Sex differences in conformity: Instrumental or communal response?

Male and female introductory psychology students (N=88) were asked to read a clinical case history and the opinion consensus of either (a) their peers, (b) advanced psychology students, or (c) Ph.D. clinical psychologists that the patient should be hospitalized for at least 90 days (an extreme treatment). Subjects then indicated on a scale of 10 to 90 days, the length of hospitalization they thought best. In a significant interaction effect (sex of subject × expertise of source) males were least influenced by the opinions of their peers and increasingly influenced as the source became more expert. Females, however, seemed most influenced by their peer group, recommending longest hospitalization terms in that condition. Results are interpreted in terms of sex-role identification and the emergence of an instrumental (task) or communal set.     

Large effects on long-term retention after standard list learning vs. adjusted learning

Prior research using the method of adjusted learning has focused on the method’s potential relative to the standard list learning method for minimizing retention differences among items. Concomitantly, there is less overlearning of individual items with the adjusted learning method. Although prior research has reported a retention difference favoring the standard list learning method, our research demonstrates that the magnitude of this difference can be surprisingly large. The results presented here from 11 experiments show retention to be more than 100% greater after standard list learning than after adjusted learning.     

Adaptation in stereoscopic depth constancy

Stereovision is a complex process because perceived depth intervals depend not only on retinal disparity, but also on cues for distance. Because disparity decreases in proportion to the square of the object distance, a compensation process called constancy of stereoscopic depth makes the necessary correction in the perception of depth by taking object distance into account. This compensation process was altered by adaptation. Subjects were exposed to artificial conditions where disparity decreased in proportion to distance instead of distance squared. Alterations in depth perception amounting to 20% were obtained.     

Evidence in support of word unitization

In each of five experiments, the subjects viewed tachistoscopically presented pairs of letters and made speeded comparison judgments on the basis of name identity. On most trials, a noise letter string (word or anagram) was placed directly between the target letters. The results indicated that correct “same” RTs were a function of noise item type and its relation to target letters. Anagrams increased RTs more than their counterpart words, except when the noise word was either unmeaningflul or response incompatible with respect to the target letters (e.g., B Tea b). The interference effects were also found to be independent of sequence length. It was posited that the subjects were unable to completely ignore the irrelevant attributes of the displays and that under certain conditions, the subjects were able to identify the noise items in a holistic fashion. The data were interpreted in terms of a unitization hypothesis of word recognition, response competition, and a continuous-flow conception of information processing.     

Overselective response to social stimuli by autistic children

Previous studies have shown that when presented with a complex stimulus input, autistic children typically respond to only one of the elements of the complex. This phenomenon was called stimulus overselectivity (or overselective attention). The present investigation sought to determine if this overselectivity might be a possible basis for the deviant social behavior in autistic children. Autistic and normal children were trained to discriminate between clothed girl and boy doll figures. After the children had acquired this discrimination, the individual clothing components and the heads were systematically interchanged between the figures. Thus, it could be determined which component(s) the children had used to make the discrimination. The autistic children demonstrated stimulus overselectivity in that they formed the discrimination between the boy and girl figures on the basis of only one component or of peculiar combinations of components. For example, one child discriminated the figures on the basis of shoes. In contrast, the normal children responded primarily to the figures' heads but could also respond correctly to other parts. These findings are consistent with previous research on stimulus overselectivity and have implications for understanding the difficulty autistic children show in forming meaningful social relationships.This investigation was supported by U.S. Public Health Service Research Grant 11440 from the National Institute of Mental Health.The authors express their appreciation to James Q. Simmons, Associate Chief, Mental Retardation and Child Mental Health Programs, Neuropsychiatric Institute, University of California, Los Angeles; and Norbert Rieger, Superintendent of Children's Services, Camarillo State Hospital, Camarillo, California. They are also grateful to Robert Koegel and to Thomas Willis for their valuable suggestions and to Meredith Gibbs for her assistance in data collection.