Anchoring and relational judgments by young children and retardates

In five experiments using as dimensions brightness, texture, facial happiness, height, and weight, young children (ages 3.4 to 5.3 years) rendered bipolar judgments of stimuli intermediate in value between alternately given extreme anchors. Consistent relational shifts away from the anchors were found for all dimensions judged, and these effects proved virtually independent of children’s ages, the sequential orders of stimulus and anchor presentation, or the provision of overt visual memory props. Evidence of relational judgment within the narrower range of the test stimuli alone was also found. Essentially similar relational judgments were replicated with a sample of severe adult mental retardates.     

Discrimination of spatially confusable letters by young children

A study of the ability of young children to discriminate spatially confusable letters using four different methods of discrimination (matching, copying, naming, and writing to dictation) was carried out. The subjects were 31 English children whose ages ranged from 5 years 6 months to 6 years 10 months. The test material consisted of 10 spatially confusable letters, i.e., letters whose differential features depend upon their spatial orientation: p, q, d, b, u, and n, and to a lesser extent h and y and w and m. The results show that the accuracy of discrimination of spatially confusable letters is dependent upon the method of assessment employed. The highest accuracy is achieved when the method requires copying confusable letters from a given sample, followed by the method that requires matching a given letter with other possible alternatives. Naming the confusable letters and writing them in response to dictation are the most difficult tasks to perform. The results also indicate that there is a significant correlation between individual performances in the matching, naming, and writing to dictation tests; but in the copying task individual performances varied independently of the performances in the other tests. Some theoretical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Content filtering human speech: A simple electronic system

The use of electronic bandpass filtering for content-masking speech samples in studies on expressive aspects of vocal behavior is discussed. A simple electronic filtering system, which can be built easily and which can be adopted readily for a variety of applications, is described.     

Verbal versus manual reaction time in schizophrenic and normal subjects

On the assumption that schizophrenia involves a disturbance in interpersonal relations it is predicted that the verbal reaction time responses of schizophrenic subjects should have disproportionately longer latencies than manual reaction time responses as compared to normal subjects. Using data presented in this Journal by Venables and O'Connor (1959). the prediction is confirmed for patients whose reaction time level is relatively fast, but not in those with relatively slow reaction times. Several possible mechanisms are postulated to account for the results, including differential reinforcement, amount of practice, and complexity of verbal responses, and degree of pathology of the patients.     

ETHNICITY AND ETHNIC IDENTITY: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF GREEK-, ITALIAN-, AND ANGLO-AUSTRALIAN ADOLESCENTS

The present study explores the nature of ethnic identity in a sample of Greek-, Italian-, and Anglo-Australian adolescents. A questionnaire designed to elicit dimensions of ethnic identity was administered to 622 subjects in Years 9 and 11 of high school. For a sub-sample of adolescents, an interview probed for perceived similarities and differences between ethnic groups. The multidimensional nature of ethnic identity was evident from both measures. Similar dimensions emerged for the two ethnic minority groups but perceptions of ethnicity differed. For Greek-Australians, associated with recognition of their cultural separateness was a positive sense of valuing their ethnic origins. For Italian-Australians, cultural separateness was associated with a positive attitude to assimilation.     

Vocal cues to deception: A comparative channel approach

The study investigated the leakage potential of different voice and speech cues using a cue isolation and masking design. Speech samples taken from an earlier experiment were used in which 15 female students of nursing dissimulated negative affect produced by an unpleasant movie or told the truth about positive affect following a pleasant movie. Several groups of judges rated these speech samples in five conditions: (1) forward or clear, (2) electronic filtering, (3) random splicing, (4) backwards, (5) pitch inversion, (6) tone-silence sequences. The results show that vocal cues do indeed carry leakage information and that, as reflected in the differences among the conditions masking different types of cues respectively, voice quality cues may be centrally implicated. In addition, gender differences in decoding ability are discussed.