Effects of inbreeding on mental-ability factors

The differential effects of inbreeding on 11 subtests of the WISC, in a Japanese (Hiroshima) population, are related to the factor structure of the tests. The degree of inbreeding depression on mental abilities is most strongly correlated with the subtests' loadings on the General factor, g, which is common to all of the subtests. Loadings on the Verbal factor are also positively correlated with inbreeding depression. The (non-verbal) Performance factor, however, is slightly enhanced by inbreeding. One possible inference from these findings is that at least the General factor shows genetic dominance, which is theoretically consistent with natural selection for g in the course of human evolution. It is also noted that the factor structure of the WISC in the Japanese population is highly similar to that of the U.S. standardization sample.     

Can applied ethics be effective in health care and should it strive to be?

Drawing upon his work in medical centers, Caplan explores the question of how well ethicists function in hospitals. He asks if their use of the "engineering model" of applied ethics, which emphasizes conceptual clarification, mastery of ethical theory, and impartiality, has made any difference in the way medicine is practiced. Noting that ethicists have been more effective in influencing heatlh policy at the national than at the institutional level, Caplan concludes that they have been less successful in teaching medical ethics, working with health personnel, and helping to formulate hospital policies. He attributes their difficulties primarily to the inadequacies of the engineering model of applied ethics for solving problems in a clinical setting. Caplan cautions ethicists to be aware both of the limitations of the engineering model and of the motives of health personnel in asking for help which may have little to do with resolving moral dilemmas.     

Commitment: A behavioral approach to job involvement

This study views job involvement and commitment as interchangeable labels for the same job behavior. Work commitment behaviors were defined as a special class of socially acceptable work behaviors that exceed formal and/or normative expectations relevant to work. The main purpose of this study was the development of a measure of work commitment based on this definition. A daily record measured the amount of personal time that each subject devoted to work-related activities beyond the required working day. For a sample of 54 female elementary school teachers, the work commitment measure demonstrated moderate correlations with two attitudinal measures of job involvement and a job satisfaction scale. The feasibility and usefulness of defining and measuring involvement behaviorally were demonstrated.     

Implicit learning: An analysis of the form and structure of a body of tacit knowledge

Subjects learned implicitly the underlying structure of an artificial language by memorizing a set of representative exemplars from the language. The form and structure of their resulting knowledge of the language was evaluated and analyzed over a four day period by several procedures: (a) solving anagrams from the language, (b) determining the well-formedness of novel letter strings, and (c) providing detailed introspective reports. Several important implications about implicit acquisition of a novel complex system emerged. First, the memorial representation of a structured system is acquired through the dual operations of a differentiation-like process based upon relational invariances and a configurational process based upon overall structure. Second, the form of tacit knowledge is an abstract representation of the intrinsic structure of the stimulus field. Third, while the ability to make explicit what is known implicitly increases with performance levels, the conscious apprehension of structure always lags behind what is known unconsciously.     

Integrated pictures and relational imagery training in children's learning

The effects of integrated pictures of nouns, training in imagining relations between separate pictures of nouns, and the combination of training and integrated pictures on the recall of noun triplets were assessed in children from grades one, three, and six. The cued recall of nouns under these three conditions was from two to six times greater than that of the control group in all three grades. In grade six, those children who had been trained to generate their own relations between the pictured nouns recalled significantly more than those who had been shown integrated (i.e., already related) pictures of the nouns. It was suggested that encouraging young children to seek out and generate relations between items to be learned might help them become aware of and more confident in their ability to improve their own learning efficiency.     

CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISON OF COGNITIVE CONSISTENCY

Une comparaison interculturelle portant sur le phénomène de consistance cognitive a été effectuée en appliquant à quarante-cinq sujets américains et quarante-cinq sujets grecs un questionnaire écrit basé sur trois paradigmes classiques de la théorie de l'équilibration. Comme prévu, d'importantes différences interculturelles sont apparues dans les réponses des deux groupes, l'effet de compensation équilibrante s'avérant inexistant chez les Grecs. De plus, à l'intérieur même du groupe américain, les sujets universitaires se distinguent de façon marquée du reste de leurs compatriotes. Les auteurs discutent la validité d'un modèle de consistance cognitive opérant universellement comme une tendance irrésistible à résoudre les déséquilibres cognitifs par un ajustement automatique des attitudes.     

On the nature of central processing in choice reactions

A procedure for generating values of central processing uncertainty was developed from positive response data in a varied-set version of the Sternberg choice reaction task. This is a logical extension of a previously validated procedure for data from a fixed-set version of the same task. Both procedures provide information on the additive components of reaction time. It was concluded that S resolves more uncertainty in the varied-set than in the fixed-set situation. It was concluded also that S performs a rechecking operation prior to emitting a negative response, and this rechecking apparently involves less information than does the original testing for stimulus classification. This, in turn, suggests that rechecking is a self-terminating process with regard to display information. The results also imply that stimulus classification is partially serial and partially parallel, so a hybrid model may be appropriate for this task.     

Locating clicks in sentences: Left,center, and right

There are currently two theoretical interpretations of the pattern of errors that Ss make in attempting to locate the position of a click in a message. One is based upon lexical sequences in the message (the linguistic hypothesis), and the other is based upon attenti6nal priorities, memory factors, and response biases (the attentional hypothesis). This experiment was designed to differentiate between them. By orthogonally varying the temporal location of the major syntactic break and the position of the click, it was possible to control for effects of serial position and memory. In addition, a subliminal control group was run to evalute Ss’ response biases. Little evidence was found to support the linguistic hypothesis; considerable support was found for at least a qualitative version of the attentional hypothesis.     

Detectability of the deletion of a tone from a tone-plus-noise background

The deletion of a 1,000-Hz tone from a tone-plus-noise background is much harder for humans to detect than the insertion of the same tone into a background of noise. A mathematically ideal O, oblivious to the context in which an observation interval occurs, performs equally well under conditions of insertion and deletion. Human listeners, not oblivious to context, produced the function d_s = 0.036 E/N_o under deletion; the slope of this linear function is no more than half that of the typical slope of the comparable insertion function. The underlying reasons for the superiority of detection of insertion to that of deletion remain unclear.