Sex role as a mediator of achievement in task performance

Participants in a test of the influence of sex role on performance in a masculine task were 96 male and female undergraduates. Subject sex, norm (challenging or not challenging), and experimenter (male, female, or no experimenter present) were varied in a 2×2×3 design. When challenged, subjects worked more successfully in the presence of a female than before a male or with no experimenter present. Results support the hypothesis that the arousal of achieving tendencies may depend in part on the importance and conspicuousness of role cues. Implications for industrial performance and for future research are discussed.The authors would like to acknowledge the thoughtful assistance of Barbara Moely and Beverly Jafek, who commented on earlier drafts of this paper.All correspondence should be sent to Dr. Laurie Larwood, Claremont Men's College Claremont, California 91711. Portions of this paper were presented at the meeting of the American Psychological Association, Chicago, August 1975.     

Motivational antecedents to maturity of moral judgment

This study was undertaken to examine the independent influences of conative development (the Maslow needs hierarchy) upon aspects of prosocial orientations. It was designed to establish the role of conative development in moral reasoning among high school men at two age levels (sophomores and seniors), controlling for cognitive skills and social role-taking opportunities. As such, it attempts to break new ground in relating motivational constructs to the moral development literature. Conative maturity was found to be a necessary antecedent to attainment of higher level moral reasoning among high school men. Fixation and consolidation of moral reasoning was evidenced in connection with conative fixation among high school seniors. Results are discussed in terms of implications of conative growth for development of prosocial orientations in general and moral reasoning strategies in particular.Ordering of authors names was determined by random procedure and is not indicative of disproportionate contributions to the overall research.     

On the autonomy of mental processes: a case study of arithmetic

We define a process as autonomous if it can begin without intention, and if it can run on to completion without intention. We develop empirical criteria for determining whether a process can begin without intention, for determining whether it begins in the same way without intention as it does with intention, and for determining whether it can run on to completion without intention once it begins. We apply these criteria to assess the autonomy of the processes underlying simple mental arithmetic--the addition and multiplication of single digits--and find evidence that simple arithmetic may be only partially autonomous: It can begin without intention, but does not begin in the same way without intention as with intention and does not run on to completion without intention. This conclusion suggests there may be a continuum of autonomy, ranging from completely autonomous to completely nonautonomous.     

Attention demands of visual search

The relation between attention demand and the number of items in the array (array size) was investigated by engaging subjects in a primary search task and measuring spare capacity at different points in time, with a secondary tone task that occurred randomly on half of the trials. The major variables in both tasks were array size 14, 8, or 12 letters and stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA: ?400, ?200, 0, 200, 400, and 600 msec. Subjects were able to perform the tasks quite independently, and me, st of the interference that resulted from nonindependence appeared in tone-task performance. Theamount of interference (i.e., maximum tone reaction time) was independent of array size, but theduration of interference (li.e., the number of SOAs at which tone reaction time was elevated) increased with array size. The findings were interpreted as supporting unlimited-capacity models of visual search performance.     

Future directions for implicit learning: Toward a clarification of issues associated with knowledge representation and consciousness

Areas of agreement and disagreement regarding knowledge representation and consciousness within implicit learning research are reviewed. It is argued that further progress in the field requires more precise definitions of abstract and episodic knowledge, and of conscious and unconscious forms of cognition. In particular, we argue that implicit learning research should be informed by more general theories of memory and performance, and that concepts such as consciousness are unlikely to act as explanatory constructs within this approach.     

Parallel response selection in dual-task situations

Semantic priming and response priming were studied in a dual-task procedure. In two experiments, reaction times to the first and second stimuli were faster when the finger required for the Task 1 response was the same as the finger required for the Task 2 response. Such priming suggests that Task 2 response information was generated prior to the completion of Task 1 response selection. These data pose a potential challenge to the response-selection bottleneck (RSB) theory of dual-task performance, since they may indicate a violation of the discrete-stage processing assumption on which the underlying locus-of-slack logic depends. Accommodating these data while preserving the essential bottleneck character of RSB theory may be possible but may also alter the very nature of the bottleneck itself.     

A device for concurrent bilateral measurement of outer eyelid closures in the rabbit

This paper describes a transducer that allows for the concurrent recording of outer eyelid closure on both the left and the right eyes of a rabbit. The device makes use of voltage induced across a current-carrying conductor when the conductor is exposed to a magnetic field perpendicular to its axis (the Hall effect). The transducer is relatively compact, inexpensive, and allows the animal to be loosely restrained.     

The loss of repetition priming and automaticity over time as a function of degree of initial learning

Two experiments were performed to investigate the buildup of repetition priming in a lexical decision task with repeated presentations and its decline over the course of 2 months. Priming was found to accumulate as a power function of presentations and to decline as a power function of time. Accuracy measures indicated that the loss rate of priming was unaffected by the amount of initial priming. Response time measures indicated the same result when the experiments were analyzed separately; however, when the data were combined, increased initial priming was associated with greater losses in priming over time. The data were interpreted in terms of automaticity, and the power function decline in priming was taken as support for memory-based models of automaticity. Possible ways to incorporate forgetting into memory-based theories of automaticity are discussed.     

Effects of event rate and display time on sustained attention in hyperactive,normal, and control children

Two experiments were conducted to determine whether hyperactive boys have a unique deficit in sustained attention. Groups with DSM-III diagnoses of attention deficit disorder (ADDH), conduct disorder (CD), ADDH+CD, and learning disorder were compared with normal controls on the Continuous Performance Task. In Experiment 1, stimulus presentation rate (stimulus onset asynchrony, SOA) and display time were varied to manipulate attentional demand, and speed and accuracy of performance were measured. The ADDH group was uniquely affected, with less accurate performance at the fastest and slowest SOA. To distinguish the effects of time on task and SOA, the duration of each SOA condition was held constant in Experiment 2. The poorer performance of the ADDH group at the fastest SOA was no longer evident. This finding indicates that the deficit of sustained attention in boys who have ADDH is associated with a greater susceptibility to refractory effects, which is influenced by practice.This research was supported by the Ontario Mental Health and Ruth Schwartz Foundations through a graduate fellowship awarded to P. Chee and a research grant to R. Schachar, G. Logan, and R. Wachsmuth. Dr. Schachar was also supported by the Canadian Psychiatric Research Foundation. This article is based, in part, on a doctoral dissertation submitted by the first author to the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. The authors thank Dr. John Lovering and the staff of the Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology, The Hospital for Sick Children, for their cooperation in the conduct of this study. This paper was prepared with the assistance of the Medical Publications Department, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto.