Trait anxiety,stress, and learning a test of Saltz's hypothesis

Behavioral predictions from Saltz's, Spence's, and Spielberger's interpretations of trait anxiety were tested in a complex verbal learning task. Fifty-three high-anxious and 52 low-anxious male college students were randomly distributed to test conditions of failure-stress, pain-stress, or neutral instructions. The learning data revealed that high-anxious-failure and low-anxious-pain Ss were disrupted and supported Saltz's hypothesis; self-reported anxiety (A-State scale, STAI) was observed only in high-anxious-failure Ss and supported Spielberger's theory of the arousal of state anxiety as a function of trait anxiety. However, the contradiction between self-reported anxiety and learning behavior in low-anxious-pain Ss indicated that the verbal report of these Ss was an inaccurate or insensitive index of arousal.     

Potassium gymnemate and the sweet and bitter taste provoked electrically

The sweetness or bitterness of taste solutions of saccharin and quinine may be blocked, while the sweetness or bitterness evoked by electrical stimulation of the tongue by cathodal polarization is unchanged. Electrical taste stimulation apparently bypasses the most peripheral process by which taste solutions elicit sweet and bitter and thus acts directly on the receptor and/or its afferent nerve terminals.     

Bilateral apparent haptic movement

When Os are permitted to manipulate the interstimulus onset interval (ISOI) to obtain optimal apparent movement between two ipsilateral vibrotactile stimuli, a consistent quantitative relation between ISOI and stimulus duration appears. The present report describes conditions for movement between contralaterally-placed stimuli, and shows that whereas movement is qualitatively incomplete, the aforementioned relation is still evident. The results are discussed in the light of recent work in both visual apparent movement and complex patterns of stimulation on the skin.     

Induction of a principle

Two experiments are reported in which student subjects attempted to discover a principle obtaining among pairs of numbers and letters. In the first experiment, subjects were more successful when they were free to select whatever number-letter pairs they wished than if they were restricted in whole or in part to pairs specified by the experimenter. In the second experiment, subjects who did discover the principle were compared to those who did not. Successful subjects were shown to be slightly more systematic in their approach to the task, to work at a faster pace, to write down more positive instances, and to have a much stronger tendency to vary only one variable of the task at a time.

Wason (1960) reported a study in which subjects tried to discover a principle applying to instances each of which consisted of three numbers. He discovered that subjects mostly showed enumerative rather than eliminative induction, i.e. they made little use of instances that would have enabled them to eliminate wrong hypotheses. Wetherick (1962) found that by modifying Wason's procedure in certain ways, enumerative behaviour was reduced and the subject's chance of discovering the principle was increased. Elimination of hypotheses remained infrequent.

In the Wason study, the subject was free to write down, for each instance, any three numbers he wished, i.e. his choice of instances was not restricted in any way. This may account in part for the behaviour Wason observed. In the first experiment to be reported here, the subject is restricted, in various degrees, in his choice of instances, to determine whether the principle is discovered more (or less) readily under such restriction.     

Decision Theory and Vocational Counseling: Important Concepts and Questions

Ignorance of specifics of career decision-making processes has prevented development and use of more effective vocational counseling procedures. Simply giving clients vocational information and assuming rational use of it is criticized. Contemporary decision theories suggest several relevant variables. Two variables, subjective probabilities (individual's self-estimates of success) and utilities (desirabilities held for outcomes or alternatives), are discussed in relation to presenting clients with objective probability information concerning future plans. Some relevant research is reviewed and two questions are discussed: (1) How do different methods of presenting information influence subjective probabilities? (2) How are utilities influenced by objective probability data?     

MEASUREMENT OF CATHECTIC DISCRIMINATION

R amfalk , C. W. Measurement of cathectic discrimination. Scand. J. Psychol ., 1961, 2, 191–202—-(1) One of the hypothetical constructs of a personality theory is preliminarily explored. The constructs are based on an experimental model in which the main concepts can be operationally defined and objectively measured by cathectic discrimination technique. (2) In order to stabilize the technical part of the project, change in cathectic orientation during (pre-) adolescence was selected as a suitable first object for the investigation. (3) Deviation from normal development in changes of cathectic orientation seems to be related to absence from school, anxiety, guilt and identification.     

The lability of the tactile-kinaesthetic framework

This paper is concerned with the ability to recognize settings of a rod (pivoted at the centre) at various angles of tilt without the use of vision. Five angles of tilt, all within the upper right quadrant, were used and 80 subjects took part in the experiments. It is shown that tactile-kinaesthetic recognition of a given angle of tilt is decidedly poor, subjects commonly reporting that the position of the rod had been changed. The direction of these subjective shifts was found to be in general towards the centre of the quadrant. If, following the recognition experiments, the subjects were required to judge settings of the rod in fact vertical and horizontal, errors made tended to be in a direction opposite to that normally found in making these judgements. It was further found that attempts to reinstate the original settings led to mean judgements equivalent to those given on the recognition tests, but with signs reversed. These various phenomena are ascribed to lability and disorganization of the tactile-kinaesthetic framework. An analogy with the autokinetic phenomenon is adduced.     

Psychosocial Responses of Hospital Workers to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS)1

To assess the psychosocial responses of hospital workers to acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), 237 hospital employees were interviewed. Information was obtained on frequency and nature of contact with AIDS patients; knowledge about AIDS; attitudes about AIDS and about homosexuality; and stresses related to AIDS care. Four indices were developed: AIDS-Contact, AIDS-Phobia, Homophobia, and AIDS-Stress. Misperceptions and fears about AIDS, as well as negative attitudes about individuals with the disease, were common. AIDS-Phobia was positively correlated with Homophobia and AIDS-Stress. AIDS-Phobia and AIDS-Stress were negatively correlated with AIDS-Contact. More patient contact was associated with lower levels of perceived stress, except for those with frequent but impersonal patient contact. Strategies for educational programs based on results are proposed.     

Linguistic analysis of a bilingual stutterer

The ultimate test of the adequacy of linguistic models of fluency breakdown is the degree to which they may account for patterns of dysfluency in the speech of a stutterer who is fluent in more than one language. We present the case of an adult bilingual stutterer (Spanish-English), whose spontaneous language in both Spanish and English was structurally analyzed to assess the relationships of phonological and syntactic structure to the frequency and location of fluency breakdown. Our findings suggest that syntax is probably a greater determinant of stuttered moments than is phonology. Additionally, similarities and differences between English and Spanish sentence structure were associated with similarities and differences in the loci of dysfluencies across the two languages. The need for crosslinguistic research utilizing monolingual and bilingual speakers of languages other than English is emphasized.