Justification effects on the judgment of analogy

Many of us share a strong intuition that justification forces us to better understand the situations we face. And there is substantial evidence indicating that this is often the case. However, there is a growing body of research showing that, under certain circumstances, explanation and justification can impair performance on a variety of cognitive tasks. In the present research, the effects of justification on judgment of the soundness of analogies were examined. Subjects judged the quality of the match between pairs of stories with varying degrees of superficial and analogical similarity. Experimental subjects either provided reasons for their judgments or wrote recollections of the target stimuli. These subjects rated the match between stimulus pairs as more sound than did control subjects. Also, providing reasons led to poorer discrimination between superficially similar aspects of the stimuli and analogous aspects. Explanations of these findings are proposed, and implications for problem solving and confidence judgment are discussed.     

Introduction to the special section on the concept of disorder.

Despite the absence of a consensual definition of disorder, considerable research and clinical work is based on the categorization and diagnosis of mental disorder. This article introduces a special section of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology that expands the debate between J. C. Wakefield (1999), who has proposed a "harmful dysfunction" analysis of disorder and S. O. Lilienfeld and L. Marino (1995, 1999), who offer an alternative "Roschian" or prototype analysis. This introduction summarizes the main arguments of Wakefield's target article and 8 critiques and discusses the conceptual value of the debate, especially an integration of diverse viewpoints and stimulation to further consideration of this important topic.     

A testosterone-mediated trade-off between parental and sexual effort in male mongolian gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus)

Effects of testosterone (T) on parental behavior of male Mongolian gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus) were examined. After undergoing gonadectomy, castrated males were implanted with empty capsules or capsules containing T; sham-operated males were implanted with empty Silastic capsules. Subsequently, each male was paired with a pregnant female, and after delivery, families were observed 15 min/day for 20 days. Gonadectomized males without T spent more time in contact with, huddling over, and licking pups than did either sham-operated males or gonadectomized males with T. When given a choice between nest sites and displaced pups, females and males with low T preferred pups, whereas intact males and castrated males with T preferred nest sites. The findings are consistent with E. D. Ketterson and V. Nolan's (1994) hypothesis implicating T in mediating trade-offs between parental and sexual effort.     

Development of young children's understanding that the recent past is causally bound to the present

The results of 6 studies (involving 304 children) suggested that 4- and 5-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, understand that very recent past events determine the present. In Studies 1-3, 3- and 4-year-old children were introduced to 2 empty hiding locations. With children's backs to these locations, a camera recorded an experimenter secretly hiding a puppet in one of them. Children then viewed the videotape of what had just happened, along with another tape that depicted identical events except with a different child and with the puppet hidden in the other location. Only 4-year-olds were subsequently able to locate the puppet, even though 3-year-olds remembered the contents of the tapes and understood the equivalence between the video events and the real world. In Study 4, similar effects were obtained when a verbal analog of the test was presented to 3-5-year-olds. Studies 5 and 6 showed that when children observed 2 events in which they had just participated, only 5-year-olds understood that the most recent events were relevant.     

Discourse deficits following right hemisphere damage in deaf signers

Previous findings have demonstrated that hemispheric organization in deaf users of American Sign Language (ASL) parallels that of the hearing population, with the left hemisphere showing dominance for grammatical linguistic functions and the right hemisphere showing specialization for non-linguistic spatial functions. The present study addresses two further questions: first, do extra-grammatical discourse functions in deaf signers show the same right-hemisphere dominance observed for discourse functions in hearing subjects; and second, do discourse functions in ASL that employ spatial relations depend upon more general intact spatial cognitive abilities? We report findings from two right-hemisphere damaged deaf signers, both of whom show disruption of discourse functions in absence of any disruption of grammatical functions. The exact nature of the disruption differs for the two subjects, however. Subject AR shows difficulty in maintaining topical coherence, while SJ shows difficulty in employing spatial discourse devices. Further, the two subjects are equally impaired on non-linguistic spatial tasks, indicating that spared spatial discourse functions can occur even when more general spatial cognition is disrupted. We conclude that, as in the hearing population, discourse functions involve the right hemisphere; that distinct discourse functions can be dissociated from one another in ASL; and that brain organization for linguistic spatial devices is driven by its functional role in language processing, rather than by its surface, spatial characteristics.     

Derivation and prediction of temperamental types among preschoolers.

The number and nature of temperamental types in 488 children aged 3 years 6 months was examined on the basis of a broad set of temperamental characteristics, including positive and negative emotionality and the attentional and behavioral control domains. Configural frequency analysis methods showed clear support for two temperament types: controlled-nonexpressive and noncontrolled-expressive. These types showed meaningful differences against external criteria related to a wide range of problem behaviors from the emotional, social, and attentional domains. The reports of problem behaviors were obtained contemporaneously from fathers and caregivers. These findings replicated a year later when children were aged 4 years 6 months. Furthermore, the findings showed that infant and toddler-age temperamental characteristics differentiated these preschool-aged types. The authors discuss the implications of the results for a categorical view of temperament-personality.     

Treatment of stammering by reinforcement of fluent speech

A series of small experimental studies was conducted with three stammerers. The studies show that stammering may be controlled by positive reinforcement of fluent speech in a machine reading task. This new procedure for the treatment of stammering is convenient and effective in producing fluent speech in the laboratory. Evidence suggests some generalization of a stable kind to outside settings.

Stammering interrupts speech and disturbs communication. It has been treated by a variety of methods, ranging from physical assault on the speech organs, through procedures designed to establish new speech patterns, training in deliberate speech control, and masking of auditory feedback, to psychotherapy and behaviour therapy.

Negative practice has brought about improvement in up to a third of cases (Dunlap, 1932; Fishman. 333 1937; Sheehan, 1953; Lehner, 1954; Jones, 1955; Case, 1960). The other common form of behaviour therapy has usually involved negative reinforcement or punishment. Flanagan, Goldiamond and Azrin (1958) used a loud blast of noise every time subjects stammered. Stammering rate was markedly depressed during the aversive conditioning, but when the aversive conditions were discontinued, stammering rate showed a pronounced increase. More recently, Goldiamond (1965) used fluency to terminate a noxious stimulus and reported a reduction in stammering.