Interference in memory for pictorial information

Subjects studied either faces composed from visual features or verbal facts composed from concepts. Recognition times were increased for both faces and facts when they were composed of elements that occurred in multiple study items. In Experiment 1 the interfering effect of other study items was much larger for verbal facts than for faces. This difference was largely eliminated in Experiment 2 where care was taken to control the features by which the faces were encoded. Experiment 2 also showed that verbal information could interfere with pictorial information and vice versa. However, this cross-modality interference was much weaker than within-modality interference. The data are consistent with the ACT theory in which pictorial material and verbal material are stored together in an abstract propositional network. The subnode model (Anderson, Language, memory, and thought, Hillsdale, N. J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1976) can account for the greater within- than cross-modality interference.     

Intrusiveness and Persuasive Impact of Three Communication Media1

Two field experiments compared the persuasive impact of communications delivered face-to-face, by telephone, or by letter. In both studies, letters did not differ from faccto-face contacts but telephone calls were less effective. In the second experiment, personalness interacted with communication medium such that addressing subjects by name reduced the impact of face-to-face encounters, increased that of letters, and had no effect on phone calls. A third sample of subjects rated the appropriateness of name usage by salespeople, indicating a salesperson should give his own name but was inappropriately personal when calling the subject by name. The findings support the notion that varying media and name usage varies the psychological distance between communicator and recipient. At appropriate psychological distances, communicators and communications have optimum effectiveness; at too great or too little distance, they lose impact. Thus, not only is selection of proper medium important to communicators but how the medium is used can affect impact.     

Married women's work status: The influence of parents and husbands

The working or nonworking status of married women free of the financial need to work was studied in relation to the balance between their instrumental and expressive needs and in relation to their own and their husbands' attitudes towards women's roles. Also studied were women's needs and attitudes towards women's roles in relation to their parents' child-rearing practices, needs, and attitudes towards women's roles. These variables were rated by 67 working and 48 nonworking women on three sets of scales, each set composed of items reflecting instrumental (I) and expressive (E) orientations. A single score for each set of scales reflected the balance between the sum of the I and E ratings, or (I-E). In 10 of 13 possible correlations, the subjects' I-E needs and attitudes towards women's roles were significantly related to their parents' I-E child-rearing practices, needs, and attitudes towards women's roles. The work status of the subjects was significantly related to their own I-E needs, to their own and their husbands' attitudes towards women's roles, and to whether their mothers worked.     

Counselors and Juvenile Delinquents: Toward a Comprehensive Treatment Approach

The complex problems experienced by juvenile offenders require a multifaceted approach to treatment. Meeting the interwoven psychological and environmental needs of delinquent youngsters involves four differential treatment functions: behaviour adjustment, growth counseling, child advocacy, and social chance. Mental health counselors and juvenile-justice-system workers can coordinate their efforts toward comprehensive treatment by analyzing their roles in terms of these four functions and by keeping their roles clearly understood among themselves and with their clients.     

“Perceptual centers” in speech production and perception

Morton, Marcus, and Frankish (1976) report that listeners hear acoustically isochronous digit sequences as anisochronous. Moreover, given a chance to adjust intervals in the sequences until they are perceptually isochronous, the listeners introduce systematic deviations from isochrony. The present series of studies investigates these phenomena further. They indicate that when asked toproduce isochronous sequences, talkers generate precisely the acoustic anisochronies that listeners require in order tohear a sequence as isochronous. The acoustic anisochronies that talkers produce are expected if talkers initiate the articulation of successive items in the sequence at temporally equidistant intervals. Items whose initial consonants differ in respect to manner class will have acoustic consequences (other than silence) at different lags with respect to their articulatory onsets thereby generating the observed acoustic anisochronies. The findings suggest that listeners judge isochrony based on acoustic information aboutarticulatory timing rather than on some articulation-free acoustic basis.     

Modeling,tuition, and sanction effects on self-control at different ages

The effects of age, modeling, tuition, and sanctions on self-control of motor behavior were examined. Children 6, 7, 9, and 11 years of age individually participated. A male model either: (a) instructed and performed “Simon Says” in the traditional manner, (b) introduced the sanction “Don't” on the inhibition trials, (c) performed an action that differed from the instruction, or (d) gave instructions only. Activation latency and inhibition error were influenced most greatly by the actions of the model and the introduction of a negative sanction, whereas tuition was less effective. Age differences were present for inhibition errors as well as activation latency and error. The discussion focused on the differential effects of modeling and tuition on deviant responding.