Graphemic analysis underlying literacy

Three experiments are described that studied the role of detailed graphemic analysis upon the ability to read text. College students named letters in various approximations to English, with frequency of individual letters constant. Findings were that later skill at reading varied with the order of approximation to English of the letters that were named, that the spacing of the letter sequences was important to this result, and, finally, that the influence of specific visual practice extended to the typeface on which the naming and reading were carried out. Hence, rather than a letter-by-letter process or its opposite, a wholly semantic analysis, reading is shown to be intimately dependent upon details of visual analysis of patterns or letter sequences.     

Representation of inflected nouns in the internal lexicon

The lexical representation of Serbo-Croatian nouns was investigated in a lexical decision task. Because Serbo-Croatian nouns are declined, a noun may appear in one of several grammatical cases distinguished by the inflectional morpheme affixed to the base form. The grammatical cases occur with different frequencies, although some are visually and phonetically identical. When the frequencies of identical forms are compounded, the ordering of frequencies is not the same for masculine and feminine genders. These two genders are distinguished further by the fact that the base form for masculine nouns is an actual grammatical case, the nominative singular, whereas the base form for feminine nouns is an abstraction in that it cannot stand alone as an independent word. Exploiting these characteristics of the Serbo-Croatian language, we contrasted three views of how a noun is represented: (1) the independent-entries hypothesis, which assumes an independent representation for each grammatical case, reflecting its frequency of occurrence; (2) the derivational hypothesis, which assumes that only the base morpheme is stored, with the individual cases derived from separately stored inflectional morphemes and rules for combination; and (3) the satellite-entries hypothesis, which assumes that all cases are individually represented, with the nominative singular functioning as the nucleus and the embodiment of the noun’s frequency and around which the other cases cluster uniformly. The evidence strongly favors the satellite-entries hypothesis.     

A comparison of the reliability and validity of the standard MFF and MFF20 with learning-disabled children

A direct comparison was made of the reliability and validity of the standard Matching Familiar Figures Test (MFF) to a recent longer version of the task (MFF20). Subjects comprised two samples of learning-disabled children, matched on age, sex, IQ, and SES. The Salkind and Wright (1977) formulation was used to generate continuous data, and IQ was statistically controlled. Internal reliability estimates showed the MFF20 to be more consistent that the standard version on both error and latency scores. Validity was addressed by comparing the two versions of the task in their ability to predict cognitive and behavioral skills of conceptual relevance to impulsivity. Results indicated that the MFF20 is a more sensitive predictor of academic achievement and attention as observed in a natural setting than is the standard version of the task.This study was supported by a contract (300-77-0495) from the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped, Office of Education, for the University of Virginia Learning Disabilities Research Institute. The authors would like to express appreciation to the school officials who generously assisted in the present study: Elizabeth Bailey, Thomas Cox, Charles Dempsey, Julian King.     

Effects of sentential stress and word class upon comprehension in Broca's aphasics

The roles which word class (open/closed) and sentential stress play in the sentence comprehension processes of both agrammatic (Broca's) aphasics and normal listeners were examined with a word monitoring task. Overall, normal listeners responded more quickly to stressed than to unstressed items, but showed no effect of word class. Aphasics also responded more quickly to stressed than to unstressed materials, but, unlike the normals, responded faster to open than to closed class words regardless of their stress. The results are interpreted as support for the theory that Broca's aphasics lack the functional underlying open/closed class word distinction used in word recognition by normal listeners.     

Word-finding as a function of stimulus context: Children compared with aphasic adults

A study of object naming in 202 children, aged 5–11 years, demonstrated that varying the stimulus context affected the level of response accuracy. From age 6 to 10, completing a sentence with a noun (auditory) yielded the lowest error scores, naming objects upon hearing a definition (also auditory) produced most errors, while responding with names to pictured objects was of intermediate difficulty. This is the same order of object naming difficulty found in adult aphasic patients. Children older than 10 do not appear to be affected by stimulus context in their object naming. Results are discussed in terms of the relative syntactic difficulty of the two auditory conditions, the unexpected sex differences, and the “aphaseoid” naming errors of children.     

Pupillometric assessment of retrieval operations in factual long-term memory

The process involved in recall from long-term memory were studied through the use of a general knowledge questionnaire and the technique of pupillometry. Degree of processing of the components of the retrieval process was inferred from second-by-second monitoring of pupil size. Measurements were recorded during subjects' attempts to retrieve the answer to the query, or if unsuccessful, from clues of the target (first and last letters), and if still unsuccessful, to recognize the presented target word as being associated with the question (the “Of course”, or “That's it!” experience). Pupil size differed according to the nature of the three task demands. Additionally, there were differences based on the type of outcome within the question trial (e.g., between target known but blocked — feeling-of-knowing/tip-of-tongue — and target not known), and the answer trial (recognize vs not recognize the question—answer relationship). The results were related to the search and decisional processes of retrieval.     

A reexamination of sex differences in job preferences

Previous research has found conflicting answers to the question of whether males and females share similar preferences for various job characteristics. It is difficult to determine if the different findings are due to the different populations sampled, the various methodologies employed, or to a real change in the phenomenon itself. This study essentially replicates earlier work by having 130 male and 84 female college students rate the importance of 10 job characteristics for both themselves and members of the opposite sex. Both sexes rated motivators as important, but females also placed importance on the hygienes. Males tended to underestimate the importance of the motivators for females, while females overestimated the importance of hygienes for males. The subject's sex could be predicted by both the importance for self and importance for opposite sex ratings, contrary to the earlier study. The difference in results and interpretation was shown to be due to the type of analyses used. Additionally, it was found that females' job preferences were related to their mothers' educational achievement.     

Efficacy of self-instructional training for reducing children''s anxiety in an evaluative situation

Fifty-six fourth-grade children were categorized as either high or low in trait anxiety and then assigned to a self-instruction treatment, minimal-treatment, or no-treatment control condition. At both pretest and posttest, the subjects recited a memorized poem while being videotaped with the expectation that they would be judged on their performance. State anxiety measures, a behavior rating of anxiety, a measure of performance accuracy and the time involved in reciting a poem were obtained at both pretest and posttest. Contrary to expectation, the self-instructional training resulted in subjects' exhibiting greater signs of behavioral anxiety, subjects' hurrying through the task (taking less time to recite the poem) and high trait-anxiety subjects' reporting more state anxiety while anticipating reciting the poem. Correlational analyses indicated that trait anxiety was significantly related to the measures of state anxiety and the behavior rating of anxiety but not to performance accuracy.     

Augmentation of in vivo exposure treatment for agoraphobia by the formation of neighbourhood self-help groups

The advantages of selecting agoraphobic patients for treatment by group exposure according to their residential geographic neighbourhood were evaluated in terms of facilitation of ‘homework’ practice and increased social contact. Both ‘zoned’ and ‘unzoned’ groups showed gains in ability to perform hierarchy items after 11 sessions of exposure, relative to a no-treatment control group. However only zoned subjects showed significant reductions in experienced anxiety when executing such items. Self-ratings of overall phobic severity also suggested a zoned group was superior to unzoned while assessors' ratings indicated both groups as equally improved. Only zoned subjects showed a significant increase in social range. Improvements were maintained at 3-months follow-up. No effect of treatment was found on either the Zung measure of anxious mood or on social integration.These results suggest that, where practical, zoning might offer the means for desirable continuation of intensive clinic-based group treatment as well as the benefit of extending treatment into the patients' environment as in home-based treatments. Crucial levels of group cohesion might also be increased although therapists should be prepared to negotiate resistance to a socially demanding programme from patients with significant additional social phobias.