Acquiring complex partial orderings in comparison with acquiring similar-sized linear orderings

The acquisition of a 14-term partial ordering was compared with the acquisition of a 14-term linear ordering. Learning the partial ordering was found to be more difficult because of two factors: (1) Subjects do not appear to have in their knowledge systems a prototype or rule for representing a long list of comparative relations as a partial ordering structure, and (2) the partial ordering must be presented so that some of the adjacently presented premises do not contain a common element. When these two factors were controlled, the partial ordering was as easy to learn as the linear ordering. It was also found that subjects learning the partial ordering showed no evidence of a serial position learning curve, whereas subjects learning the linear ordering showed some tendency to produce a serial position learning curve.     

Consistency in attitude and behavior of women with a liberated attitude toward the rights and roles of women

The study was designed to determine the extent of consistency of attitude and behavior of women with liberated attitudes toward their rights and roles, and to identify determinants of inconsistency between attitude and behavior. The Attitude Towards Women Scale, Rotter's locus of control scale, the Ego-Strength Scale, the Self-Esteem Scale, the Liberated Behavior Questionnaire, and the Attitude of Family and Friends Questionnaire were administered to 242 women. Women with more liberated attitudes tended to act more liberated. Also, women with liberated attitudes tended to act more liberated if their close friends were liberated and if they themselves were more aware of leaders in the women's liberation movement. The personality measures did not relate to the tendency to act liberated.     

Transfer of persistence to the acquisition of a new behaviour

Two experiments tested whether the degree of effort required for the reinforcement of one behaviour would affect the acquisition of a second behaviour. In the first experiment, rats were placed in a conditioning chamber and: (a) were required to press a lever for food pellets on a fixed ratio schedule, (b) received free presentation of the pellets, or (c) did not receive pellets. Next, all rats were rewarded for a new behaviour, round trips across the length of a runway. As predicted, the fixed-ratio group had the greatest shuttle rate. In the second experiment, two groups were required to press a lever, and the number of presses per pellet was varied. For two other groups not required to press the lever, the amount of food presented per approach to the feeder was varied. The greater required number of lever presses and the lesser number of pellets per approach to the feeder produced the higher subsequent shuttle rates. Two alternative explanations were compared: the degree of accustomed effort per reinforcer becomes a learned component of behaviour, or high effort increases the habituation of frustration-produced disruptive responses.     

Ear asymmetries on a selective attentional task

To ascertain whether there are ear-hemisphere asymmetries of selective attention, signal stimuli (tonal sequences) were presented monaurally with and without complex maskers (music and speech). The right ear-left hemisphere was more disrupted by language maskers; the left ear-right hemisphere was more disrupted by music maskers. These results suggest that there are hemispheric asymmetries of selective attention and that the ear hemisphere that usually processes a class of stimuli has greater difficulty filtering out those stimuli than does the nonspecialized hemisphere.     

Children as witnesses: A comparison of lineup versus showup identification methods

The goal of this study was to compare children's and adults eyewitness identification accuracy when presented with an array of possible suspects (‘lineup’) versus one suspect (‘showup’). Kindergarten children and adults were shown a slide show of a staged theft and subsequently asked whether, of the photo or photos shown them, the perpetrator was present or not. Children were more likely than adults to identify the perpetrator correctly when that suspect was present in the lineup or showup. Children were also more likely than adults to make an incorrect identification of another person when the perpetrator's photo was not present in the lineup or showup. Because false positive identification errors are more difficult to detect with the showup than the lineup, use of the showup may be less appropriate with child witnesses than with adults due to children's greater tendency to make positive identifications.     

The stability and reliability of attentional bias measures in the dot-probe task: Evidence from both traditional mean bias scores and trial-level bias scores

Motivation and Emotion - A new method of calculating attentional bias from the dot-probe task measures fluctuations in bias towards and away from emotional stimuli over time using trial level bias...     

Stranger Harassment and PTSD Symptoms: Roles of Self-Blame,Shame, Fear,Feminine Norms,and Feminism

Sex Roles - Stranger harassment is a prevalent experience for many women but is often trivialized as a social problem (Kearl 2014; Vera-Gray 2016). As a result, there is a lack of knowledge related...