Predicting adult temperament from minor physical anomalies

It is known that in children, individual differences in temperament are linked to rates of minor physical anomalies (MPAs). These anomalies are a standard set of 17 nonobvious but measurable characteristics of the face, hands, and feet. We explored the relation between MPAs and temperament in adults. An intact sample of 88 undergraduates completed a battery of personality tests and lifestyle questions, and then were examined for MPAs. The index of MPAs for each subject was simply the total count out of 17. The results showed a pattern of correlates parallel to that found in children. Among male subjects, correlations with MPAs were significant for the Physical Activity and Clumsiness factors of the lifestyle inventory as well as for measures of emotionality, extraversion, masculinity, femininity, and Type A personality. The MPA index was also predictive of a behavioral index of temperament in male subjects. No correlations were significant among female subjects.     

The fantasy-prone person: hypnosis, imagination, and creativity

The present study evaluated the so-called fantasy prone personality by selecting subjects who ranged along the continuum of fantasy proneness and then administering measures designed to assess hypnotic susceptibility (Harvard Group Scale, HGSHS:A; Shor & Orne, 1962), absorption (Tellegen Absorption Scale; Tellegen, 1976), vividness of mental imagery (QMI; Sheehan, 1967), response to waking suggestion (Creative Imagination Scale; Wilson & Barber, 1978), creativity (Barron Welsh Art Scale; Barron & Welsh, 1952), and social desirability (Crowne & Marlowe, 1960). Fantasy-prone (N = 23; upper 4% of college population), medium range (N = 22), and nonfantasy-prone persons (N = 17; lower 4% of population), were selected using the Inventory of Childhood Memories and Imaginings (Wilson & Barber, 1981). Strong support was secured for J. R. Hilgard's construct of imaginative involvement and Wilson and Barber's contention that fantasy prone persons can be distinguished from others in terms of fantasy and related cognitive processes. Fantasizers were found to outscore subjects in both comparison groups on all of the measures of fantasy, imagination, and creativity, with social desirability used as a covariate. Low fantasy-prone subjects were no less creative or less responsive to hypnosis than their medium fantasy-prone counterparts.     

Problem representation: The effects of spatial arrays

Two studies examined how characteristics of spatial arrays contribute to efficient problem representation. Thirty-two adults were presented with information about family relationships in one of two arrays: a hierarchy or a matrix. Their answers to two different sets of questions were timed. The matrix format was superior to the hierarchy for one set of questions only; no differences between the arrays emerged for the other set. The data were interpreted in terms of how the family relationships were mapped onto the arrays; the mapping differences between the arrays affected the number of mental steps needed to solve some questions, but not others. In a second experiment (N=32), the same problem information was remapped onto the arrays, with the mapping relations reversed. As predicted, the pattern of response times exactly reflected the change in mapping. It is proposed that, for spatial arrays, efficiency of problem representation is best understood in terms of the number of mental steps in the problem solution.     

Anxiety,aspirations, and self-concept in the achievement process: A longitudinal model with latent variables

Recent research suggests that anxiety is not a single, unified reaction to perceived threat, but rather a cluster of interrelated factors whose relationships to performance change as the individual progresses from one test event to another. This study investigated the presumed linkages between traitlike predispositions to perceive threat and achievement performance, as mediated by statelike anxiety arousal on a longitudinal basis (Perceived Threat Anxiety Arousal Impaired Performance). College students were administered self-report questionnaire measures during a preenrollment period, after the first two midterms, and following the last two midterms in a general psychology course. Four performance measures and 26 motivational indicators were fitted to a 10-factor latent model using LISREL model-fitting techniques. Path-analytic interpretations of this structural model provided little evidence for the commonly held view that traitlike threat perceptions mediate performance via statelike anxiety reactions. Far more promising, theoretically, are those influences on test performance stemming from the self-attributional, cognitive domain. Overall, the findings support a recent reinterpretation of achievement anxiety as stemming from the disruptive effects of diminished ability perceptions (and hence, impaired personal worth), rather than from the interfering influence of diffused emotional arousalper se.     

Effects of treatments and their outcomes on peer perceptions of a hyperactive child

In an exploration of the social impacts of treatments for hyperactivity, two age groups (kindergarteners and first-graders vs. fourth- and fifth-graders) heard about a hyperactive child whose problem was treated either by an internal and controllable means (effort) or by an external and uncontrollable means (medication) and whose behavior either did or did not improve. The attributions and affective responses of both age groups were influenced by both the nature and the effectiveness of treatment, and there was only weak support for the hypothesis that younger children are more influenced by treatment outcome than older children are. However, older children, conforming to attribution theory predictions, held target children more accountabe for the success or failure of their own efforts than for the outcomes of medication, particularly valuing the child whose own efforts succeeded. By contrast, young children judged the child whose efforts failed as more worthy of pride and more likable than the child whose medication failed. Implications for peer acceptance of hyperactive children over the childhood years are discussed.Portions of this paper were presented at the annual meeting of the Southeastern Psychological Association, Atlanta, March 1985. Thanks are extended to the staff and students of the Model Laboratory School.     

The relationship between eye movements and spatial attention

Most previous studies of the attentional consequences of making saccadic eye movements have used peripheral stimuli to elicit eye movements. It is argued that in the light of evidence showing automatic “capture” of attention by peripheral stimuli, these experiments do not distinguish between attentional effects due to peripheral stimuli and those due to eye movements. In the present study, spatial attention was manipulated by varying the probability that peripheral probe stimuli would appear in different positions, while saccades were directed by a central arrow, enabling the effects of attention and eye movements to be separated. The results showed that the time to react to a peripheral stimulus could be shortened both by advance knowledge of its likely position and, separately, by preparing to make a saccade to that position. When the saccade was directed away from the most likely position of the probe, the targets for attention and eye movements were on opposite sides of the display. In this condition, the effects of preparing to make a saccade proved to be stronger than the effects of attentional allocation until well after the saccade had finished, suggesting that making a saccade necessarily involves the allocation of attention to the target position. The effects of probe stimuli on saccade latencies were also examined: probe stimuli that appeared before the saccade shortened saccade latencies if they appeared at the saccade target, and lengthened saccade latencies if they appeared on the opposite side of fixation. These facilitatory and inhibitory effects were shown to occur at different stages of saccade preparation and suggest that attention plays an important role in the generation of voluntary eye movements. The results of this study indicate that while it is possible to make attention movements without making corresponding eye movements, it is not possible to make an eye movement (in the absence of peripheral stimulation) without making a corresponding shift in the focus of attention.