Speakers' assumptions about the lexical flexibility of idioms

In three experiments, we examined why some idioms can be lexically altered and still retain their figurative meanings (e.g., John buttoned his lips about Mary can be changed into John fastened his lips about Mary and still mean "John didn't say anything about Mary"), whereas other idioms cannot be lexically altered without losing their figurative meanings (e.g., John kicked the bucket, meaning "John died," loses its idiomatic meaning when changed into John kicked the pail). Our hypothesis was that the lexical flexibility of idioms is determined by speakers' assumptions about the ways in which parts of idioms contribute to their figurative interpretations as a whole. The results of the three experiments indicated that idioms whose individual semantic components contribute to their overall figurative meanings (e.g., go out on a limb) were judged as less disrupted by changes in their lexical items (e.g., go out on a branch) than were nondecomposable idioms (e.g., kick the bucket) when their individual words were altered (e.g., punt the pail). These findings lend support to the idea that both the syntactic productivity and the lexical makeup of idioms are matters of degree, depending on the idioms' compositional properties. This conclusion suggests that idioms do not form a unique class of linguistic items, but share many of the properties of more literal language.     

The influence of status and sex-typing on assessments of occupational outcome

In order to investigate the relative strengths of status and sex-typing of occupations on evaluations of job outcomes, this study varied sex of subject, sex of stimulus person, status of occupation, sex-typing of occupation, and job outcome in a three-between, two-within factorial design. Contrary to previous research, subjects' beliefs about stimulus persons' affective reactions to job outcomes were not consistent with rigid sex-typing of jobs. Instead, the data suggest that crossing the sex-typing barrier in occupations is receiving growing acceptance, and that subjects are aware of sex segregation and discrimination in the labor force. Other data suggest that subjects' beliefs about job outcomes are influenced by belief in a just world.The authors wish to thank Walter G. Stephan for commenting on an earlier version of this article.     

Word familiarity and retention

These experiments examine the relationship between subjects' familiarity judgements of words of similar (low) frequency and their recall or recognition of these words. The expected relationship between familiarity and recall was well confirmed, as was the less expected relationship between familiarity and recognition. An analysis of the vocabulary acquisition process led to more specific predictions about performance on delayed, as compared with immediate, retention tests. The most crucial of these predictions was that words which are familiar, but whose meanings are not known, are remembered by tagging sets of phonological (as opposed to semantic) features, leading to good immediate recall but poor delayed recall, and a greater likelihood of acoustic confusions following a delay. Some support was obtained for these predictions. However, subjects showed unexpectedly good retention of unknown words and it was felt that tagging alone does not account for all the findings.     

Transfer of training and skill assumptions in tracking tasks

Matched groups of subjects were used to test the learning and transfer effects that follow changes in the display, the muscular reactions and the directional relationship between stimulus and response in a tracking task. Two arrangements were compared in the relationship studies: one arrangement of the stimuli and reactions was similar, and the other was opposed to that used in many every-day skills. The familiar arrangement was easier to learn. There was high positive transfer from the unfamiliar to the familiar, and little transfer from the familiar to the unfamiliar.

The physical dimensions of the display were varied to give two tasks with different stimuli. The initial learning times were equal for both tasks, and the transfer between them was high, positive, and equal. Two further tasks varied in the extent, speed and force of the required muscular movements. One task proved more difficult to learn initially, and there was greater transfer from the difficult to the easy task than from the easy to the difficult. A further experiment tested the effects of changing the difficulty of a tracking course, and it was found that learning was more rapid on the more difficult course. A difference in difficulty between two tasks, therefore, determined both the amount of transfer between them and the rate of learning the tasks.

New measures were developed to test the transfer between tasks of unequal content, and the effect of such inequalities upon the rate of learning. The findings are discussed, as are their possible implications for transfer measurement and their bearing upon existing theories of transfer.     

