Rats and bunnies: core kids in an American mall

Although adolescents use shopping malls as important places of congregation, very little attention has been paid to this phenomenon by social scientists. This paper reports on a qualitative, interview-based study of adolescents in a New England shopping mall. Regular, day-to-day frequenters (N = 23) were identified and interviewed extensively over a six-week period in 1988. These "core kids" exhibited a good deal of alienation from both family and school, and used the mall as a neutral ground on which to create a fragile but mutually supportive community of kind.     

Motivation and performance: Two consequences of winning and losing in competition

The present study examined the effects of competitive outcome—either a win or a loss—on intrinsic motivation. Winning was hypothesized to facilitate both performance and intrinsic motivation. Fifty-four participants, 29 females and 25 males, competed against a same-gender confederate in a puzzle-solving contest. Following the competition, participants' intrinsic motivation was surreptitiously measured by the amount of time spent playing with the puzzle while alone. Results showed that winning facilitated both actual competitive performance and intrinsic motivation relative to losing. The importance of considering the outcome when predicting intrinsic motivation after competition is discussed.     

Contributions of elicitation to measures of self-control

Pigeons' not pecking or pecking constituted choice between a delayed, large reinforcer and an immediate, small reinforcer (self-control) and at other times between a delayed reinforcer and no reinforcer (omission). Both a tone and a keylight were tested as choice signals, and the delayed reinforcer was either response independent or response dependent. Pigeons pecked during the choice signals on over 95% of the trials in the self-control procedure, and pecked during the choice signals on over 75% of the trials in the omission procedure. Consistent pecking was observed with either the tone or the keylight as a choice signal, with the exception that a tone paired with a response-independent delayed reinforcer did not maintain pecking in the omission procedure. Pigeons pecked during more choice signals when delayed reinforcers were response dependent than when the delayed reinforcers were response independent. These results indicate that Pavlovian conditioning influences self-control experiments, especially in single-key procedures.     

A NEUROBIOLOGICAL ALTERNATIVE TO THE PERCEPTUAL REINFORCEMENT HYPOTHESIS OF STEREOTYPED BEHAVIOR: A COMMENTARY ON “SELF-STIMULATORY BEHAVIOR AND PERCEPTUAL REINFORCEMENT”

A perceptual reinforcement theory of stereotyped movements is advanced by Lovaas, Newsom, and Hickman (1987) in an effort to integrate a number of diverse observations about the origins and maintenance of this behavior. We, in turn, argue that the theory, as presented, is logically flawed and fails to take into account important biological findings and theory concerning pathological stereotyped acts. An alternative theory, derived primarily from neurological concepts, is briefly described.     

The influence of alcohol and loud music on analytic and holistic processing

The influence of alcohol and loud music on analytic versus holistic processing was examined in classification, concept learning, and embedded figures tasks. In the classification task, loud music reduced analytic responding by individuals who had consumed alcohol and increased analytic responding by individuals who had received placebo drinks. Alcohol also decreased the speed with which individuals were able to generate analytic responses in the classification task and decreased analytic performance on the embedded figures test. Alcohol slowed the rate of learning in the concept-learning task but did not lead to less analytic responding in that task. The results are consistent with the idea that alcohol slows the rate of information processing, particularly in tasks requiring visual analysis of stimuli.     

Test theory and psychometrika: The past twenty-five years

On the occasion ofPsychometrika's fiftieth anniversary, the past twenty-five years' developments in mental test theory are reviewed, with special emphasis on the topics receiving attention in the pages of this journal. (Analogous reviews forPsychometrika's first quarter century were given by Gulliksen and Guilford in 1961.) Much of the recent progress in test theory (and in other branches of psychometrics as well) has been made by treating the problems in this field as being essentially ones of statistical inference. It is concluded that (a) research in test theory is in a healthy state and (b)Psychometrika is an important source of information about that research.     

The Zeigarnik effect and intrinsic motivation: Are they the same?

The present study focused on delineating the parameters under which intrinsic motivation leads an individual to reengage an activity from those that result in the Zeigarnik effect. In a posttask free-choice period, participants not completing the experimental task displayed more reengagement behavior than participants completing the task (the Zeigarnik effect). When participants were also provided self-efficacious performance feedback via a prearranged competitive outcome manipulation, there was no evidence of the Zeigarnik effect, while there was support for intrinsic motivation from competent self-efficacious performance feedback. Results were discussed in terms of distinguishing between intrinsic motivation and the Zeigarnik effect as sources of reengagement motivation. It was concluded that, in the presence of self-efficacious performance feedback, the competent-incompetent impression was more salient than task-completion feedback.Preparation of this article was supported by Texas Christian University grant TCU/RF 5-23757.