The hierarchy of consistency: A review and model of longitudinal findings on adult individual differences in intelligence,personality and self-opinion

When viewed in the aggregate, studies of the longitudinal consistency of intelligence, personality traits and self-opinion (self-esteem, life satisfaction etc.) show a hierarchy of consistency. Uncorrected retest coefficients over periods of 6 months to 50 yr are analyzed as the product of period-free reliability (R) and the true stability of the construct (sⁿ, where s is the coefficient of annual stability and n the number of years of the retest interval). The annual stabilities of intelligence, personality traits and self-opinions are estimated as 0.99, 0.98 and 0.94, respectively. While intelligence and personality may be regarded as relatively stable characteristics over the length of the adult lifespan, self-opinion has little stability over periods of more than 10 yr. The hierarchy of consistency should be taken into account in causal models of human development. Although self-opinion is not a longitudinally-stable characteristics, it may still be predicted over long periods of time by higher-order constructs such as personality traits and intelligence.     

Gobal-local precedence in picture processing

Summary Previous investigations of the global precedence hypothesis (Navon, 1977) have utilized compound letter stimuli. In these stimuli there is no predictive relationship between the global and local levels. Pictorial stimuli, however, contain mutually predictable global and local levels. This study investigated the global precedence hypothesis with pictorial stimuli using a Stroop-like interference task similar to that used by Navon. Subjects were required to respond either to the global (e.g., beach or farm) or local (e.g., boat or tractor) level of a scene. The display size and consistency of the global and local levels were varied. Response latencies supported global precedence for small scenes (4°) but local precedence for large scenes (16°). The results are interpreted by a model in which the priority of processing is determined by a critical spatial frequency sampling bandwidth.Portions of this research were presented at the meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Minneapolis, November, 1982. The authors with to express their sincere appreciation to Tom Petros for his assistance in data analysis. Requests for reprints should be addressed to James R. Antes, Department of Psychology, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND 58202.     

The effects of recency and story content on children's moral judgments

Sixteen stories were read to children at ages 4, 7, and 11 years and to college freshmen (n = 24 per age level) to investigate the effects of recency and specific story content on the development of moral reasoning. The stories consisted of either positive or negative intention and either positive or negative consequence in one of four situations: rule breaking, property damage, property damage with peer interaction, or injury to a person. At each age level, half of the subjects heard the stories with the intention first and the consequence second, and half heard them in the reverse order. Analyses confirmed that in general younger children judged on consequence, whereas older children utilized intention, and that on stories containing intentional injury to a person, the younger child took intention into account. Recency effects were evidenced for both the 4- and 7-year-olds. In the 4-year-old group, however, the recency effects failed to override the salience of negative consequence in contexts of positive intention and negative consequence. This suggests that preschool children may respond primarily to the negative aspect of the story, whether intention or consequence.     

Physiological and psychological effects of acute intentional hyperventilation

Research is reviewed which suggests that hyperventilation syndrome is an underdiagnosed disorder for the presentation of many patients experiencing apparent anxiety states. In a test of this hypothesis, 21 normal individuals (9 female) underwent a 2 min period of intentional hyperventilation following a 10 min baseline phase. Hyperventilation was accompanied by increased subjective anxiety and tachycardia, and indications of peripheral vasoconstriction. Following hyperventilation, Ss experienced increased levels of state anxiety and perceived autonomic arousal, as indexed by self-report instruments. These results support the hypothesis that undiagnosed hyperventilatory phenomena may be etiologically implicated in states of pathologic anxiety.     

CO-WORKER SOCIAL SUPPORT IN A WORKSITE SMOKING CONTROL PROGRAM

We evaluated the effects of adding a social support component to a worksite controlled smoking treatment program. Twenty-four participants were randomly assigned to either a controlled smoking or a controlled smoking plus partner support condition. Within a multiple baseline across behaviors design, smokers in both conditions made efforts to achieve sequential 50% reductions in: (a) nicotine content of brand smoked, (b) number of cigarettes smoked per day, and (c) percentage of each cigarette smoked. Self-monitoring records, laboratory analyses of spent cigarette butts, and carbon monoxide determinations indicated that both conditions were effective in producing significant reductions in each of the three target behaviors and in carbon monoxide levels. All participants who quit smoking during the program maintained their abstinence at a 6-month follow-up, and those who did not quit were smoking less at follow-up than they had at pretest on all dependent variables. However, few differences were observed between controlled smoking and controlled smoking plus partner support conditions either during treatment or at the 6-month follow-up. Results are discussed with regard to previous worksite studies, future directions for research on social support, and variables that may have mediated treatment outcome.     

Infant sensitivity to figural coherence in biomechanical motions

Two experiments assessed infant sensitivity to figural coherence in point-light displays moving as if attached to the major joints of a walking person. Experiment 1 tested whether 3- and 5-month-old infants could discriminate between upright and inverted versions of the walker in both moving and static displays. Using an infant-control habituation paradigm, it was found that both ages discriminated the moving but not the static displays. Experiment 2 was designed to clarify whether or not structural invariants were extracted from these displays. The results revealed that (1) moving point-light displays with equivalent motions but different topographic relations were discriminated while (2) static versions were not, and (3) arrays that varied in the amount of motion present in different portions of the display were also not discriminated. These results are interpreted as indicating that young infants are sensitive to figural coherence in displays of biomechanical motion.     

Food anticipation and lever-directed activities in rats

Three experiments are described which elaborate some of the conditions under which rats will contact and manipulate a periodically presented retractable lever. Experiment 1 demonstrated that (i) initial manipulative oral and manual contact with the lever was facilitated if the rat had previous experience of food delivery in the experimental chamber; (ii) persistence in contacting the lever on successive presentations was a function of whether food continued to be presented in the experimental environment; and (iii) food satiation significantly reduced the tendency of the rat to contact the lever even though an expectancy of food had previously been established under conditions of food deprivation. Experiment 2 suggested that the tendency to approach and contact the lever was in part a function of the local moment-to-moment conditional probability of food delivery. Experiment 3 found that the probability of contacting the lever was higher during presentation of an auditory CS signaling a high rate of food delivery than during stimuli signaling no food at all. These results are interpreted as suggesting that the food-signaling aspects of an appetitive CS and that CS's ability to generate signal-directed behaviors are experimentall separable properties.