Affect and retrieval of personal memories

The relationship of pleasantness and intensity of affect to retrieval of reallife experiences was investigated in three experiments. Subjects reported the first specific personal experience that came to mind for a series of prompt words. Latency of report was regarded as a measure of memory accessibility. The first study compared retrieval time for prompts that sampled affects varying in pleasantness and intensity. Experiments II and III assessed the possible contributions of demand characteristics and implicit inferential processes to retrospective judgments of feelings. Judgments of the intensity of feeling engendered when the events occurred were inversely related to report latency. Results support the conclusion that intensity ratings were reliable indices of memory information rather than inferences or reconstructions mediated by report latency. Other characteristics of recollections such as pleasantness, recency, or relative frequency of the specific affects were not correlated with report latency. Two explanations of the findings are considered: an arousal hypothesis and an extent-of-processing hypothesis. The latter provides the most adequate account and relates the present findings to a more general theory of memory processes. The results are also relevant to investigations of mood-dependent retrieval.This is an expanded version of a paper presented in the Symposium on Naturally Occurring Memories, at the meeting of the American Psychological Association, Toronto, August 1978.     

Formal assessment of problem-solving and planning processes in preschool children

While much is known about adult problem-solving, the materials, analyses, and theoretical issues from the adult literature rarely make contact with the tasks typically used to investigate children's thinking. This paper examines the behavior of 4-, 5-, and 6-year-old children attempting to solve a novel variant of the Tower of Hanoi task. Problems varied in difficulty (one to seven moves for the minimum path solution) and in goal type: tower (all objects on one peg) or flat (all pegs occupied). For each problem, children gave verbal statements of their complete solution plan. The Plan Analysis examined performance as a function of goal type and age. Better performance was observed for tower ending problems, and among older children. The Error Analysis revealed that specific error propensities were related to both age and goal type. The Strategic Analysis compared the first move profiles of 6-year-olds to those of several plausible move selection models, and a high degree of correspondence was obtained between specific models and individual children. Young children appear to have rudimentary forms of many of the problem-solving processes previously identified in adults, but they may differ in encoding and representational processes.     

A more powerful method for testing for agreement between a judge and a known standard

We assume that a judge's task is to categorize each ofN subjects into one ofr known classes. The design of primary interest is employed if the judge is presented withs groups, each containingr subjects, such that each group of sizer consists of exactly one subject of each of ther types. The probability distribution for the total number of correct choices is developed and used to test the null hypothesis that the judge is guessing in favor of the alternative that he or she is operating at a better than chance level. The power of the procedure is shown to be superior to two other procedures which appear in the literature.The authors are grateful for the suggestions of the referees and for computer funding provided by the Northeast Regional Data Center at the University of Florida.     

Detection of Fs in a single statement: The role of phonetic recoding

Most college-student readers have difficulty in detecting the letter F in instances of the word OF embedded in a single statement. Throughout a series of five experiments designed to clarify the basis of these detection failures, their unique and robust nature was demonstrated. The detection failures persisted in spite of repeated attempts to detect the letters by subjects who, in separate conditions and experiments, first memorized or copied the statement, or who, for purposes of comparison, also detected the O in OF, the N in ON, or the F in IF, or who read the statement in a number of physical formats, which included lower and upper letter cases, scrambled syntax, unsegmented letter strings, and vertical (list) presentation. Although many of these manipulations significantly improved performance, none produced perfect performance or performance comparable to the detection of F in IF. Several hypotheses, including those of redundancy, unitization, and phonetic recoding, were tested as explanations of the detection failures: The hypothesis that received the strongest support was that of phonetic recoding. This hypothesis focuses upon the atypical pronunciation of F as/v/(as in the word OF), rather than as the more typical/f/. In short, this reading illusion was concluded to be, in large part, a result of the subjects’ scanning their acoustic rather than their visual images of the printed word.     

