Social validation of an objective measure of dominance in captive monkeys

The validity of a primate dominance hierarchy was examined in terms of its relationship to social interactions. Twelve social behaviors associated with dominance and aggression were recorded during 61 h of observation of six pigtail macaques (Macaca nemestrina). Of the 1,462 interactions recorded, 94.7% were oriented in the water dominance hierarchy in the direction that would be predicted on the basis of their ascribed functions.     

Detection of extraneous signals during sentence recognition

In two separate experiments, 40 Ss were presented with recorded sentences during each of which a click occurred. Ss had to depress a key as soon as they heard the click. RTs were f aster when the click was located at the major syntactic break of the sentence compared with RTs to clicks not at a break. This confirmed the hypothesis that processing load is a function of the surface structure of sentences, although the role of minor breaks was not clear. A second finding was that RTs were slower when the click was in the first rather than in the second half of the sentence. This can also be explained in terms of differential processing loads.     

Disruption of proofreading by irrelevant speech: Effects of attention,arousal or memory?

A series of five experiments examined the effects of irrelevant speech on proofreading and memory. Four of the experiments used a proofreading task and showed that the deleterious effects of irrelevant speech: (1) depend on the speech being meaningful, (2) are only present when the burden on short-term memory is low and (3) are manifested in a lower detection rate for non-contextual as opposed to contextual errors. Neither the spatial location of the speech (either in terms of spatial dispersion of sources or spatial movement of a single source) nor the intensity of the speech (in a range bounded by 50 dB(A) and 70 dB(A)) had any effect on proofreading. Late selection models of attention are favoured by the results in preference to models having arousal, short-term memory or early selection in attention as their basis. A final experiment showed serial recall for visual lists to be impaired by the presence of any speech-like sound (including reversed speech and speech in an unfamiliar language) which suggests a set of phenomena qualitatively different from those associated with proofreading. Throughout the article the practical consequences of the findings are emphasized.     

Empathic interactional sequences and counsellor trainee effectiveness

Consecutive counsellor trainee and client statements from 12 audiotaped assessment interviews were coded to operationalize empathy as a sequential variable. For each two statement sequence the speaking order (counsellor to client, client to counsellor) was also coded, and the resultant matrix analyzed via loglinear statistical procedures for categorical data. For the speaking order client to counsellor, three empathy sequences (empathy enhancing, empathy diverging, empathy commencing) were found to be significantly related to counselling effectiveness. For the speaking order counsellor to client, only one sequence(empathy diverging) was found to be significantly related to counselling effectiveness. Implications for counsellor training and future research are discussed.     

Counsellor verbal response mode usage and client-perceived rapport

The effects of usage of eight verbal response modes by trainee counsellors during an initial interview were determined by reference to client-perceived rapport. Data on rapport were gathered via a standardized client's minute-by-minute ratings of his experience of rapport on a five-point scale during the interview. A total of ten counselling interviews were conducted, and data were examinedfor overall effects (i.e. during the interview as a whole) and minute-by-minute effects. Restatements, Minimal Encouragers and Verbosity were significantly dafferent in occurrence in high versus low rated interviews. Minute-by-minute data revealed that these overall differences were not consistent at all stages of the interviews. Implications for counsellor training are discussed.     

Anxiety and the spelling and use in sentences of threat/neutral homophones

The disambiguation of threat/neutral homophones was investigated in high- and low-trait anxiety subjects who had been exposed to either a positive or a negative mood manipulation procedure. Subjects were required first to spell each auditorily presented word and second, to generate and speak a sentence using the word. Difference indices were calculated for the spelling and the sentence usage data, i.e. the number of threat minus neutral interpretations. Examination of these indices revealed that subjects exposed to the negative mood manipulation procedure produced relatively more threat than neutral interpretations (for both spelling and sentence usage) than did subjects exposed to the positive mood manipulation procedure. Multiple regression analyses revealed that both the trait anxiety and mood manipulation variables contributed significantly to the prediction of the difference index on the spelling task. In the analysis of the use of homophones in sentences, only the mood manipulation variable contributed significantly to the prediction of the difference index on the sentence usage task.     

High-Trait and Low-Trait Angry College Students: A Comparison of Family Environments

In this study the authors investigated differences in the family environments of high- and low-trait angry college students. High-trait angry students described their family environments as significantly less cohesive, less emotionally expressive, more conflictual, and more disorganized than did their low-trait angry counterparts. Implications of the findings to the counseling of students with anger-related problems are discussed.