Neuroticism and intensity of religious attitudes among clergy in England.

Ninety-two male and 20 female clergy completed the short-form Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Eysenck, Eysenck, & Barrett, 1985) and the Francis Scale of Attitude Towards Christianity (Francis & Stubbs, 1987). The findings support Eysenck's central theory regarding an inverse relationship between psychoticism scores and religious attitudes, and they confirm the view that neuroticism scores are also implicated in predicting the intensity of religious attitudes among the religiously committed.     

Top-down design for a system to control operant choice experiments

STATIONS, a FORTRAN program to control operant choice experiments, was developed based on the principles of top-down design and structured programming. As a consequence, the program consists of modules organized in a hierarchical fashion. Separate modules deal with different types of reinforcement schedules, such as variable ratio (VR) and variable interval (VI). These modules produce specific schedules with different parameters by using sequences of values read in at ran time and then randomly sampled. This form of organization permits modifications to be made via changes confined to one module without global repercussions. The clarity of structure that results from the application of top-down design and structured programming should enable future users to more easily adapt this package to suit their specific needs.     

The relation between visual imagery mediators and recall

Three hypotheses are discussed as explanations for the result that pairs of concrete nouns are more easily remembered than are pairs of abstract nouns: the imagery hypothesis, the familiarity hypothesis, and the concreteness hypothesis. Two experiments are reported in which the degree of visual imagery associated with the components of paired associate items was not indicative of the degree of visual imagery experienced during their learning or with the accuracy with which they were recalled. It was found that pairs of related abstract nouns were rated higher in imagery and familiarity than were pairs of unrelated concrete nouns, but recall of the higher imagery pairs was poorer. The concreteness hypothesis is discussed as the best explanation for the results. The concreteness hypothesis proposes that people learn to associate the labels of concrete objects by using their real-world knowledge of the potential relations between categories of objects. Dual coding theory and schema theory are also discussed as explanations for mediation learning, and the issue of visual imagery as an epiphenomenon is addressed.     

Attitudes Toward Industrial Pollution, Strategies for Protecting the Environment, and Environmental-Economic Trade-offs

Attitudes toward industrial pollution, environmental-economic trade-offs, and endorsement of various strategies and activities to protect the environment were examined in a community sample. Environmental attitudes were measured using seven distinct factors organized around four cognitive themes: commercialist-expansionist-emphasizing industrial concerns even at the expense of environmental considerations; reformist-emphasizing the need and possibility of environmental quality; radical-emphasizing pessimism over the possibility of environmental quality, given the present economic and policital system; and finally, denial that the community has been harmed by pollution. Examination of the relationship between pollution attitudes and endorsement of the various proenvironmental activities yielded a pattern consistent with a cognitive, syllogistic model of the organization of attitudes. Those emphasizing a commercialist position neither favored nor regarded the various environmental activities as effective. Those who emphasized reform endorsed the various activities as both favorable and effective. Denial was associated with opposition to the various activities. Finally, those taking a radical position favored the various strategies but were not convinced of their efficacy.     

A large-scale expandable I/O port interface for the TRS-80 microcomputer

Described is a large-scale expandable input/output port interface for the Tandy Corporation TRS-80 microcomputer.     

Cognitive integration of language and memory in bilinguals: semantic representation

Understanding cognitive research on the integration of 2 languages in bilingual memory is difficult because of the different terminology, methodology, analysis, and interpretation strategies that scholars with different backgrounds bring to the research. These studies can be usefully categorized on 2 dimensions: memory for verbal experience versus linguistic knowledge, and systemwise versus pairwise issues. Experimental findings in this area converge on the conclusion that at the word meaning/conceptual level, both episodic and linguistic memory can be characterized as shared at the systems level and at least partly shared at the pairwise translation-equivalent level. Interpretation problems that stem from weak hypothesis testing structure and from covert translation can be minimized by using appropriate design and analysis techniques.     

Motion parallel to line orientation: disambiguation of motion percepts

Four experiments demonstrate that lines indicating path of movement can generate rotational percepts in a multistable motion display that usually produces only horizontal or vertical motion percepts. The properties of the path-of-movement lines are predicted by a neural-network theory of visual perception. Experimental results validate the theory's predictions by demonstrating that movement of the display elements seems to follow an increasing luminance gradient in lines but not bars, and that illusory contours have similar effects. Experimental results also demonstrate that, in a choice between movement along lines drawn parallel or orthogonal to possible motion paths, observers more often see movement along the lines parallel to the motion path. These results suggest modifications to current computational and neurophysiological theories of motion perception.     

Ideals,oughts, and self-regulation: Are there qualitatively distinct self-guides?

Self-regulation, the ability to regulate one's emotions and behavior with respect to important goals, is an important function. While a number of different self-regulatory models exist, self-discrepancy theory (SDT: Higgins, 1987, 1989a, 1989b) is the only model which proposes that there are distinct self-guides, the ideal and the ought self. Discrepancies or congruencies between the actual self and each type of self-guide is proposed to result in unique emotional and behavioral consequences. Some recent research findings have failed to demonstrate these unique consequences, causing the proposed distinction between the self-guides to be questioned in the literature. This paper suggests that this conclusion is based on the assumption that these effects must occur in every case. We argue that SDT does not propose that unique relationships between discrepancies and either emotions or behavior always occur; rather, it specifies moderators of these relationships. A review of recent research examining the effects of these moderators highlights not only that, indeed, such moderating effects are found, but also in some cases the moderating effect is different for relationships between emotions and the two types of discrepancies. It is concluded that these two different types of evidence, namely, the existence of moderator variables and their differential effects on ideal and ought self-regulation, provide compelling support for the distinct nature of the ideal and the ought self-guides.     

Toward the equivalence of the HIT and HIT 25 in community-residing older adults

In a study by the first author wherein 102 community-residing older adults were administered the Holtzman Inkblot Technique (HIT), data collected were analyzed regarding the equivalence of the HIT and the HIT 25. Although alpha coefficients and split-half correlations were low when single-response-per-card data were analyzed, corrected Spearman-Brown coefficients were more supportive of the use of the HIT 25 with older adults. These data suggest that although a shortened form of the HIT may be useful with aged persons, research exploring the substantive bases for creating a shortened version of the HIT is nevertheless necessary.     

A closer look at the complex structure of gender stereotypes

In the present paper an experimental design is introduced for the analysis of the conceptual categories used by subjects when stereotyping males and females. Subjects were asked to name as many familiar types of women and men as they could think of, and describe them in terms of various characteristic properties (e.g., traits, attitudes, interests, skills, and demographic features). The most frequently mentioned types were then sorted by a second sample according to their perceived similarity. Finally, a third group of subjects categorized the initial set of properties in terms of their relevance to either male or female types. Clustering and scaling analyses yielded a clear cut picture of the cognitive ordering principles underlying gender stereotypes. Distinct property clusters were found for the female and male types, underlining the important role of gender stereotypes in the knowledge base of the subjects.The authors would like to thank Kay Deaux for helpful comments on an earlier draft.