Letter familiarity does not aid feature extraction

Summary Familiarity effects in visual letter processing were examined by means of a mutilation detection task. The uppercase E was used as the non-mutilated letter. One or two horizontal bars of the E were delected, to produce an upright or inverted F or L. These four mutilations of the E were assigned to the same response. In Experiment 1, brief exposure of the stimuli was followed by a backward mask. Experiment 2 was identical to Experiment 1, except that the display duration of the stimulus was increased and the backward mask was omitted. In Experiment 3, the overall luminance of the stimuli (luminance per point times length of the constituent line segments) was held constant. In Experiment 4, the upright and inverted non-E letter occurred in different blocks to encourage a normal (upright) letter processing strategy in the upright letter blocks. Accuracy (Experiment 1) and mean correct response times (all experiments) were not different for the upright and inverted F or for the upright and inverted L. These findings and converging results from other studies indicate that the higher familiarity of the upright letters did not aid feature extraction.     

State-dependent recall decrements with moderate doses of alcohol

Thirty-two adult volunteers were asked to memorize a simplified geographical map, visually displayed, together with an auditorially presented 19-item set of instructions regarding a particular route. During this session, half the subjects were sober and half were under the effects of a moderate dose of alcohol (mean blood alcohol concentration = 81mg/100ml). Twenty-four hours later they were tested under the same or different conditions. Learning performance on Day 1 was unaffected by alcohol. Learning transfer (tested on Day 2) was equally good when subjects were intoxicated during both sessions or were sober during both sessions. There were significant decrements in recall on Day 2, when subjects were in a different drug state. This ‘dissociation of learning’ was found to be symmetrical in that the recall decrement was the same whether the initial learning was acquired in a sober or a drugged state.     

The perceived social status of husbands and wives in dual-work families as a function of achieved and derived occupational status

The perception of the general social standing of husbands and wives in dual-work families as a function of their respective achieved and derived occupational statuses was examined experimentally. The results indicated that both the wife's and husband's general social status was a function only of the husband's occupational status; the wife's occupational status had no effect on either her general social status or that of her husband. The one exception to this was the case of the high achieved occupational status wife depressing the social status of the low occupational status husband. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for recent critiques of male-determined stratification models.     

Locus of control and self-esteem as correlates of role orientation in traditional and nontraditional women

This research attempted to establish relationships between locus of control, self-esteem, and traditional-nontraditional behavior. It was hypothesized that (1) women tending toward internality and high self-esteem should be more likely to manifest nontraditional behaviors, as evidenced through career-oriented roles, and to rank these roles as their primary source of satisfaction; and (2) women tending toward externality and low self-esteem should be more likely to manifest traditional behavior, as evidenced through family-oriented roles, and to rank these roles as their primary source of satisfaction. The sample consisted of 91 White females in a southern metropolitan area. The data were collected using a survey design. As expected, high self-esteem internals were more likely to manifest nontraditional behavior. Contrary to expectation, low self-esteem externals were more nontraditional in role orientation.     

Emotional expressivity and sex-role perceptions of repressors and sensitizers

Two studies were conducted examining the contributions of repression-sensitization (R-S) status, sex-role perceptions, and sex of the target of expressivity to assess the expression of emotional discomfort by males, in Experiment I verbal and nonverbal measures of emotional expressiveness were obtained for male repressors and sensitizers exposed to neutral or moderately negative arousal situations with sex of the target of the expressiveness controlled. In Experiment 2 repressors were found to be sex-typed masculine and male sensitizers sex-reversed in their sex-role perceptions. The usefulness of R-S status and sex, role perceptions to predicting emotional expressivity by males is discussed.     

The problem of rehearsal or mental practice

The present study examines several methodological and conceptual problems which in the past have made it difficult to accept the hypothesis that mental practice facilitates behavioral skill. An experiment on skill in speech production is then reported which overcomes the methodological problems. Subjects practice producing a sentence at maximal rate either mentally (mental practice) or overtly (physical practice) and then produced a transfer sentence which was either related or unrelated. The maximal rate of speech was faster for related than unrelated transfer sentences, and the degree of transfer for the mental and physical practice conditions was equivalent. A theory was developed to explain these results and overcome the conceptual problems outlined in the introduction. Implications of the theory for several related phenomena are discussed: rehearsal, errors in action, automatization, control processes in motor skills, speed-up as a function of practice, the relative advantages of physical vs. mental practice, and the evoked potentials accompanying mental rehearsal of an action.     

Impulsivity and paced tapping

The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that impulsivity is positively related to both the intraindividual variability and the rate of performance of a paced tapping task. The independent variable in the tapping task were: feedback vs. no feedback; tempo; concurrent cognitive task (counting) vs. no concurrent cognitive task. Three measures of tapping performance were computed: absolute or total error of tapping, tapping rate, and the intraindividual variability of tapping. The results confirm the hypothesis that impulsivity is positively related to rate of paced tapping, although the degree of relationship varied under different experimental conditions within the paced tapping task. Intraindividual variability of tapping was not significantly related to impulsivity, but the results were suggestive of a positive relationship.     

Stress-management training: Evaluation of effects on school psychological services

School psychologists participated in a cognitive-behavioral stress-management training program. The data showed decreases in self-reported anxiety and increases in job satisfaction of school psychologists as a result of the training. In addition, teacher satisfaction with school psychological services increased after participation in teacher inservice workshops generated as a result of training the school psychologists.     

Affect as a mediator of attributional egotism

A three-stage model of the relationships among achievement outcomes, outcome-related affect, attribution, and emotion is tested in two studies. It is suggested that success and failure elicit positive and negative affective states due to prior conditioning. These affective states then lead to an attribution process that serves to defend and enhance self-esteem. Next, emotional labels are chosen that are consistent with the affective states and the attributions. Two studies were designed to test the proposed relationships among achievement outcomes, affective states, and attributions. In the first study, subjects received information indicating that they were strongly or mildly aroused as a result of receiving outcome feedback on an achievement task. The results indicated that low arousal reduced egotistical attributions to internal factors. In the second study, subjects either succeeded or failed on an achievement task. Half of the subjects were provided with an opportunity to misattribute the arousal elicited by their outcomes to an irrelevant source. Subjects in the misattribution condition made less egotistical attributions to external factors than subjects who were given no opportunity to misattribute their arousal. The results of both studies suggest that outcome-related affect mediates the relationship between outcomes and attributions in achievement situations.