Children's detection and awareness of textual anomaly

Children of 8 and 11 years were assessed in two experiments for their sensitivity to textual anomaly. In Experiment 1, subjects read stories containing two target lines, one appropriate and the other anomalous in relation to previously given information. Both age groups read the anomalous line more slowly than the appropriate line, but in a subsequent test of comprehension monitoring, the older group was more likely than the younger group to pick out the anomalous line as not fitting in with the rest of the story. Experiment 2 produced similar results: both 8- and 11-year-old children read an anomalous line more slowly, but 11-year-olds were more likely than 8-year-olds to cite the anomalous line or part of it when questioned about the possible presence of a line that did not fit in with the rest of the story. The results indicate that an age change in comprehension monitoring as indexed by citation or selection of a textual anomaly need not be contingent upon a parallel age change in constructive processing as indexed by modulation of reading rate.     

Attention to important versus trivial tasks and salience of fatigue-related symptoms for coronary prone individuals

The present study tested the hypothesis that individuals with the Type A coronary prone behavior pattern focus their attention more on important tasks, and less on trivial tasks than do Type B's. The study used a paradigm in which some subjects worked on math problems (important task) and rated intervening mood items (trivial task), whereas others rated mood items they were to memorize (important task) and worked on intervening math problems (trivial task). All subjects were later tested on recall of mood items. Results indicated that Type A's performed better on math problems and recalled more fatigue-related mood items when the task was important than when it was trivial; for Type B subjects, there was no difference in the number of math problems solved correctly or number of mood items recalled between important and trivial task conditions. Moreover, Type A's reported greater fatigue when mood recall was the important task than when math was the important task, whereas fatigue ratings of Type B's did not differ across these conditions. The findings suggest that Type A's suppress their attention to fatigue-related symptoms only when symptoms are not the objects of focus.     

Interactive effects of generalized and situational expectancies on the arousal of cognitive and emotional components of social anxiety

This study examined the arousal of social anxiety in an interview setting as a function of anticipated self-disclosure. Of 88 college students who completed the Social Avoidance and Distress (SAD) scale and other measures of social anxiety, self-disclosure, need to affiliate, and interpersonal trust, 24 volunteered for the interview. During the interview, both components of anxiety (worry and emotionality) were affected by expectancy conditions, and emotionality was higher for high- than for low-SAD subjects. The prediction of an interaction between SAD level and expectancy condition on worry was confirmed: only high-SAD subjects exposed to the negative-expectancy condition experienced significant elevations in worry. Though social anxiety and self-disclosure measures correlated negatively, anxiety did not affect self-disclosure during the interview.     

Do Students with Different Characteristics Take Part in Psychology Experiments at Different Times of the Semester?

ABSTRACT In this study we examined 15 personality and demographic differences between psychology students who took part in experiments at different times of the semester and different times of the day. In general, few significant relations were found and those that did emerge were small in magnitude. Females and freshmen signed up for experiments earlier in the semester. Females took part in their first experiment earlier in the semester, as did students who were Protestant and who came from smaller home towns. Students low in self-consciousness also tended to begin participating earlier. Extraverts participated earlier in the day than introverts. Results generally were consistent with previous findings of differences between research volunteers and non-volunteers. However, it was concluded that because of their small magnitude and inconsistency from site to site, with a few precautions experimenters probably need not be concerned that timing effects threaten the external validity of psychological research outcomes.     

Fat,Four-Eyed,and Female: Stereotypes of Obesity,Glasses, and Gender1

In a between-subjects design, 46 male and 101 female Australian university students rated a target person described as male or female, overweight or average weight, and wearing glasses or not, on twelve 7-point rating scales. As predicted, a negative stereotype of the overweight person and a complex one of the person with glasses were found. However, there was no significant effect of sex of target except on the ratings of masculine and feminine and no interaction of sex of target with either the glasses or obesity variables. Nor did sex of subject influence the ratings. The results suggest that, although stereotypes of obesity and glasses do exist, they may be as severe for men as for women.     

Perceived depth vs. structural relevance in the object-superiority effect

When subjects must identify a barely visible line in a briefly flashed display, their accuracy depends on the configuration of the context in which the target line appears. Weisstein and Harris (1974) found that accuracy is highest when the target is part of a pattern that resembles a unified, three-dimensional object, and lowest in a flat-looking pattern composed of disconnected lines; they labeled this phenomenon the object-superiority effect. In the three experiments reported here, identification accuracy was found to correlate highly and significantly (r =.78) with the judged depth of the patterns. Judged structural relevance of the target line to the pattern (McClelland & Miller, 1979) was uncorrelated with accuracy (r=?.28). Even when the target line appeared as an isolated fragment within the context pattern, a pattern perceived as three-dimensional yielded higher identification accuracy than one perceived as flat.     

SUPPRESSION OF SELF-STIMULATION: THREE ALTERNATIVE STRATEGIES

Four boys with autistic-like behavior were treated for self-stimulatory behavior with three different treatment procedures—time-out, differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO), and overcorrection. All four boys showed a rapid response to the overcorrection procedure. Three boys demonstrated some evidence of decrement in responding with time-out. During the DRO procedure, one showed a modest decrease, two showed no change, but one exhibited a consistent increase in responding under this condition. A multiple baseline applied to one of the subjects failed to reveal any generalization of suppression from one setting to another. A strong but not perfect relationship was found between a frequency and a duration measure of self-stimulation. There was some evidence of negative side effects for one boy during overcorrection and for another during time-out. None of these negative side effects was enduring. There was also some indirect evidence that overcorrection facilitated appropriate play.     

Memory for metaphors

Three experiments examined memory for metaphorical sentences. No differences between metaphors and nonmetaphorical equivalents (e.g.,The ivy cuddled up to the window vs.The ivy grew up to the window) in the number of correct recalls or recognitions were found. There was, however, a significant trend for recall errors that were meaning-preseving to be less metaphorical than the input sentence. The results supported hypotheses that metaphors and nonmetaphors are equally easy to remember and that the stored memory representation does not distinguish whether its antecedent linguistic input was metaphorical or not.This research was supported by Grant MH 28493-01 from NIMH and by a grant from the Kansas State University Bureau of General Research.Some of the data were reported at the Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Denver, November 1975.