Communication Patterns in an International Student Dormitory: A Modification of the “Small World” Method1

Milgram's “small world” method was modified to trace communication patterns in an international student dormitory containing 500 residents from 38 different countries. Eighteen residents served as “starters” for chain-booklets that circulated through the dormitory from friend to friend. Social networks were inferred from the circulation pattern of booklets. Sixteen chains progressed beyond their respective starters, and a total of 86 transactions were recorded. Four determinants of social relations were investigated: culture similarity, sex, organizational affiliation, and residential propinquity. The circulation pattern of the booklets showed that culture similarity was a major determinant of social interaction among the residents. The other main determinant was sex similarity. Organizational affiliation was less important, and proximity played only a minor role in determining communication patterns in the dormitory.     

Choice reaction times in children: Error and post-error responses,and the repetition effect

Analysis of the frequency and nature of error and post-error responses in the serial choice reaction times (RTs) of children between 5 and 12 years essentially replicate findings in adults. Errors are few and fast, tend to be made on fingers closely related to the correct responding finger, and are followed by a marked slowing in response rate. This pattern of results is interpreted in terms of a strategy to optimize performance with respect to instructions emphasizing both speed and accuracy. Importantly, this may be seen to reflect the activity, even in the youngest of children, of a finely-tuned feedback mechanism for error detection. Only the extent of immediate post-error slowing shows a decline with age, and is referred to improvements in response programming. Repetition RT is much faster than alternation RT (the “Repetition Effect”) and improves much less rapidly with age. Reduction of the Repetition Effect with age is consistent with theories of RT in which signals are categorized by retrospective search in short-term memory. The girls' advantage in gross RT is found to be confined to alternation RT only. The particular contribution of alternation RT both to the development of, and sex difference in, gross RT is related to the greater response organization involved in rapidly switching between fingers and hands.     

Assistance with learning competence and decision-making in schools and further education

721 first-year university students were asked about the amount of help they had received or might have received at their pre-tertiary institutions in developing their learning competence and in course/university/career decision-making. Over all items, nearly 30% felt they had been helped minimally, 40-45% slightly to moderately, and nearly 30% moderately to very much. They felt they had been helped most with learning competence concerns, less with their career and educational decision-making, and least of all with handling distracting personal worries. There were no significant differences by sex or by type of institution previously attended. The correlation between perceived amount of help and A-level scores was not significant. The implications of the findings are discussed in terms of the possible contribution of learning competence to attainment and the need for realistic educational and career decision-making.     

Counselling approaches to increasing students' learning competence

Learning competence is a comprehensive term which encompasses study skills, relevant interpersonal skills, and absence of debilitating achievement anxiety. 721 first year university freshmen were asked about the areas in which they felt more and less competent as learners. A factor analysis of their responses suggested eight areas of learning competence including: planning, organising and effective use of study time; effective reading and memorising; interpersonal relations and ability to obtain study help; and examinations. Ways in which counsellors can assist students with these varying learning concerns are reviewed, and it is suggested that more attention be paid in schools and colleges to professional approaches and structures for increasing student learning competence.     

A low-cost high-speed digital data acquisition and display system

A flexible and inexpensive data acquisition and display system based upon the KIM-1 microcomputer module is described. A simple signal-conditioning circuit and program are shown that will allow events to be counted at rates to 1,000/sec and stored in successive time bins. The program counts events from each of two event detectors and stores the count of each detector in an independent set of time bins. Up to 127 16-bit bins are available to each event detector and bin width can be varied from 1 msec to 1 min. A separate input can be used to time-lock data collection to a specific stimulus allowing poststimulus histograms or IRTs to be collected. The collected data can be sequentially displayed as a decimal number on a built-in LED display and stored for later analysis on an inexpensive audio cassette recorder.     

Transfer between downshift in reward magnitude and continuous delay of reward

Two separate experiments were conducted to investigate transfer of persistence between delay and a downshift in reward magnitude. In the first experiment, experimental rats were initially downshifted in reward magnitude and later tested for persistence to continuous delay of large reward. It was found that these rats were more persistent to the effects of delay than control rats which did not receive prior experience with a downshift in reward magnitude. In the second experiment, experimental rats were first trained to receive large reward under delayed conditions and then tested for persistence to a downshift in reward magnitude. Compared to control rats which received no prior experience with delay, the experimental rats showed a significantly smaller negative contrast effect. The results were interpreted as supporting Amsel's theory of persistence as well as Capaldi's recent interpretation of contrast effects.     

Optic-flow and cognitive factors in time-to-collision estimates

Time-to-collision (Tc) estimates were obtained from twenty-four subjects who viewed film clips for varying lengths of time. The film clips showed the view from a moving car travelling towards a stationary target car, but ended 100 m before reaching the target. Viewing time varied from 2 to 6 s, approach velocity from 40 to 100 km h-1, and Tc from 3.6 to 9.0s. It was hypothesised that, if time were needed to calculate Tc, the accuracy of Tc estimates would increase with viewing time up to some maximum. However, the results showed no effect of viewing time, and this was taken to indicate that estimates were based upon information directly available from the changing optic array at the eye of the observer. A significant velocity effect was found, accuracy increasing with velocity. Since velocity was inversely correlated with Tc, this probably implies that accuracy decreases with increasing Tc. Sex differences were found, with males giving higher and more accurate estimates than females. The relevance of these findings to the nature of Tc information is discussed.     

A linguistic analysis of fluent aphasia

Fluent aphasia is a general term for those posterior aphasic syndromes which involve little or no motor difficulties and which exhibit rather normal rates of speech output. This paper is a comparative neurolinguistic study of three types of fluent aphasia. Differences as well as similarities regarding language behavior both within and across groups are analyzed. Much attention is given to anomia and to how it is confronted by each group. Various possible paraphasic processes which may be involved in the genesis of neologisms are discussed. Localization information is provided for the patients in the study, and special attention is drawn to prerequisite neuroanatomical involvement for neologistic jargon.