Standing's power function in long-term memory

Summary Standing (1973) and Murray (1975) have both found that the number of items retrieved from long-term memory is a power function of the number of items presented. The present research reports three further experiments designed to validate this power function: the law was found to be upheld in paired associates recognition (for four levels of meaningfulness); for free recall (with or without retrieval cues at presentation and/or recall); and for incidental and intentional free recall and recognition. Some data of Roberts (1972) were also found to be fitted by a power function. The discussion deals with power functions as compared with linear functions and also with the relationships between slopes and intercepts of power functions.This research was supported by National Research Council of Canada Grant AO-126 to D.J. Murray. W.E. Hockley served as research assistant for Experiments 1 and 2; Experiment 3 was an Honours Thesis project carried out by Carol Pye.     

Families-at-risk and home-based intervention: A therapist training model

Home-based family therapy programs are designed to provide intensive family intervention for at-risk children and adolescents. However, examination of the literature reveals limited publications about training therapists for this difficult task. The purpose of this paper is to describe a therapist training model based upon a family-as-context approach to crisis intervention. Specific units covered during the course include: family-as-a-system, structural family therapy, family crisis intervention, family assessment and simulation. It is concluded that the effective prevention of placement for at-risk children and adolescents requires both a home-based family treatment program and a specific therapist training model for family intervention.John J. Zarski, PhD, is a professor in the marriage and family therapy training program at the University of Akron. Carol A. Pastore is program coordinator for the T.I.E.S. program in Canton, OH. A. Lynette Way and Richard N. Shepler are home-based therapists with T.I.E.S. The authors would like to express their appreciation to Professor John West for his helpful comments on drafts of this article.     

The Changing Self: Using Personal Documents to Study Lives

ABSTRACT In this paper we describe a technique for coding expressions of preoccupation with aspects of the adult self in personal documents and retrospective autobiographical writings In particular we explore the value of this approach by analyzing themes of identity, intimacy, and generativity expressed in Vera Brittain's diary and correspondence, written during her adolescence in World War I, and in her retrospective autobiographical account of that period in her life Analyses aim to use Erikson's theory of personality development to describe her psychological experience at the time and to compare that account with the later one     

Goals: an approach to motivation and achievement

This study tested a framework in which goals are proposed to be central determinants of achievement patterns. Learning goals, in which individuals seek to increase their competence, were predicted to promote challenge-seeking and a mastery-oriented response to failure regardless of perceived ability. Performance goals, in which individuals seek to gain favorable judgments of their competence or avoid negative judgments, were predicted to produce challenge-avoidance and learned helplessness when perceived ability was low and to promote certain forms of risk-avoidance even when perceived ability was high. Manipulations of relative goal value (learning vs. performance) and perceived ability (high vs. low) resulted in the predicted differences on measures of task choice, performance during difficulty, and spontaneous verbalizations during difficulty. Particularly striking was the way in which the performance goal-low perceived ability condition produced the same pattern of strategy deterioration, failure attribution, and negative affect found in naturally occurring learned helplessness. Implications for theories of motivation and achievement are discussed.     

Formal relationships among words and the organization of the mental lexicon

A series of experiments investigated the role of orthography in the organization of the mental lexicon. A pilot experiment had found no effect of formal overlap between words on a repetition priming task at a lag of 56 intervening items. The first two experiments reported here used a lag of zero and varied SOA. Formal priming was found at SOAs of 1,650 milliseconds and less. However, reducing the proportion of related primes and targets in the experiment reduced formal priming. Moreover, it did so not by affecting response times to formally related primes and targets but by reducing response times to comparison trials in which primes and targets were unrelated. This led to a hypothesis that the formal priming we had observed was only apparent and due to strategic inhibition of responses to unrelated prime-target pairs. The final experiment reduced the proportion of responses to related targets further and examined formal priming at lags of 0, 1, 3, and 10. No formal priming was found under these conditions. Across all experiments, where formal priming occurred, it was due to changes in levels of inhibitory priming in comparison conditions. The conclusion is drawn that convincing evidence for an orthographic or phonological organization of the lexicon is not obtainable using priming procedures.This research was supported by NIH Grant HD 01994 to Haskins Laboratories     

The effect of social comparison information on learned helpless and mastery-oriented children in achievement settings

The present study investigates the effect of social comparison information on learned helpless and mastery-oriented children's attributions, behaviour, and affect following a failure experience. Ninety-one fifth grade children experienced failure in the context of high consensus or group failure feedback, low consensus or personal failure feedback or no social comparison feedback. The Jindings point to the robustness of the helpless and mastery response patterns: the behaviour of learned helpless children, as compared to mastery-oriented children, deteriorated following failure regardless of the social comparison feedback they recieved. However, the attributions made by the two groups of children differed. Mastery-oriented children appeared to use social comparison information more accurately in that they appropriately made higher task difficulty ratings when receiving group failure feedback than when receiving personal failure feedback. Learned helpless children were more likely to use a self-derogatory bias and made attributions to their low ability, even when presented with social comparison feedback that was contrary to their bias. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for education and for intervention with learned helpless childrens.     

The role of performance-related similarity in social comparison of abilities: A test of the related attributes hypothesis

The hypothesis that individuals evaluate their abilities by comparison with others who are similar on nonability attributes that are related to performance has been supported in recent experiments. However, since these experiments did not include conditions in which attributes were unrelated to performance, they provide no evidence that it was the relationship of attributes to performance that explains why subjects compared with similar others. In the present experiment, 66 female undergraduates could choose to compare their test performance to the performance of women who were similar or dissimilar to themselves in physical attractiveness and the college they attended. In a 2 × 2 design these attributes were either related or unrelated to test performance. Results showed that only the performance relevance of college attended influenced comparison choices. Subjects compared with similarly attractive women even when attractiveness was unrelated to performance. These results indicate that identification of the conditions in which people do and do not consider the relevance of attributes to performance in selecting comparison others warrants attention.     

THE USE OF CONTINGENT-INTERRUPTED MUSIC IN THE TREATMENT OF DISRUPTIVE BUS-RIDING BEHAVIOR

The present study evaluated the efficacy of using contingent-interrupted music in treating the disruptive bus-riding behavior of an 8-year-old profoundly retarded female. Music was played during each bus ride as long as the subject was sitting appropriately, and interrupted contingent upon each response defined as disruptive bus riding, during an ABCDCDCDA design. A significant reduction in disruptive bus riding occurred with each introduction of contingent-interrupted music. The treatment procedure described in this report was easy to administer, produced rapid treatment gains, and showed virtually no regression during an 8-week follow-up period.     

Effects of taste quality and intensity on oral perception of viscosity

Oral assessments of viscosity were obtained with the method of magnitude estimation. Subjects judged the viscosity of a series of aqueous solutions thickened to one of six viscosity levels (1–2025 centistokes) with a food-grade gum, sodium carboxymethylcellulose. The solutions contained one of several concentrations of caffeine, citric acid, sodium chloride, or sucrose. The presence of taste substances significantly altered the perception of solution viscosity for only the thickest solutions. Increasing concentrations of citric acid and sodium chloride produced progressive decreases in perceived viscosity, and increasing sucrose concentrations produced small increases in perceived viscosity. Caffeine did not affect judgments of solution viscosity. The most likely explanation for these findings is that subjects detected differences in the Newtonian behavior of the thickened solutions, differences that were produced by the addition of taste substances.