Factor analytic examination of Kline's scales for psychoanalytic concepts

Seventeen personality scales were administered to 133 subjects to investigate the relation of three new psychoanalytically-derived scales to the personality scales of Howarth and Eysenck, respectively. A previous study (Howarth, 1980a) suggested that Kline's oral optimism scale related to Eysenck's extraversion scale, oral pessimism to neuroticism, and Kline's anal syndrome scale to Eysenck's psychoticism scale. In order to investigate this further Eysenck's scales were included as well as ten scales of Howarth's and Kline's three scales. The factors found among the 17 variables were: I. Anxiety; II. Psychoticism; III. Sociability; IV. Anality; V. Lie scale; VI. Conscience.The present study found that the anal scale was relatively independent of all of Eysenck's ‘superfactor’ scales and did not verify the possibility that this anal scale might relate to psychoticism (as measured by Eysenck). However, the present study verified the previously found relation between oral optimism and extraversion and, of the three Kline scales, oral pessimism related more to psychoticism than the anal syndrome scale.     

An automated eye movement laboratory for on-line electrooculography

This paper describes an automated eye movement laboratory that uses electrooculography (EOG) to study people’s eye movements while they read. An on-line minicomputer processes bioelectric potentials that correspond to saccadic eye movements. Horizontal saccades larger than 1.5 deg of visual angle are detected and analyzed in real-time as they occur. The laboratory is designed for prolonged yet unobtrusive observation of human eye movements during sustained reading periods of minutes or hours. All important functions regarding data collection and data reduction are performed automatically, according to simple procedures that can be applied uniformly and without bias to nearly all subjects that we study. Results from three experiments are cited in order to quantify the performance of the laboratory with respect to four criteria: saccade detection accuracy, measurement accuracy, sensitivity, and the uniformity of these measures over different subjects.     

TASK-RELEVANT CONTROL IN ORGANIZATIONS1

Studies of organizational power using questionnaire measures of perceived control have usually asked respondents, “How much influence do (various groups in the hierarchy) have on what goes on in your organization?” The present study measured such general control, plus control over specific task-relevant responsibilities. Data were obtained from 526 individuals at four hierarchical levels in 20 regional offices of an insurance company. Predicted relationships between total general control and task-relevant control and an independent measure of effectiveness were only partially supported. The general manager's control was more important than expected. However, measuring task-relevant control could be a useful management tool, and could help future research explicate relationships between control and effectiveness.     

Coactor's behavior and imitative aggression

After being exposed to either an aggressive or a nonaggressive filmed model, four- and five-year-old boys were tested for imitation while either alone or with a confederate who had also seen the film. The confederate's behavior was either inactive, the same as that in the film, the same as that in the film the child had not seen, novel but of the same category (aggressive or nonaggressive) as that in the film seen, or novel but in the category of the film not seen. These conditions conformed to the dimensions of a 2 × 6 factoral design. According to prediction, the imitation of subjects exposed to the aggressive model was greatest when the confederate's behavior was similar to the model's. No difference in imitation was produced by the confederate's actions if the boy had watched the nonaggressive model. The results were interpreted within the context of social comparison theory.This project was facilitated by the senior author's Margaret Bosshardt Pace and Paul David Pace Research Fellowship.     

Children's attention to stimulus components with variation in relative salience of components and degree of stimulus integration

A total of 400 children at ages 5, 9, and 12 years were given a component selection task with stimuli differing in color and shape. Relative salience of these two stimulus components was manipulated across subjects in two ways: the standard shapes and colors from previous studies were compared with standard shapes in fluorescent colors, and the latter materials were compared with nonsense shapes in fluorescent colors. While fluorescence of color had little effect, the replacement of standard shapes with nonsense figures caused attention to be redirected from shape to color as the primary cue for learning. This effect was more pronounced at age 9 than at age 5. Apparently there is a greater tendency for older than for younger children to withdraw attention from a normally dominant component such as shape, when it is advantageous to adopt another feature such as color as the primary functional cue. An additional variable was integration of components (color within shape vs color as background for shape). Integration produced generally greater attention to color but did not affect the general pattern of salience effects.     

Influence of linguistic complexity,rate of presentation,and interphrase pause time on auditory-verbal comprehension of adult aphasic patients

Among the variables affecting comprehension of linguistic stimuli by aphasic subjects are syntactic complexity and processing time. Comprehension performance of 15 aphasic adults was studied while altering the rate of speech presentation and varying the pause time between the major phrases within sentences of increasing grammatical complexity.Simple Active Affirmative Declarative Sentences, Negative, and Passive sentences were presented (1) at the rate of 150 words per minute (wpm) with 1-sec interphrase pause time (IPT); (2) 150 wpm with no pauses; (3) 120 wpm with 1-sec IPT; (4) 120 wpm with no pauses added.Performance was seen to vary with increasing syntactical complexity and as a function of processing time. Greater comprehension was seen with active affirmative than negative; greater with passive affirmative than with active negative. Clinical implications are discussed. Subjects demonstrated greater comprehension when sentences were presented at slower than normal rate; addition of interphrase pause time intervals aided comprehension. Combining slower rate of presentation and IPT intervals provided greatest increase in auditory processing time and showed concomitant increase in comprehension performance.