The unimportance of explicit spatial information in serial recall of visually presented lists

The superiority of auditory over visual presentation in short-term serial recall may be due to the fact that typically only temporal cues to order have been provided in the two modalities. Auditory information is usually ordered along a temporal continuum, whereas visual information is ordered spatially, as well. It is therefore possible that recall following visual presentation may benefit from spatial cues to order. Subjects were tested for serial recall of letter-sequences presented visually either with or without explicit spatial cues to order. No effect of any kind was found, a result which suggests (a) that spatial information is not utilized when it is redundant with temporal information and (b) that the auditory-visual difference would not be modified by the presence of explicit spatial cues to order.     

Anxiety management and applied relaxation in reducing general anxiety

Sixty-three generally anxious subjects were assigned to anxiety management training, applied relaxation training, relaxation-only, placebo and untreated control conditions. After 6 weeks of treatment, anxiety management training led to reductions on a variety of self-report measures of state and trait anxiety and decreases in maladaptive cognitions during a laboratory stress procedure. On several measures, subjects in anxiety management training differed from relaxation-only and placebo subjects as well as untreated controls. However, treatment effects did not extend to performance and physiological measures of anxiety. Applied relaxation training, which in contrast to anxiety management training lacks structured rehearsal involving the recognition and reduction of tension cues during the treatment sessions, resulted in less consistent decreases in measures of general anxiety.     

Book reviews

BODEN, MARGARET A. Artificial Intelligence and Natural Man. Hassocks : Harvester Press Limited, and New York: Basic Books Inc., 1977. Pp. ix+537. £613.50 hardback; £64.95 paperback. ISBN 0 85527 435 2.

ESTES, W. K. (Ed.). Handbook of Learning and Cognitive Processes. Vol. 6. Linguistics. Functions in Cognitive Theory. Hillsdale, N.J. : Erlbaum Associates. 1979. Pp. 331. £12.70. ISBN o 470 26311 3.

O'KEEFE, J. and NADEL, L. The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map. London: Oxford University Press. 1978. Pp. 543. £25.00. ISBN 0 12 524150 X.

FITZSIMONS, J. T. The Physiology of Thirst and Sodium Appetite. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1979. Pp. 572. £32.50. ISBN 0 521 22292 3.

MURRAY, F. B. and PIKULSKI, J. J. (Eds). The Acquisition of Reading. Baltimore: University Park Press. 1978. Pp. 178. £8.95. ISBN 0 8391 1281 5.

NEWTON, M. J., THOMAS, M. E. and RICHARDS, I. L. Readings in Dyslexia. Wisbech: Benrose Ltd. 1979. Pp. 203. £4.50. ISBN 09 0511 4124.

SENDERS, J. W., FISHER, D. F. and MONTY, R. A. (Eds). Eye Movements and Higher Psychological Processes. Hillsdale, N. J. : Erlbaum. 1978. Pp. 394. £19.95. ISBN 0 470 26489 6.

GRUBER, H. E. and VONECHE, J. J. (Eds). The Essential Piaget. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1977. Pp. 880. £12.95. ISBN 07100 87780.

SIEGEL, L. S. and BRAINERD, C. J. (Eds). Alternatives to Piaget. New York: Academic Press. 1978. Pp. 262. £11.70. ISBN 12 641950 7.

BRANSFORD, J. D. Human Cognition: Learning, Understanding and Remembering. Belmont, California: Wadsworth. 1979. Pp. xii+300. £11.85. ISBN 0 534 00699 X.

VON FIEANDT, K. and MOUSTGAARD, I. K. The Perceptual World. London: Academic Press. 1977. Pp. 680. £32.00. ISBN 0 12 725050 6.

BURTON, A. and RADFORD, J. (Ed.). Thinking in Perspective: Critical Essays in the Study of Thought Processes. London: Methuen. 1978. Pp. xxii+232. £3.95. ISBN 0 416 85840 6.

MAYER, R. E. Thinking and Problem Solving: An Introduction to Human Cognition and Leavning. Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman and Company. 1977. Pp. viii+214. £4.95. ISBN 0 673 15055 0.

BATES, E. Language and Context: The Acquisition of Pragmatics. New York: Academic Press. 1976. Pp. 375. £14.50. ISBN 0 12 081550 8.

MILGHAM, N. W., KRAMES, L. and ALLOWAY, T. M. Food Aversion Learning. New York: Plenum Press. 1977. Pp. 263. £27. ISBN 0 306 31040 6.

O'CONNOR, N. and HERMELIN, B. Seeing and Hearing and Space and Time. London: Academic. 1978. Pp. 157+viii. £6.80. ISBN 0 12 524150 X.     

Syntactic complexity and information transmission in first-graders: A cross-cultural study

Some differences between child and adult communication are due to general developmental immaturity and some to language-specific factors. The Piagetan concept of syncretism exemplifies an hypothecated universal of psycholinguistic development, and it results in child texts characterized by minimally structured temporal, causal, and logical connections. A different sort of problem is that, within a specific language, certain syntactic items may fail to mature in children at the expected rate, because of structural oddities of the constructions. English has several such constructions, generally peculiar in their conflict between surface- and deep-structure subject of the main verb. It is predictable that a syncretistic child attempting to deal with such items in a text will analyze them according to the surface-structure analogic method which defines verbal syncretism, and so will fail to make sense of them. Finally, cutting across these child language features are others peculiar to the language of specific groups of children, such as the putative communication impairment of the disadvantaged black child, whose language has been described by some researchers as less efficient and slower to mature than that of others. Clearly, if this is so, then black children's language should at any young age show more evidence of syncretistic communicative immaturity as well as slower development of adult syntactic patterns. The present paper, then, investigates on a cross-cultural basis the dual hypotheses of syncretism and faulty mastery of difficult syntax, by means of an experimental story-repeating format first used by Piaget. Hypotheses are examined for the cause of children's distinctive communication technique, and the whole question of the significance of black/white differences in communicative style and verbal maturity is discussed.     

Feature saliency and recognition memory for schematic faces

Memory for schematic faces was studied using a recognition memory paradigm. Ss indicated whether two faces, separated by delays of 6, 12, or 18 sec, were the same or different. Theoretical interest centered on the effects of component feature saliency on response bias and detectability. The main results were that there were fewer misses and more false alarms on the more salient features. Analysis showed that the main effect of feature saliency was on response bias, not detectability.