The roles assigned to females and males in non-music radio programming

This article summarizes a content analysis of the non-music programming of two Top 40 radio stations in a metropolitan market, targeting adolescents. The content analyzed was recorded during times when, according to Arbitron Ratings, 12 to 17 year olds are the primary listeners (weekdays 6 a.m. to 9 a.m.; 7 p.m. to midnight; and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.). Research questions focused on the roles assigned to males and females in non-music content. Findings indicate that males dominate as DJs, newscasters, voiceovers in advertisements, sportscasters, and weathercasters. Females dominate as traffic reporters and audience participants. In addition, an analysis of the terms used to identify males and females throughout the non-music content indicates that females are referred to primarily by their family roles (wife, mother, daughter, sister), women, or as ladies while males are primarily referred to as guys, sir, or Mr.     

Vocal congruence in mother-infant play

Turn-taking is the fundamental temporal structure of adult dialogue. This structure defines two types of joint silence: intrapersonal pause (silence bounded by the vocalizations of a single speaker) and switching pause (silence bounded by the vocalizations of different speakers). Switching pauses mark the boundaries of the turn exchange. In adult conversation the mean durations of both types of pause are characteristically matched between partners. This matching, termed vocal congruence, occurs developmentally earlier in the case of switching pauses. We hypothesized and confirmed that mothers and infants match switching pauses but not intrapersonal pauses at 4 months, even though the infants' vocalizations are prelinguistic. Second, since there are known affective correlates of vocal congruence in adult conversation, we hypothesized a similar affective correlate for mother-infant vocal congruence. We found, for the intrapersonal pause only, that the degree of matching within a dyad correlated with infant affective engagement. We conclude, from switching pause congruence, that a turntaking dialogic structure is being regulated in the mother-infant pair at 4 months in the same way as seen in adult conversation. Thus, both the temporal structure of adult dialogue and its affective correlate are prelinguistic.Supported in part by NIMH grant No. 41675.     

Modelling courage: The role of dissent in fostering independence

While dissent has been construed in terms of social support and informational influence, this paper hypothesizes that exposure to dissenting minority views, even when they are wrong, stimulates resistance to conformity and increased adherence to one's own views. In this study, individuals in groups of four judged the colour of a series of blue stimuli and were exposed to one individual who consistently judged the stimuli to be ‘green: inconsistently judged them to be 'green' or expressed no dissent. In a subsequent setting, when judging a series of red slides; subjects were exposed to a majority who repeatedly judged them as 'orange’. Exposure to dissent, whether it was consistent or inconsistent, substantially reduced the level of conformity. In fact, exposure to the consistent dissent led to almost complete independence.     

Long-term memory for pictures under conditions of thematically related foils

Memory for pictures was investigated under conditions of difficult foil discriminability and lengthy retention intervals. The foils preserved the theme of the studied stimulus, but differed in the number and quality of nonessential physical details. In each experiment, subjects viewed colored photographs, black-and-white photographs, elaborated line drawings, and unelaborated line drawings, followed by an old/new (Experiment 1) or a four-alternative forced-choice (Experiment 2) test given either immediately, 1 day, 1 week, or 4 weeks following study; Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 1 but with a 12-week delay. For the old/new procedure, performance was best on colored photographs, with performance differences among the four stimulus types still significant after 4 weeks. For the forced-choice test, performance on colored photographs and unelaborated line drawings was best, with performance differences among stimulus types also still significant after 4 weeks. A confusion analysis indicated that errors were based on physical similarity, even after 12 weeks. These results refute the hypothesis that the memorial representations for pictorial variations converge to a common, thematic code after lengthy delays; instead, non-thematic, analogue information is encoded and preserved for lengthy time periods.     

Intensity and number of alternatives in hue identification: Piéron’s law and choice reaction time

Two experiments investigated the effects of intensity and the number of response alternatives in hue identification. Three questions were addressed. First, what is the relationship between these effects? If intensity and number of alternatives affect different processes in series, these factors would have additive effects on reaction time (RT). Other models predict a multiplicative interaction. These models assume that when a stimulus is presented, evidence accrues over time for each response alternative, and that when the evidence for a particular alternative exceeds its criterion, the response is made. A natural auxiliary assumption is that intensity affects the rate of evidence accrual, while the number of alternatives affects the criterion. The second question addressed is, how does choice RT change as a function of intensity? Piéron used a power function to describe the effect of intensity on simple RT. This paper considers three candidates for intensity’s effect on choice RT: the power, logistic, and Michaelis functions. Each candidate function was tested in an additive model and a multiplicative model. The best account was given by the power function in an additive model. The last question is, does each process produce an output that can be classified as correct or incorrect? Schweickert (1985) proposed that factors that selectively influenced such processes would have additive effects on log percent correct. Instead, an interaction was found. Perhaps the assumption that the process affected by intensity produces a single output is wrong.     

Time urgency and the Type A behavior pattern: Implications for time investment and psychological entrapment

Type A's have been described as more time urgent than Type B's, and research indicates that they underestimate the passage of fixed time intervals. The present study examined the implications of these differences in time perception for decisions where time is a resource that can be invested. Type A's and B's were given an initial stake of $4 and provided the opportunity to invest some or all of that amount for the chance to win an additional $2. Investment occurred as a function of time, with subjects believing they would win the additional $2 if a counter reached a randomly determined number. Each unit increment on the counter also resulted in the loss of 1¢ from the initial stake, thus as the counter progressed, goal attainment became more certain, but expenses also increased. Subjects could stop the counter at any time and keep the remainder of their initial stake or continue to invest until the initial stake was depleted (the counter was programmed to never hit the “jackpot”). Half of the subjects could monitor the counter directly, while the other half could not and had to rely on their subjective time estimates. Results indicated that when objective time passage cues were present, Type A's and B's did not differ in their investment decisions. When subjects had to estimate time passage, however, Type A's invested far more than Type B's. These results indicate that under appropriate conditions, Type A's are more susceptible than Type B's to psychological entrapment.     

Failure of instructional set to affect completeness of taste adaptation

The effect of task instructions on taste adaptation was investigated in two experiments. In the first experiment, three groups of subjects received a 3-min flow of salt solution, over the anterior dorsal tongue surface and periodically gave magnitude estimates of its intensity. Each group had previously received different instructions suggesting the appropriate outcome of the adaptation experiment. Not all subjects showed adaptation, and the instructions had no significant differential effects. In the second experiment, subjects who were practiced in judging pulsatile taste stimuli were instructed to rate the intensity of a continuous salt stimulus as it disappeared, but this produced no increased adaptation. Several possible hypotheses are presented to account for this repeatedly observed failure of many subjects to completely adapt to taste stimuli.     

Infant responses of ocular fixation to moving visual stimuli

Infants of 1, 2, and 3 months of age were presented with two checkerboard patterns, one stationary and the other moving in a horizontal oscillatory motion at one of eight rates. An observer who could see only the infant's head and eyes recorded, for each 30-sec trial, (a) the position of first fixation, (b) position of fixation at the end of each 5-sec interval, and (c) a final forced-choice judgment of the position of the moving stimulus. Results showed reliable differences in ocular behavior as a function of rate of stimulus motion for all three groups of infants.