Need for a Theoretical Justification of Humanistic Commitment Components in Behavior Therapy

The Psychological Record - Although behavior therapies are putatively based on traditional learning paradigms, standard clinical practice with outpatient clients presenting problems of personal...     

Persistence of negative priming: II. Evidence for episodic trace retrieval.

Responses to recently ignored stimuli may be slower or less accurate than to new stimuli. This negative priming effect decays over time when delay is randomized within subjects, but not when delay varies between subjects. In Experiment 1, response-stimulus intervals (RSI) of 500 and 4,000 ms were randomized within subjects in a target localization task. Negative priming of ignored locations diminished with longer delay. However, no significant decay was obtained when RSI and the preceding RSI were equal. Similar results were obtained when RSI and preceding RSI were deliberately confounded by blocking (Experiment 2). Negative priming appears to depend on temporal discriminability of the priming episode.     

Confirmatory factor analysis and reliability of the Mental Health Inventory for Australian adolescents

Ostroff, Woolverton, Berry, and Lesko in 1996 examined the adolescent subsample of Veit and Ware's 1983 normative data for the Mental Health Inventory and recommended a two-factor rather than the original five-factor model for the assessment of adolescents' mental health. Analysis of a 30-item version with a new independent sample of 878 adolescents in another English-speaking country supported a two-factor model of psychological well-being and distress for boys and girls. Internal consistency was > .9, and scores were stable (approximately .7) over a 10-wk. period. Boys reported slightly better mental health than girls, as in the original American research.     

Avoidance conditioning as a function of appetitive stimulus pretraining: Response and stimulus transfer effects

Pretrained appetitive discriminative stimuli were used as warning signals in subsequent avoidance learning. In Expt 1 identical responses were required in pretraining and in avoidance learning. An appetitive S+ facilitated avoidance learning in rats in comparison to S? or a stimulus previously uncorrelated with food. In Expt 2, the type of response in pretraining and in avoidance learning was varied. Groups with homogeneous responses in the two situations replicated Expt 1 results, whereas groups with different responses in pretraining and avoidance learning failed to show an advantage when S+ served as warning; in the heterogeneous response groups, S? was as effective as S+. Inhibitory factors in the heterogeneous groups were discussed as an explanation for these results.     

Dependent processing in dichotic listening as a function of word meaning attributes

Single dichotic word pairs were presented for immediate identification. Recognition probability was greater and response latencies shorter for high- than for low-frequency words. Both recognition measures were also affected by the frequency of the word accompanying the target word, performance being facilitated by a high-frequency partner and sometimes impaired by a low-frequency partner. Associative meaningfulness had similar, though less reliable, effects whereas the effects of word concreteness-abstractness were inconsistent. Recognition accuracy was generally superior for right-ear inputs, but recognition latency did not show consistent ear effects. Similar results were obtained under both unrestricted (Experiment 1) and controlled (Experiment 2) ear order of report instructions. The findings are consistent with a limited capacity interpretation of secondary processing in word perception.     

Disruptive effects of prior information on tachistoscopic recognition

Smith, Haviland, Reder, Brownell, and Adams (1976) found tachistoscopic letter recognition to be disrupted by advance information about possible letter alternatives. An association of “before-disruption” with a bias to respond “same” in same-different judgment led Smith et al. to conclude that incidental mask features corresponding to a precued letter were erroneously incorporated into the target letter decision. Experiments 1 and 2 in the present study failed to replicate the before-disruption effect under conditions similar to those of Smith et al., although precuing produced a strong bias to respond “same.” Similarity between “same” and “different” alternatives was manipulated in Experiment 3 by selecting letter pairs differing in one critical feature (P-R, O-Q, C-G, F-E) for one group of subjects, and re-pairing the same letters (P-G, O-E, C-R, F-Q) for another group. Contrary to Smith et el., precuing interacted significantly with pair similarity, such that before-disruption occurred only with similar alternatives. In contrast, precuing produced equivalent “same-bias” in both groups. The dependence of before-disruption on pair similarity was extended to two-alternative forced-choice recognition in Experiment 4. Together with inconsistencies in the Smith et al. data and more detailed analysis of present recognition errors, the results suggest (1) the before-disruption and same-bias effects of precuing are mediated by separate mechanisms, and (2) before-disruption reflects loss of target letter information rather than direct incorporation of extraneous mask features.     

The Role of Personal Spirituality and Religious Social Activity on the Life Satisfaction of Older Widowed Women

We examined the impact of personal spiritualityand religious social activity on the life satisfactionof older widowed women. Fifty-one White, femaleretirement community residents completed measures of personal spirituality, religious socialactivities, and life satisfaction. Ten residents werealso interviewed about their religious beliefs andactivities. Although the interviews revealed bothpersonal spirituality and religious social activity tobe central to the life satisfaction of these women,quantitative results suggested only involvement withreligious social activities was related to lifesatisfaction. Interviews revealed thatchurch activitiesprovided the women a loving family and a supportivecommunity. Religious activities helped these older womenovercome hardships, gave them a chance to sustainfriendships, and provided a vehicle through which they couldcontribute to their community.     

Does “inhibition of return” occur in discrimination tasks?

When attention is drawn to a location and then withdrawn, responding to a stimulus at that location may be slower than to one at a new location. This “inhibition of return” (IOR) has not been reliably demonstrated in tasks that require discrimination of targets from nontargets. The present experiments replicated IOR in detection and localization tasks only when target/nontarget discrimination was not also required. When discrimination was required, a consistent samelocation advantage occurred for repeated targets. Changed targets may, however, induce a bias toward opposite responses. The results cast doubt on IOR as a general attentional phenomenon.     

A translation-based generation effect in bilingual recall and recognition

Two experiments were performed with incidental study procedures in which generation effects were observed for relatively balanced French-English bilingual subjects on measures of both free recall and recognition. Experiment 1 used a within-subject design, and Experiment 2 used a between-subject design. In both experiments, reading translations and reading same-language repetitions generally resulted in similar amounts of retention. Experiment 2 and Experiment 3 also showed that the generation effect was abolished under intentional study procedures because of an enhancement of reading-based retention. The results suggested that previous failures to obtain a translation-based generation effect may have been due to the use of intentional study procedures. The pattern of effects was explained in terms of a single-code model of bilingual linguistic representation and an individual-item processing intetpretation of the generation effect.