Memory processes in the identification of pitch

A study in pitch identification with three interstimulus intervals is reported. Ss received a pretest, three drills, and a posttest. Results include: (a) superior performance on stimuli requiring only a simple discrimination judgment, (b) inferior performance at longer interstimulus intervals, (c) a greater tendency to repeat correct rather than incorrect responses to adjacent tones at the same pitch level, and (d) a modest, but reliable, improvement in pitch identification accuracy from the pre- to the posttest. Relevance of the results for an interpretation of pitch identification as dependent on memory processes is discussed.     

Kommunikationsstruktur und Gruppenleistung

Zusammenfassung Vierergruppen von Vpn arbeiteten in Kommunikationsnetzen, in denen es infolge des Fehlens einer (direkten oder indirekten) Wechselseitigkeit gewisser Verbindungen einigen Vpn — nämlich denjenigen, die ganz bestimmte (ungünstige) Positionen innerhalb des Netzes einnahmen — verwehrt war, die Lösung eines Problems durch Austausch von Informationen zu finden. Den Vpn-Gruppen wurde diese Eigenschaft der Kommunikationssysteme bei Beginn der Versuche nicht mitgeteilt. In einer derartigen Lage suchen jene Vpn den Grund für den unbefriedigenden Informationsaustausch (zumindest zunächst) nicht in der Struktur des Kommunikationsnetzes, sondern unterstellen den anderen Gruppenmitgliedern mangelnde Loyalität oder/und mangelndes Verständnis. Die Folge sind starke affektive Spannungen, die zur Verschlechterung der Kooperation und zur Verringerung der Gruppenleistung führen. Die kognitive Seite des Erlebens der Vpn wurde u. a. mit Hilfe der Begriffe phänomenale Variabilität und phänomenale Konstanz näher analysiert.     

How a Cockpit Remembers Its Speeds

Cognitive science normally takes the individual agent as its unit of analysis. In many human endeavors, however, the outcomes of interest are not determined entirely by the information processing properties of individuals. Nor can they be inferred from the properties of the individual agents, alone, no matter how detailed the knowledge of the properties of those individuals may be. In commercial aviation, for example, the successful completion of a flight is produced by a system that typically includes two or more pilots interacting with each other and with a suite of technological devices. This article presents a theoretical framework that takes a distributed, socio-technical system rather than an individual mind as its primary unit of analysis. This framework is explicitly cognitive in that it is concerned with how information is represented and how representations are transformed and propagated in the performance of tasks. An analysis of a memory task in the cockpit of a commercial airliner shows how the cognitive properties of such distributed systems can differ radically from the cognitive properties of the individuals who inhabit them.     

Is the Counselor a Woman?

The 16 PF was administered to 75 male and 43 female high school counselors to determine whether they manifested the femininity (loving receptivity) and the masculinity (potency) that have been said to be important to the counseling role. The men differed significantly from male norms in the feminine direction on warmth, tender-mindedness, and trust. They deviated significantly in the direction of potency on brightness, ego strength, adequacy, and tranquility, but away from potency on caution and group-dependency. The women differed significantly from female norms in the feminine direction only on trust, but in the masculine direction on assertiveness, venturesomeness, and practicality. They deviated significantly in the direction of personal strength on brightness, ego strength, superego strength, adequacy, experimentation, and tranquility.     

Coping and anxiety in women recalled for additional diagnostic procedures following an abnormal screening mammogram.

This study characterized women's concurrent and subsequent levels of emotional distress associated with a questionable mammogram screening and relationships between women's coping and psychosocial adjustment. State anxiety was assessed in 98 women 1 day after receiving a mammogram screening (Time 1), after notification of a questionable screening result that necessitated additional testing (Time 2), and after being informed of their breast-cancer-free status (Time 3). Key findings include (a) women reported a significant increase in anxiety following notification of the need to return for follow-up testing; (b) significant and positive associations were found between anxiety and behavioral approach, behavioral avoidance, cognitive approach, and cognitive avoidance coping in cross-sectional analyses; and (c) cognitive avoidance coping was a strong predictor of final levels of state anxiety in women. Findings suggest that cognitive avoidance coping plays an important role in reducing anxiety in women recalled to clarify an initially ambiguous screening procedure.