Job satisfaction related to tested congruence and differentiation

Tested personality-environment congruence and differentiation, singly and in combination, as measured by the Vocational Preference Inventory (J. L. Holland, Palo Alto, California, Consulting Psychologists Press, 1977b), were predictive of reported job satisfaction for teachers employed in five subject matter areas. Time-related variables and sex were not significantly related to the job satisfaction measure used in the study.     

Stimulus factors and listening strategies in auditory memory: An experimental demonstration

Three experiments are reported in which digits spoken at different rates were recalled and monitored. In Experiment I, digits to be recalled were embedded in varying levels of noise. In Experiment II noise was presented only during the inter-digit intervals, either to the same or to the opposite ear as the digits. In Experiment III Ss monitored these sequences for a specified digit and reported its successor. Stimulus rate and signal-to-noise ratio affected perceptual processing time, as evidenced by the frequency and relative proportion of item and order errors. These stimulus factors induce listening strategies that influence the shape of the serial position curve and that persist after stimulus conditions are changed. The data are consistent with a two-stage processing model for the temporal course of speech perception and the nature of listening strategies.     

Syntax model games and language in early education

Some procedures for developing language skills in young children are set forth. These procedures, syntax model games, were developed with consideration for children's language development and their developmental styles, and a consideration for transformational-generative grammar. Through the syntax model games, participants inductively acquire language patterns through functional use in a playful setting. A purpose of the activities was to support more efficient and flexible use of language. In addition to discussing induction as a way of knowing language, this article deals with the contrast of understanding and using language, the relation of metalinguistic awareness, some processes of syntactic development, relevant aspects of transformational-generative grammar, and a detailing of some syntax model games that were used with several hundred children between 5 and 9 years of age.Some of the concepts discussed in this article are expanded further by the author inEarly Childhood Education: A Perceptual Models Curriculum to be published by John Wiley and Sons in 1976.     

Integration of information during problem solving due to a meaningful context of learning

Ninety-seven subjects memorized nine associations among six interlocking elements that were presented as links among nonsense letters, connections among spies with word code names (after Hayes, 1966), or airline flights among major US cities. On tests of problem solving and true-false judgments, the letters group and the words group performed nearly identically; however, relative to these two groups, the cities group performed worse or about the same on short recall problems and much better on longer problems requiring chunking of learned information. The conditions and effects of a meaningful learning context for problem solving were discussed.     

The impact of computers on cognitive psychology

Computer developments and their applications in cognitive psychology are reviewed. Examples from recent studies illustrate the ways that computers are used for different research purposes: stimulus generation, on-line interactive experimental control, response collection, data analysis, and theory building. A quantitative analysis of federal funding for computer-based and noncomputer research compares costs over the past 9 years for the areas of perception, memory, learning, and thinking. A tabulation of journal articles relevant to computer-based cognitive research shows the distribution of articles over various categories of hardware and software development. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of using computers in cognitive research are evaluated.     

Private self-consciousness, canned laughter, and responses to humorous stimuli

Sefl-focused attention is hypothesized to (a) intensify emotional responses; (b) diminish susceptibility to suggestion; and (c) increase the consistency of self-report and behavior. These hypotheses were tested by having 82 undergraduates varying in private self-consciousness (PrSC) listen to humorous stimuli presented either with (laugh track group) or without (no laugh track group) canned laughter. Subjects' funniness ratings and overt laughter served as dependent measures. Regression analyses revealed that PrSC and funniness ratings were negatively correlated in the laugh track group, but uncorrelated in the no laugh track group. In contrast, PrSC and overt laughter were positively correlated in both groups. The association between funniness and laughter appeared stronger in high than in low PrSC subjects. Interpreted in light of research indicating that funniness ratings represent affect-free evaluations of humor stimuli, whereas laughter represents amusement, these results suggest that self-focus (a) intensified subjects' amusement; (b) decreased the extent to which their evaluations of the stimuli were biased by canned laughter; and (c) increased the consistency between their (self-reported) cognitive and (overt behavioral) affective responses (although this finding was equivocal).     

Computer use by the visually impaired

Several recent developments have made computers accessible to the blind and partially sighted: hard-copy (paper) and softcopy (raised-pin) braille output, magnified high-resolution characters, and synthetic speech. We report survey data on these users’ computer education, tasks, and goals; their hardware uses and preferences, particularly for special-purpose I/O devices; and seven classes of human-factors problems that affect the use of these I/O devices by the visually impaired.     

Contextual effects in a metaphor verification task

The verbal transformation effect, an auditory illusion in which physically invariant repetitive verbal input undergoes perceptual transformation, has traditionally been interpreted as a speech-specific phenomenon. Experiment 1 showed that the effect is not limited to speech, but occurs in non-speech categories such as music and other complex everyday sounds, with transformations being comparable in nature and number to those in speech. Experiment 2 provided evidence for an alternative, broader-based view of the phenomenon, involving spreading activation through a multidimensional associative network of mental representations, by demonstrating that creating or activating pre-existing links between a single complex non-verbal stimulus and other representations by priming led to an increase in transformations.