Development of cultural strategies of attention in North American and Japanese children

Recent studies suggest that North American adults exhibit a focused strategy of attention that emphasizes focal information about objects, whereas Japanese adults exhibit a divided strategy of attention that emphasizes contextual information about objects. The current study investigated whether 4- and 5-, 6- to 8-, and 9- to 13-year-old North American and Japanese children exhibit these divergent attention strategies. Two experiments suggest that those older than 6 years of age exhibit measurable cultural differences in attention, whereas 4- to 6-year-olds do not. We suggest that sociocognitive development and socialization experiences that occur around 5 to 7 years of age may foster the development of cultural strategies of attention.     

The Pictorial Fire Stroop: A Measure of Processing Bias for Fire-Related Stimuli

Fire interest is a risk factor for firesetting. This study tested whether a fire-specific emotional Stroop task can effectively measure an information-processing bias for fire-related stimuli. Clinic-referred and nonreferred adolescents (aged 13–16 years) completed a pictorial “Fire Stroop,” as well as a self-report fire interest questionnaire and several control tasks. Results showed (a) comparatively greater fire-specific attentional bias among referred adolescent firesetters, (b) a negative relationship between Fire Stroop attentional bias and self-reported fire interest, and (c) positive correspondence between Fire Stroop attentional bias and self-reported firesetting frequency. These findings suggest that instruments that measure an automatic bias for fire-specific stimuli may usefully supplement self-report measures in the assessment and understanding of firesetting behavior.     

Lexical complexity and fixation times in reading: Effects of word frequency,verb complexity,and lexical ambiguity

Two experiments investigated whether lexical complexity increases a word’s processing time. Subjects read sentences, each containing a target word, while their eye movements were monitored. In experiment 1, mean fixation time on infrequent words was longer than on their more frequent controls, as was the first fixation after the Infrequent Target. Fixation Times on Causative, factive, and negative verbs and ambiguous nouns were no longer than on their controls. Further analyses on the ambiguous nouns, however, suggested that the likelihood of their various meanings affected fixation time. This factor was investigated in experiment 2. subjects spent a longer time fixating ambiguous words with two equally likely meanings than fixating ambiguous words with one highly likely meaning. The results suggest that verb complexity does not affect lexical access time, and that word frequency And the presence of two highly likely meanings may affect lexical access and/or postaccess integration.     

Absolute and relative perceptual codes in young children

Three experiments were conducted to ascertain whether young children's perceptual codes, as evidenced by choice reaction times, were related to either the absolute difference or the ratio between stimuli. In Experiments 1 and 2, children were shown pairs of line lengths and were asked to choose either the longer or shorter line within each pair. In Experiment 3, children chose which of two birds on a map was closer to themselves or to the experimenter. In all three experiments, children's reaction times were related to both the absolute differences and ratios between pairs of stimuli. The findings suggest that perceptual judgments in young children may be based on both absolute and relational codes.     

Comparison of the performances of a fluent and a nonfluent aphasic on a pantomimic referential task

The pantomimic performances of a typical Broca's (nonfluent) and Wernicke's (fluent) aphasic were compared with each other and with four normal control subjects on a simple task of nonverbal referential communication. Both aphasic subjects demonstrated only about 50% accuracy in their pantomimic communication. Also, measures were obtained of the motoric fluency of the pantomimes of all subjects and comparisons were made between the fluent and nonfluent aphasics. These measures demonstrated distinct differences in the fluency patterns of the pantomimes of the two aphasic subjects similar to the differences in speech fluency which distinguish and characterize these two types of aphasia; that is, the fluent aphasic pantomimed fluently and like the control subjects and the nonfluent aphasic pantomimed nonfluently. The quantitative and qualitative similarities in the fluency patterns of the speech and the pantomimic behaviors of the aphasic subjects are discussed in terms of their implications for a definition of aphasia.     

Ego strength and confidence thresholds in two methods of paired-associate learning.

Two experiments contrasted the effects of high and low wgo strength (as measured by Cattell's Sixteen Personality Factor Questionaire) on confidence thresholds (FG scores) under the anticipation and recall methods. High ego strength resulted in larger FG scores under the anticipation method- weakly so in Experiment I but significantly so in Experiment II, where subjects were selected from greater extremes of ego strength. This inferiority extended to trails to criterion and a measure of the associative-learning stage as well. Tasks for extending the generality of the obtained relationship of ego strength and confidence thresholds in paired-associate learning are suggested.     

An investigation of body part as object (BPO) responses in normal and brain-damaged adults

A test of simple pantomime was administered to three groups of adults and comparisons were made across groups of the incidence of subjects who exhibited body part as object (BPO) responses and of the mean frequency of occurrence of BPO in each group. The three groups were left-hemisphere-damaged aphasics (N = 28), right-hemisphere-damaged (N = 24), and normal controls (N = 28). The results indicated no significant differences among groups on the BPO measures. Also, to test the strength of association between the frequency of occurrence of BPO and measures of limb apraxia and severity of aphasia for the left-hemisphere-damaged aphasic group, correlation coefficients were obtained. The correlations were low and nonsignificant. The results of this investigation do not support the common clinical assumption that the occurrence of BPO during the performance of simple pantomimes is pathognomic for left-hemisphere pathology or associated with limb apraxia.     

Initial response to rape: The impact of factors within the rape situation

The relationship between specific aspects of the rape situation and immediate post-rape measures of depression, fear, anxiety, and social and interpersonal functioning in 50 recent victims of sexual assault was examined. The data failed to reveal any significant relationships between rape situation variables (e.g., stranger vs. known assailant, weapon vs. no weapon) and the nature or severity of the victims' psychological response. It is emphasized that this negative finding contradicts previous and current clinical lore, and has a number of implications for the assessment and treatment of rape victims.This research was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (MH#29692) to the first two authors.