Response competition effects insame-different judgments

An account ofsame-different discriminations that is based upon a continuous-flow model of visual information processing (C. W. Eriksen & Schultz, 1979) and response competition and inhibition between the responses by which the subject signifies his judgment is presented. We show that a response signifyingsame will on the average be executed faster due to less priming or incipient activation of the competing response,different. In the experiment, the subjects matched letters on the basis of physical identity. The degree of priming ofdifferent responses on same trials and ofsame responses ondifferent trials was manipulated by an extraneous noise letter placed in the display. Latency for judgments onsame trials increased as the feature overlap of noise and target letters decreased. Latencies were shorter ondifferent trials when the noise letter was dissimilar to either target letter than when the noise letter was the same as one of the targets. These results were consistent with the response-competition interpretation.     

The relationship of estimated comprehensibility to the rate of connected speech

The relationship between subjective estimates of the comprehensibility of connected, freerunning speech and rate of speech was investigated for each of two types of time-compressed speech: pitch-varying speeded speech and pitch-normalized compressed speech. The midpoints of the resulting functions approximated the values obtained by a previously described speechrate tracking method. For equivalent degrees of comprehensibility, rates were higher for compressed speech than for speeded speech, indicating that estimates are sensitive to the intelligibility of speech. Subjective estimates of comprehensibility of time-compressed speech provide a means of assessing the itelligibility of connected speech.     

Effects of sex of subject,sex of stimulus cue,and androgyny level on evaluations in work situations which evoke sex role stereotypes

This study examined the differential evaluation of male and female stimulus cues and the effect of subject's androgyny level on their evaluations. Male and female college students filled out the Bem Sex Role Inventory (1974) and responded to set of five in-basket tasks taken from the Rosen, Jerdee, and Prestwich (1975) study of male managers. Sex of subject, sex of stimulus cue in the in-basket tasks, and androgyny level were varied in a series of 2 X 2 X 3 analyses of variance. On some tasks, male and/or female subjects responded in a sex role stereotyped manner. There were no effects for androgyny level. The discussion focused on circumstances under which stereotyping occurs and implications of the study.     

The Waffle Phenomenon: Negative Evaluations of Those Who Shift Attitudinally1

The past two presidential campaigns have been filed with charges that the Democratic nominee “changed his mind” on various issues. The present research explored the possibility that negative evaluations may be produced by attitude change per se. In the first experiment, subjects responded to a stranger whose attitudes remained stable or who changed his attitudes over a period of two months vs. one year. Individuals who changed their attitudes were generally evaluated more negatively than those whose attitudes remained stable; the amount of time over which the change occurred produced no effect. A second expcriment sought to determine if the direction of change (toward increased or decreased similarity with subjects) influenced evaluations of a stranger. Attitude change which resulted in decreased similarity was rated most negatively. Even when a stranger changed his attitudes in the direction of greater similarity with subjects, however, he was still regarded as less decisive, less reliable, and a worse leader than was an individual with stable attitudes. This negative evaluation of attitude change was labeled the “waffle phenomenon”, and the implications for political candidates were discussed.     

Reactance,Attribution, Equity,and the Help Recipient1

The relevance of social psychological theory for understanding the helping relationship from the recipient's perspective and for designing efficient and humane helping systems is examined. Negative feelings associated with seeking or receiving help may occur when recipients feel threatened with loss of freedom (reactance), interpret their help-seeking as a sign of inadequacy (attribution), or feel uncomfortably indebted (equity). Studies supporting each of these theories, and a program of research which contrasts helper vs. recipient-initiated assistance, are reviewed. Findings suggest that helper-initiated aid leads to higher utilization of services and better recipient feelings. These results are interpreted as supporting attribution in contrast to reactance theory concepts. A field study in a welfare setting extends laboratory findings, and shows that current practice which requires welfare recipients to initiate requests for service may effect savings via lowered requests for service at the expense of recipients who really need help but are inhibited from requesting it.     

Outcome predictors in the behavioral treatment of stuttering

The MMPI and subscales of the Stuttering Severity scale were utilized to predict motivation and success in the behavioral treatment of 32 stutterers. Subjects spent a mean of 10 individual sessions in criterion-oriented learning of fluent speech based on speech-muscle relaxation aided by EMG visual biofeedback. Judged motivation and judged success were strongly related to each other and significantly related to MMPI K and Es scores and negatively to F and Sc. Actual success was negatively related to Sc and Pd, completely unrelated to Es, and (if anything) negatively related to K. Results are consistent with previous studies, and show that global judgements of progress were only minimally related to a measure of actual progress.     

Semantic and surface codes in the memory of deaf children

In three experiments, deaf children in the age range of 6 years, 10 months to 15 years, 5 months were presented with continuous lists of items, and for each item they had to indicate whether it had appeared before on the list. Later items were related to preceding items either in surface form or in meaning or were unrelated. False-recognition errors (i.e., “yes” responses to new items) served as an index of memorial coding. In one experiment, the items presented to the subjects were printed words. The results of this experiment showed a false-recognition effect (i.e., more errors to related words than to unrelated words) for both semantically related words and orthographically similar words. In the other two experiments, the subjects viewed a series of manual signs on videotape. In these experiments, there was a false-recognition effect for signs related semantically and for signs related cherologically (i.e., similar in terms of their manual production). These results establish orthography and cherology as effective memorial codes for deaf children. The finding of a consistently strong semantic effect for young deaf children stands in contrast to findings of weak semantic effects in false-recognition studies with young hearing children. The ascendancy of semantic codes for deaf children was attributed to the absence of competition from the speech code which dominates the linguistic memory of hearing children.     

Signalled free-operant avoidance of shock by pigeons pecking a key

Two pigeons were trained to peck a key under a free-operant avoidance schedule. Then, changes in key color signalled the beginning (safe period) and the end (warning period) of the response-shock interval, with a response required to change the key color. Finally, a change in key color signalled the warning period and either a response or a shock reinstated the safe stimulus. During signalled avoidance, response rate was higher during the warning stimulus than during the safe stimulus. More responding tended to occur in the warning stimulus when it was terminated by either a response or a shock than by only a response. In either procedure, response latency during the warning stimulus was a function of the duration of the warning stimulus. In general, response and shock rate were higher during unsignalled than during signalled avoidance. When the warning stimulus was brief, the results were similar to those of unsignalled avoidance. These results confirm previous findings with pigeons, are in general agreement with data provided by other species in studies of signalled avoidance, and thereby indicate the transituationality of the key-pecking operant.