Declines in Major League Batting Performance as a Function of Game Pressure: A Drive Theory Analysis1

Zajonc's (1965) drive theory explanation argues that greater arousal tends to impair performance on difficult tasks. The hypothesis that arousal generated by “pressure situations” during major league baseball games would hinder batting performance—a difficult task—was tested by examining such performance during the 1989 season. Six “pressure situations” were identified, some occurring during the late innings of close games and others occurring throughout the game when there were two outs. Two measures of batting performance (batting average and slugging average) were employed. Results indicated broad support for the hypothesis. Reasons for this pattern are discussed, as are possible alternative explanations for these findings.     

Sources of Bias in Health Commission and Tobacco Industry Surveys in Australia

Recently, the attitudes held by Australians towards tobacco company advertising and sponsorship have become the focus of much public discussion and the concern of psychological researchers and opinion pollsters. Community attitude surveys have been commissioned by both supporters and opponents of the tobacco industry. Paradoxically, the data obtained from these surveys allow each protagonist to state that the majority of Australians agree with their viewpoint The present authors have identified several sources of possible bias in two surveys as causes of contradictory research findings. A questionnaire was designed which attempted to reduce the sources of bias and which incorporated other methodological refinements. The data obtained highlight how the form of the questions may substantially influence responses in attitude surveys.     

USING STIMULUS EQUIVALENCE PROCEDURES TO TEACH NAME-FACE MATCHING TO ADULTS WITH BRAIN INJURIES

On pretests, 3 men with brain injuries matched dictated names of three therapists to written names, but did not match dictated or written names to photos, produce correct names in response to photos, locate offices given written names, or name therapists on sight. Match-to-sample training established conditional relations between dictated names and photos. Posttests showed the emergence of untrained conditional relations involving photos and written names, indicating development of three classes of equivalent stimuli (each containing a dictated name, photo, and written name). For 1 participant, conditional relations involving photos of office nameplates were also examined, but did not emerge pre- or posttraining. Two participants produced names orally when given photos and sorted written names and faces together after training; the 3rd participant was unavailable for these posttests. After training, 1 participant located and named all three therapists in their offices.     

The effect of individual differences in act prototypicality judgments on trait-behaviour correlations and cross-situational consistency

Individuals differ in their perceptions of actprototypicality. This study examined whether incorporating such individual differences enhances trait-behaviour correlations and provides stronger evidence for cross-situational consistency. Three hundred and fifty-three subjects rated the dominance prototypicality of 100 acts, indicated how often they performed each of these acts, and provided trait ratings of how dominant they were in general. There were substantial and reliable individual differences in prototypicality judgements over a 4–5 month period. A variety of weighting schemes were used to incorporate these individual differences, but none dramatically increased the trait-behaviour correlation. Similarly, incorporating individual differences did not increase the magnitude of cross-situational consistency correlations. However, incorporating individual differences did enhance the pattern of trait-behaviour and consistency correlations from less prototypical to highly prototypical acts. Differences in perceptions of act prototypicality thus do not affect the magnitude of the correlations that can be obtained, but they are useful in revealing theoretically meaningful patterns of relationships.     

The Chancellor's memory: Rhetoric and truth in discursive remembering

This paper explores the notion of truthfulness in research on conversational remembering. It argues that people's accounts of past events, before they can be taken as data on the cognitive workings of memory, need to be examined as contextualized and variable productions that perform pragmatic and rhetorical work; no one version can be taken as a person's real memory. The consequences of this discourse-analytical perspective are examined first through a critical discussion of Ulric Neisser's study of John Dean's testimony to the senate ‘Watergate’ committee. The issues are then explored more deeply in an analysis of reportings of a different event, in which similar (Watergate-like) issues of memory, truth and accuracy are also at issue. It is argued that: (a) all of Neisser's three kinds of memory–verbatim, gist and ‘repisodic’–involve problematical assumptions concerning their relation to some true, original event; and (b) that Dean's accounts of his memory and his displays of memory should be approached as occasioned productions oriented pragmatically to the assignment of guilt and avoidance of scapegoating. Through an analysis of newspaper reports (based on memory) of a controversial briefing given by the then British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, we then examine: (a) how discourse about what could be used as an arbiter of truth was rhetorically organized; (b) how participants' versions of events were constructed rhetorically, as parts of arguments; (c) that both sides in the dispute maintained the coherence of their positions by a form of error accounting similar to that used by Neisser with respect to Dean. It is suggested that cognitive psychologists, whether working in the laboratory or attempting to do real-world studies of everyday remembering, need to avoid simplistic notions of true original events, and can do so by addressing the rhetorical organization of participants' memory accounts.     

Continuous attention: rationale and discriminant validation of a test designed for use in psychopharmacology

The continuous attention task (CAT) is a test designed to assess changes in attention due to a variety of factors, for example, drugs. Subjects view a series of 3x3 patterns of squares on a monitor screen, each displayed for 100 msec at intervals of 1.5–2.5 sec, and respond whenever two successive patterns are identical. For such a measure to be validr factors other than attention should be investigated, and shown not to be a factor in performance. Nineteen subjects took part in a study in which information-processing rate and recall of CAT figures was measured. The results showed that a viewing time of 50–60 msec was sufficient for 50% correct recognition of CAT figures, and that recognition with a masked presentation of 100 msec did not differ significantly from an unmaske presentation of 100 msec. Mean recall of CAT figures 2 sec after a 100-msec exposure was 98.2%. These results suggest that performance on the CAT is not limited by either information-processing speed or memory capacity, but is a valid measure of the ability to sustain attention.     

Neighborhood frequency effects and letter visibility in visual word recognition

Two experiments are described that measured lexical decision latencies and errors to five-letter French words with a single higher frequency orthographic neighbor and control words with no higher frequency neighbors. The higher frequency neighbor differed from the stimulus word by either the second letter (e.g.,astre-autre) or the fourth letter (chope-chose). Neighborhood frequency effects were found to interact with this factor, and significant interference was observed only tochope-type words. The effects of neighborhood frequency were also found to interact with the position of initial fixation in the stimulus word (either the second letter or the fourth letter). Interference was greatly reduced when the initial fixation was on the critical disambiguating letter (i.e., the letterp inchope). Moreover, word recognition was improved when subjects initially fixated the second letter relative to when they initially fixated the fourth letter of a five-letter word, but this second-letter advantage practically disappeared when the stimulus differed from a more frequent word by its fourth letter. The results are interpreted in terms of the interaction between visual and lexical factors in visual word recognition.     

Creating new memories that are quickly accessed and confidently held

In two experiments involving a total of 542 subjects, a series of slides depicting a burglary was shown. After the initial event, subjects were exposed to one or more narratives about the event that contained some misinformation or neutral information about four critical details. Finally, subjects were tested on their memories of what they saw, and their reaction times and confidence levels were measured. When subjects took a standard test in which the misinformation item was a possible response option, they responded very quickly and confidently when making this incorrect choice. Misled subjects responded as quickly and confidently to these "unreal" memories as they did to their genuine memories. It does not seem, then, that the misinformation effect arises from a large proportion of subjects who must resolve a conflict between two memories when they are tested, a conflict that would be expected to take time. When subjects took a modified test in which the misinformation item was not a possible response, misled subjects were as accurate as were controls, but they responded more slowly, regardless of whether they ultimately chose the right or wrong option. These findings indicate that misinformation does introduce some form of interference not detected by a simple test of accuracy.