Experimental assessment of tinnitus aurium

A 32-year-old male volunteer with an eight year history of chronic unilateral tinnitus (ear-ringing) participated in a behavioral assessment strategy that included a series of measurement and modification procedures. A psychophysical matching technique was employed throughout a planned combination of procedures to assess and manipulate the intensity or loudness of tinnitus responses. Following baseline assessment, measurements were conducted at varying times of the day, concomitant with exposure to music, during progressive relaxation training, and under conditions of caffeine consumption. The value of careful assessment to describe cues and conditions associated with tinnitus and its reduction are discussed with implications for behavior treatment design and evaluation.     

Observing behavior in monkeys (Macaca arctoides): Support for the information hypothesis

A single lever, discrete-trials observing procedure was used with stumptailed monkeys (Macaca arctoides). Lever-presses during a trial produced colored key lights (IS⁺ and IS^?) which signaled whether the trial would end with response-independent food or without food. During the baseline period, both IS⁺ and IS^? were produced on a variable-interval (VI) 15-sec schedule which began operating at the onset of the trial. The two experimental conditions involved a combination of this VI schedule and a DRL schedule. In one of these conditions, only a response that both met the VI requirement and was preceded by at least 6 sec of nonresponding could produce IS^? on nonfood trials, while the schedule for IS⁺ on food trials remained VI 15 sec. In the other experimental condition, the schedules for producing the two stimuli were the reverse. All subjects eventually learned to produce either IS⁺ or IS^? on the combined VI-DRL schedule. These data support an information hypothesis of observing in monkeys and contrast with data from pigeons which support a conditioned reinforcement hypothesis.     

Semantic specificity in cued recall

In three cued recall experiments, extralist retrieval cues that were congruous in meaning to an encoded target pair of words produced better recall of the targets than wh6n the cuetarget relation was incongruous. However, this result, which differs from that of other experiments, depended in some cases on scoring recall of a target pair when either member of the pair was recalled. It is argued that (1) pairs of words are typically stored as higher order units, (2) the best test procedure is to request recall of both members of the pair when an extralist cue is presented, and (3) semantic features provide an important dimension in the mnemonic representation of word events.     

A challenge to vocational psychology: How important are aspirations in determining male career development?

Nationally representative longitudinal data on 1394 employed white men aged 15 to 24 in 1966 were used to assess whether job opportunities or vocational aspirations are the more important determinants of later job held. Support was found for two hypotheses: (a) men more often achieve congruence between their aspiration and their field of employment by changing aspirations to match the job rather than vice versa; and (b) aspirations for field of work generally are not as useful as actual job field for predicting the field of jobs held 1 to 5 years later. Contrary to expectation, middle-class young men were no more able to attain their aspirations either for field of employment or for status level of occupation than were lower-class male youths. These results suggest that although aspirations have some predictive power, the opportunity structure—which both conditions aspirations to narrow ranges early in life and affects the direction of early career development—is too often neglected by vocational psychology. One suggestion for counseling practice is that interest and maturity assessments be used as sources of information to both client and counselor about past influences. Attempts to actually counteract those influences should be clearly specified as such and separated from the assessment process.     

The dilution effect: Nondiagnostic information weakens the implications of diagnostic information

In a series of studies, subjects were asked to make predictions about target individuals. Some subjects were given information about the target which pretest subjects had judged to be “diagnostic”—that is, had judged to be usefully predictive of the outcome. Other subjects were given a mix of information judged to be diagnostic and information judged to be “nondiagnostic” by pretest subjects—that is, judged to be of little value for predicting the outcome. Subjects given mixed information made much less extreme predictions than did subjects given only diagnostic information. It was argued that this “dilution effect” occurs because people make predictions by making simple similarity judgments. That is, they compare the information they have about the target with their conception of outcome categories. The presence of individuating but nondiagnostic information about the target reduces the similarity between the target and those outcomes that are suggested by the diagnostic information. One of the major implications is that stereotypes and other “social knowledge structures” may be applied primarily to abstract, undifferentiated individuals and groups and may be largely set aside when judgments are made about concrete, individuated people.     

Selective information use and perseveration in the search behavior of infants and young children

Two experiments examined the early development of selective information use in search. The first experiment tested 9- and 16-month-olds on a modification of Piaget's Stage IV object permanence task. It examined infants' use of information from previous experiences with an object (prior information) and from the most recent hiding (current information) to locate a hidden object. In the second experiment, 2-, $\text{2}\text{1}\text{2}$-, and 4-year-old children received these same sources of information along with new forms of prior and current information: information about the typical locations of objects (location specificity) and verbal information. No systematic perseveration was observed at 9 months, although previous findings related to perseveration were replicated. Perseveration was found at 16 months, but there was also evidence of selectivity at that age. When errors occurred, they tended to be to the prior location, but they were infrequent in comparison to correct searches at the current location. The preschoolers, while continuing to show perseveration, were more consistently selective than the infants. They also showed considerable generality in extending their selectivity to new sources of information.     

Drug effects on repeated acquisition: comparison of cumulative and non-cumulative dosing

Pigeons acquired a different four-response chain each session by responding sequentially on three keys in the presence of a sequence of four colors. The response chain was maintained by food presentation under a fixed-ratio schedule. Errors produced a brief timeout but did not reset the chain. Each day there were four 15-minute sessions, with a 10-minute inter-session interval. Cumulative dose-effect curves for phencyclidine, pentobarbital, and d-amphetamine were obtained by giving an injection before each of the four sessions; successive injections increased the cumulative dose in equally spaced logarithmic steps. For comparison, non-cumulative doses of each drug (i.e., doses not preceded by other doses on the same day) were also tested. As the cumulative dose of each drug increased, the overall response rate decreased, the percent errors increased, and there was less within-session error reduction (acquisition). With phencyclidine and pentobarbital, the rate-decreasing and error-increasing effects tended to be greater with a non-cumulative dose than with the corresponding cumulative dose. In contrast, with d-amphetamine, the effects were considerably greater with the cumulative doses. The results indicate that although the cumulative-dosing procedure saved a substantial amount of time in determining dose-effect curves, there were quantitative differences in effects between cumulative and non-cumulative doses.     

Visuospatial ability, accuracy of size estimation, and bulimic disturbance in a noneating-disordered college sample: a neuropsychological analysis

The relationship between visuospatial ability and size accuracy in perception was assessed in 69 normal college females. In general, correlations indicated small associations between visuospatial defects and size overestimation and little relationship between visuospatial ability and level of bulimic disturbance. Implications for research on the size overestimation of body image are addressed.     

Irrelevant thoughts,emotional mood states,and cognitive task performance

In two experiments, we investigated the relationship shared by irrelevant thoughts, emotional mood states, and cognitive task performance. At an empirical level, irrelevant thoughts were defined as thoughts that did not facilitate successful task performance. We used the same general procedure for both experiments: three groups of college students received happy-, neutral-(control), or sad-mood inductions and performed a memory task. The procedure for obtaining thoughts varied between experiments. The subjects in Experiment 1 listed their thoughts after the memory recall task. In Experiment 2, the subjects were tape-recorded while performing a memory task and producing concurrent verbal protocols. The subjects in both experiments then judged their thoughts in terms of frequency, intensity, and irrelevance. We found a similar pattern of results in both experiments: (1) The proportions of irrelevant thoughts and recall performance were negatively related, and (2) happy and sad students produced reliably greater proportions of irrelevant thoughts than did neutral (control) students.