Enhancement of recall using multiple environmental contexts during learning

Distributing the presentation of sublists of words into multiple learning rooms produced better free recall scores than a single learning room condition for subjects who were given a comprehensive recall test in a new environment. No such effects occurred on recognition or list differentiation tests in Experiment 2, implying a retrieval explanation rather than one relying upon learning or list differentiation effects. Experiment 3 found that the contextual dependence of recall li.e., recall tested in a learning context is better than recall tested in a new context was nullified by using multiple learning rooms, rather than a single room for input. The data are consistent with an explanation that states that the multiple learning rooms become associated with the different sublists during learning and subsequently act as memory landmarks that guide the course of retrieval.     

The effect of subject's race and other's race on judgments of causality for success and failure

This study examined the proposition that blacks and whites make dispositional attributions for an in-group's positive behaviors and an out-group's negative behaviors. The study also examined whether this positive in-group bias was caused by dislike of the out-group or belief in a stereotype. Thus, blacks and whites made attributions to black and white others who succeeded or failed on tasks for which there was either no stereotype or a more negative stereotype of whites than of blacks. An out-group other's failure on both tasks was attributed to lack of ability more than was an in-group other's failure. This finding suggests that the in-group bias is caused by dislike of the out-group. Furthermore, in success conditions subjects' attributions to the in-group or out-group other did not differ. It was suggested that these attributions may result from a combination of an in-group bias and a polarized appraisal.     

Functional constraints on sentence processing: A cross-linguistic study

English and Italian provide some interesting contrasts that are relevant to a controversial problem in psycholinguistics: the boundary between grammatical and extra-grammatical knowledge in sentence processing. Although both are SVO word order languages without case inflections to indicate basic grammatical relations, Italian permits far more variation in word order for pragmatic purposes. Hence Italians must rely more than English listeners on factors other than word order. In this experiment, Italian and English adults were asked to interpret 81 simple sentences varying word order, animacy contrasts between the two nouns, topicalization and contrastive stress. Italians relied primarily on semantic strategies while the English listeners relied on word order—including a tendency to interpret the second noun as subject in non-canonical word orders (corresponding to word order variations in informal English production). Italians also made greater use of topic and stress information. Finally, Italians were much slower and less consistent in the application of word order strategies even for reversible NVN sentences where there was no conflict between order and semantics. This suggests that Italian is ‘less’ of an SVO language than English. Semantic strategies apparently stand at the ‘core’ of Italian to the same extent that word order stands at the ‘core’ of English. It is suggested that these results pose problems for claims about a ‘universal’ separation between semantics and syntax, and for theories that postulate a ‘universal’ priority of one type of information over another. Results are discussed in the light of the competition model, a functionalist approach to grammar that accounts in a principled way for probabilistic outcomes and differential ‘weights’ among competing and converging sources of information in sentence processing.     

A note on the analysis of designs in which subjects receive each stimulus only once

In social psychological experiments, the manipulations of interest are often presented to subjects along with, or as part of, some stimulus. An example would be a manipulation of the verbal label associated with a stimulus photograph, in a person perception study. Ordinarily it is not possible for stimuli to be completely crossed with treatments because subjects cannot be exposed to any stimulus more than once. In such designs it is wise to counterbalance the assignment of stimuli to treatment conditions, but this gives rise to difficulties in the analysis of the experimental data. Data from such designs have frequently been misanalyzed in the published literature. This paper presents a method of constructing a counter-balancing scheme to simplify the analysis, and appropriate methods of analysis for both the simplified and the general case. It is emphasized that stimuli are generally best treated as a random factor in such designs, permitting increased generalizability, but the case where the stimulus factor is fixed is also considered.     

Two classes of models for magnitude estimation

One class of models assumes that presentation of a signal results in an internal representation as a random variable. Depending on whether the signal is close to or far from the preceding signal, the variance of the representation is smaller or larger. Responses are determined largely by this random variable; however, when the signal is close to the preceding one, the response is generated by modifying the representation multiplicatively by some function of the ratio of the previous response to its representation. Power and linear functions are explored. The form of the random variable is assumed to be that arising from either the timing or the counting model operating on a Poisson process. Detailed analyses are carried out successfully only for the timing model with neural sample sizes independent of intensity; however, the data require the sample to increase with intensity. The linear response function coupled with the constant sample size counting model appears somewhat viable, but detailed calculations are very difficult to carry out. The second class of models postulates a power function relation between magnitude estimates and signals intensity for which the exponent is a Gaussian distributed random variable and the unit is the product of two log normal random variables. Again we assume an attention band such that succesive stimuli that are widely separated in intensity lead to independent samples of the random variables while a variety of assumptions is explored for successive stimuli that are near each other in intensity. Although they each give rise to the qualitative features of the data, estimates of parameters are sufficiently inconsistent that we are led to reject all of the submodels studied.     

Lunchroom noise control using feedback and group contingent reinforcement

Reduction of noise levels in an elementary school lunchroom was examined as a function of feedback and feedback plus reinforcement using group contingency procedures. Feedback consisted of signals from a traffic light, with green indicating acceptable levels, yellow indicating levels approaching undesirable, and red indicating unacceptable levels. Other behaviors, including running, hitting, pushing, and kicking, were measured incidentally. Results indicate that feedback plus reinforcement was effective in reducing noise levels. Feedback only was also effective, but to a lesser degree. No response-response relationship was found to exist between noise level and the other behaviors.