be over 90% accurate. This indicates that prompted recognition does not yield repetition priming, even though subjects can remember the faces. A fusion of “face recognition unit” and “episodic record” accounts of the repetition priming effect may be more useful than either theory alone in explaining these results.