Life Stress,Hassles, and Self-Efficacy in Aging: A Replication and Extension1

This study examines the roles of life stress, hassles, and self-efficacy in the prediction of adjustment in aging. Twenty-six men and 26 women between the ages of 65 and 75 participated in an initial structured interview and a follow-up interview one year later. Measures of negative life change events, daily hassles, and self-efficacy were used to predict depression, psychosomatic symptoms, and negative well-being both in concurrent and time-lag designs. Frequency of hassles was the strongest predictor, showing significant relationships with depression and psychosomatic symptoms both concurrently and one year later, even when initial distress was controlled. Perceived self-efficacy was also shown to be predictive of current and subsequent depression, even after initial depression was controlled. Frequency of negative life events was a weak predictive factor. The only area where life events related significantly to health was in time-lag analyses with negative well-being, even when initial distress was controlled.     

Syntactic frozenness in processing and remembering idioms

Three experiments examined the effect of syntactic frozenness on understanding and memory for idiomatic expressions. In Experiment 1 we established a frozenness continuum by asking subjects to judge whether idioms in different syntactic forms maintained their idiomatic meanings. The results of Experiment 2 indicated that subjects processed idiomatic expressions more quickly than they did nonidiomatic, control strings. Moreover, subjects are faster at processing frozen idioms than they are at understanding flexible ones. The final experiment found that the degree of syntactic frozenness has an effect on memory for idioms in that flexible idioms were recalled more often than were frozen ones. These data overall support the idea that idioms are part of the normal lexicon, but are accessed differentially according to their degree of syntactic frozenness.     

Chronic self-destructiveness: Conceptualization,measurement, and initial validation of the construct

Individual differences in various behaviors suggest that those who are primarily motivated by current emotional factors are more likely than those motivated by more distant cognitive considerations to engage in acts that are ultimately self-destructive. To assess and explore these behavioral differences, 12 samples of undergraduate subjects, totaling 864 (527 females, 337 males), a group of 15 businesswomen, and 111 male VA patients were used to develop a measure of this construct in a series of reliability and construct validity studies. By means of internal-consistency item analyses, two cross-validated 52-item measures of chronic self-destructiveness were constructed for males and females. Reliability was established with respect to internal consistency (alpha coefficients range from .73 to .97) and temporal consistency over a 1-month period (test-retest correlations range from .90 to .98). There is a slight drop in chronic self-destructiveness scores across age groups. Test scores were found to be positively related to external locus of control, negatively related to Type A coronary-prone behavior, and unrelated to either social desirability response set or need for achievement. Individuals high in chronic self-destructiveness, compared to those with low scores, are more likely to be in treatment for drug or alcohol abuse, to report having cheated in courses, to have had traffic violations, to report having gone through a rebellious stage in adolescence, and to postpone obtaining a medical test for cancer. Chronic self-destructiveness appears to be a personality dimension that affects behavior across a wide range of ages and situations.We wish to thank John Wapner for his assistance in obtaining data in the clinical sample.     

Emotional responsiveness and obsessive-compulsive behaviour

Abstract

Several clinicians have proposed that patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) are unusually sensitive to unpleasant events. We tested a non-clinical sample of obsessive-compulsive (O-C) subjects who reported in diagnostic interviews that they experienced significant problems with obsessions and/or compulsions. Excerpts from three emotion-eliciting films were shown to 10 O-C males, 12 O-C females, 12 normal males, and 12 normal females. Emotional response was measured by using a self-report instrument and by recording facial expressions, which were coded for both appropriate emotional reactions as well as reactions that may represent efforts to mask or control the display of negative emotion. The groups did not differ with regard to subjective response to the film clips, but facial responses indicated that O-C subjects made more efforts to suppress the expression of fear (inappropriate smiles/laughs) during the frightening film clip. In spite of these responses, male O-C subjects also tended to reveal more frightened facial expressions than male control subjects. This finding is believed to illustrate one component of a model in which exaggerated emotional response is a precursor to the development of OCD.