The time course of mood-induced decrements in colour-naming of threat-related words

The current study investigated the relationship between processing biases towards affectively negative words and a film-based mood manipulation procedure. Subjects either watched a film about nuclear war or sat alone for ten minutes and then colournamed sets of negative, positive and neutral words. Testing occurred after one of three possible time intervals. Impaired colour-naming of negative words was found both immediately and five minutes after watching the film. There was no consistent pattern of colour-naming impairments for the positive words. It was found that, when baseline Stroop performance was taken into account, and the semantic priming effect caused by stimulus homogeneity was controlled for, the resulting impairment in the colournaming of negative words was accounted for by state anxiety levels alone, and not the previously found interaction of state and trait anxiety.     

Multilevel covariance structure analysis of sibling substance use and intrafamily conflict

Conventional covariance structure analysis, such as factor analysis, is often applied to data that are obtained in a hierarchical fashion, such as siblings observed within families. A more appropriate specification is demonstrated which explicitly models the within-level and between-level covariance matrices of sibling substance use and intrafamily conflict. Participants were 267 target adolescents (mean age=13.11 years) and 318 siblings (mean age=15.03 years). The level of homogeneity within sibling clusters, and heterogeneity among families, was sufficient to conduct a multilevel covariance structure analysis (MCA). Parental and family-level variables consisting of marital status, socioeconomic status, marital discord, parent use, and modeling of substances were used to explain heterogeneity among families. Marital discord predicted intrafamily conflict, and parent marital status and modeling of substances predicted sibling substance use. Advantages and uses of hierarchical designs and conventional covariance structure software for multilevel data are discussed.     

Stimulus selection by the retarded: list length and response requirement.

Institutionalized retardates learned paired associates of redundant trigrams and double digits (e.g., DLZ/10) and were given a transfer test to measure their stimulus selection. List length (four or six items) and response requirement (recall or recognition) were both manipulated during learning. The finding of most interest was that the retardates became more efficient at cue selection as the amount of information increased. This finding suggests that, at least to some extent, these retarded persons actively tended to choose a stimulus-processing strategy that puts a low load on memory as the overall memory requirements of the paired-associate task were increased.     

Storage and retrieval of low-frequency words*

Retneval of words as a function of their language frequency was studied by having Ss attempt to recogruze the words, recall the words after one presentation, or produce (think of) the words from their initial bigrams. It was found that one reason many low-frequency words could not be thought of (often necessary in anagram and other problem-solving tasks) was because they were not stored by S. as measured by failure to recognize them as words. Those low-frequency words that were stored were more difficult to retrieve than high-frequency words, both in production and in recall. High-frequency words did not exhibit failure of storage. but showed considerable difficulty in retrieval. both in recall and in production.     

Worker traits and worker functions in DOT

Some users of the worker traits ratings and worker function hierarchies in DOT do not seem to be fully aware that the two systems are in large part redundant: the worker traits can be efficiently summarized by the ratings of worker functions (level of complexity of working with data, people and things). This paper, a by-product of an extension of DOT to the Australian Census Classification of Occupations, attempts to validate the worker function hierarchies in terms of the worker traits required by different jobs in DOT. It shows empirically that the variation in worker traits across the 21,741 occupations listed in DOT is closely reflected in the 197 worker function profiles, which have the better research potential.     

Cognitive dissonance as a function of self-esteem and logical inconsistency

An experiment was conducted to test the importance of self-esteem in the arousal of cognitive dissonance. Recently, Aronson (1969) suggested that the reason an attitude-discrepant speech can arouse dissonance is that it is an indecent act committed by an individual who likes to think of himself as a good and decent person. Looking at counterattitudinal behavior as a discrepancy with one's self-concept rather than as a logical discrepancy between behavioral and attitudinal cognitions differs from Festinger and Carlsnuth's (1959) original notion In the experiment reported, subjects volunteered to take a personality inventory and received either neutral, very favorable, or very unfavorable feedback In this way, subjects' level of self-esteem was raised or lowered Following this procedure, subjects were induced to record a speech that was known to be discrepant with their private beliefs. They were offered either a small or a large inducement for their statements. It was predicted that, regardless of their level of self-esteem, subjects would manifest the inverse relationship between incentive magnitude and attitude change predicted by dissonance theory The major analysis of the results, and the concomitant internal analysis, generally supported the prediction With one qualification, the results were held to be consistent with Festinger and Carlsmith's version of dissonance arousal and inconsistent with the self-esteem analysis