Individual differences in long-term memory access

In a study of individual differences in long-term memory access, university undergraduates verified (1) whether an item was a member of a category, (2) whether two items belonged to the same category, and (3) whether two words had the same name. Reaction times from these tasks were correlated with verbal ability, as measured by performance on a standardized test of vocabulary and reading comprehension. A relationship was found between verbal ability and reaction time in the verification tasks. These results are contrasted with those of Hogaboam and Pellegrino (1978), who failed to find such a relationship. The results indicated that the various reaction time measures form a single factor that bears a moderate relationship to reading and vocabulary measures.     

The DIAGNOSER: A HyperCard tool for building theoretically based tutorials

The DIAGNOSER is a HyperCard tutorial construction system based on a framework of naive physics conceptions and developed for high school classroom use. It assesses students’ conceptions in a domain, and prescribes a course of action on the basis of that assessment. In addition, it collects data for instructional enhancement and theoretical investigations. It is sufficiently general to allow tutorials to be developed in other knowledge domains, such as probability, economics, and psychology. An advanced version exploring naive conceptions of circuit electricity is also discussed.     

When psychiatric patients interact with computer terminals: Problems and solutions

A computer system for on-line psychiatric patient assessment has been developed at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Salt Lake City. Unlike the typical on-line computer system designed for skilled terminal operators, this system is designed to interact with unskilled psychiatric patients. Special design considerations necessary to support this approach are discussed.     

Impact of father absence during childhood on the psychological adjustment of college females

In the present study, daughters who had lost fathers and whose mothers had not remarried demonstrated greater insecurity and more negative self-evaluations than daughters who had either not lost their fathers or had lost their fathers but their mothers had remarried. Contrary to the findings of Hetherington (1972), neither reason for father loss (i.e., death or divorce) nor age of daughter at time of father loss was found to affect the psychological adjustment of the college-age daughters who served as subjects in this study.     

An Experimental Study of Black-White Negotiations1

One hundred and forty variables tapping aspects of the subjective culture (characteristic way or perceiving the social environment) of 300 white male students were subjected to two-mode factor analysis. Five subject types emerged from the similarities in the responses of the students to these variables. In the next phase of the study, 88 representatives of these subject types participated in experimental negotiations. Before the negotiations, caucus groups, consisting of six students homogeneous in their pretest scores, decided what positions should be upheld during the negotiations. Following the caucuses, three two-member teams were formed, from each caucus group. The teams negotiated with two-member black teams of confederates of the experimenters. Negotiations focused on three issues, each of which was represented by 10 Thurstone successive-interval method scaled positions. Negotiation outcomes were predicted from the subjective culture measures (r= .42; p < .005). The negotiation outcomes tended to be more predictable from the reference group (caucuses) preferred positions (r= .65) than from individual preferences (r= .36). Negotiators tended to overconform to caucus positions. Behavioral differential scale ratings of black negotiators predicted the outcomes better than semantic differential ratings of these stimuli. The more specific the attitude measured the more predictive it was of negotiation outcomes. Discussion focused on implications for understanding the relationship between attitudes and behavior and the process of black/white negotiations.     

A six-channel PDP-8 interface for nerve impulse data

An interface operating on the I/O bus of the LINC-8 has been built which accepts up to six channels of nerve impulse data simultaneously at rates up to 4,000 pps/channel. By means of a 100-KHz clock and a 17-bit counter, the time of occurrence of each nerve impulse is strobed into one of six 17-bit buffer registers. The strobe causes a program interrupt to occur. Two I/O instructions are used to read the buffers into the PDP-8 accumulator. Additional instructions for skipping on data or overflow, enabling the counter, clearing the overflow flag, and clearing the counter are available.     

Popular peers as change agents for the socially neglected child in the classroom

The present study investigated the use of popular students in promoting the acceptance of socially neglected children. A sociometric questionnaire was administered to 573 fifth- and sixth-grade students. Ninety-five socially neglected children were identified and randomly assigned to experimental or control groups. Four to eight popular students were also selected as student peer facilitators from each class included in the study. These students were instructed weekly in social skills and assigned to work with a target child within their own classroom. Assessment after treatment indicated that students in the experimental group increased significantly in peer acceptance, whereas no significant change occured in the control group.     

The design of ballantines

The shared variance between two variables can be expressed graphically by overlapping circles. A procedure is presented for locating the circles so that the graphical and statistical relations correspond exactly. The procedure does not generalize to the representation of multiple, part, and partial correlations between three or more variables. The reasons for the nonextension are explained, and some alternative graphical representations are suggested.     

The sentence-verification paradigm: A case study of two conflicting aproaches to individual differences

The contrasting approaches of differential psychology and cognitive psychology to the same individual differences data are outlined. Using illustrative data from the Clark and Chase (1972) sentence-picture verification task, four loci of conflict between these two disciplines are identified. These areas of conflict center around issues of (1) theory versus measurement, (2) meaningfulness versus reliability, (3) linearity of relationships, and (4) discontinuities in performance. We conclude on the basis of observed incompatibilities that a simple derivation of differential psychology from cognitive psychology is not likely, but separate development of complementary theories may be possible.