The diffuse thalamocortical system and Pavlovian/Eysenckian theory: A response to criticism

This article is a response to Paisey's (1983, this issue, pp. 527–534) critique of reports which describe how transmission characteristics of the diffuse thalamocortical system relate to personality, intelligence and cognitive style (Robinson, 1982a, Robinson, 1982b). Detailed consideration of Paisey's objections leads to the conclusion that they fall into three major categories. First, there are ‘straw men’ that derive from a misrepresentation of theoretical arguments. Secondly, there are objections which relate to methodological considerations but lack substance. Finally, there are criticisms that arise from Paisey's mistaken application of statistical methods.     

Characteristics of schizophrenics' and neurotics' relatives

A group of adult first-degree relatives of schizophrenics were compared with a control sample of neurotics' relatives on the EPQ, an earlier version of the Eysenck P scale, and on three specially-constructed scales of ‘psychoticism’ (STA, STB and S), derived from a consideration of the clinical symptomatology of schizophrenia and of the ‘borderline syndromes’. Overall differences, in a predictable direction, were confined to the EPQ P scale where schizophrenics' relatives had significantly higher scores, though further analysis suggested that this was due partly to the raised scores of males and partly to very low P-scores seen in male neurotics' relatives. Scores on the STA, measuring schizophrenic ‘symptoms’, were very low in schizophrenics' relatives, due, it was argued, to extremely defensive responding in that group. Results are also reported for two psychophysiological measures, forearm EMG and skin conductance. Here marked group differences were observed, schizophrenics' relatives having significantly higher mean EMG and significantly lower mean skin conductance. This unusual pattern of response was especially evident in a small subgroup of schizophrenics' relatives whose personality profiles tended to differ in the predictable direction, towards greater ‘psychoticism’. The psychophysiological data were highly consistent with other results from our laboratory demonstrating a ‘dissociation’ between different measures of ‘arousal’ in high-P normal subjects and in psychotic patients and it was concluded that measures based on such a conception of the biological basis of schizophrenia offer considerable promise as high-risk indicators of psychopathology.     

Derivatives of the Self-Directed Search: Potential clinical and evaluative uses

Four derivatives of the Self-Directed Search (SDS), accuracy in estimating one's profile, differentiation of one's six SDS personality types, consistency of the types within one's summary code, and congruence of the summary code with the preferred occupational area, were computed and correlated with other indices of career maturity for 138 community college students. Accuracy in estimating one's SDS profile correlated significantly with five other career maturity indices, but the other derivatives tended not to relate to the other career maturity criteria. The discussion examines the implications of using the Accuracy derivative to identify clients in need of assistance with career development and to unobtrusively evaluate career development interventions, and it suggests ways of increasing the reliability of the derivatives and promising directions for further research.     

Human Aggressive and Escape Responding: Effects of Provocation Frequency

The Psychological Record - The effect of point loss frequency on aggressive and escape responding was investigated in two experiments. Subjects could respond on levers marked “A,”...     

The effects of parental alcoholism on perception of control and imposter phenomenon

The present study examined the differences in internal and external locus of control and imposter phenomenon among persons with alcoholic and non-alcoholic parents. The subjects were 48 college students and 21 members of local Adult Children of Alcoholic groups. The students were further divided into those with alcoholic parents and non-alcoholic parents. The subjects were administered the following three instruments: the Nowicki-Strickland Internal-External Control Scale for Adults (Nowicki & Duke, 1973), the Imposter Test (Chance & O’Toole, 1987), and a family history survey. Analysis of locus of control scores revealed a highly significant (p<.01) difference for externality, with Adult Children being most external and students with non-alcoholic parents least external. Similarly, internality scores differed significantly (p<.0001), with Adult Children being least, and the non-alcoholic group being most internally oriented. Analysis of variance for imposter phenomenon revealed a significant (p<.05) difference among the three groups, with the Adult Children of Alcoholics group having the highest scores and students with non-alcoholic parents having the lowest. These findings are consistent with the idea that parental alcoholism interferes with nurturing and consistent reinforcement, and with the development of personal adaptability.