An on-line assessment of causal reasoning during comprehension

Fletcher and Bloom (1988) have argued that as readers read narratives, clause by clause, they repeatedly focus their attention on the last preceding clause that contains antecedents but no consequences in the text. This strategy allows them to discover a causal path linking the text's opening to its final outcome while minimizing the number of times long-term memory must be searched for missing antecedents or consequences. In order to test this hypothesis, we examined the reading times of 25 subjects for each clause of eight simple narrative texts. The results show that: (1) causal links between clauses that co-occur in short-term memory (as predicted by the strategy) increase the time required to read the second clause; (2) potential causal links between clauses that never co-occur in short-term memory (again as predicted by the strategy) have no effect on reading time; and (3) reinstatement searches are initiated at the end of sentences that are causally unrelated to the contents of short-term memory or that contain clauses that satisfy goals no longer in short-term memory. These results support the claim that subjects engage in a form of causal reasoning when they read simple narrative texts.     

A feature model of immediate memory

A feature model of immediate memory is presented, and simulations are described. List items are characterized as multiattribute vectors that can be selectively overwritten by subsequent external events and by the ongoing stream of internal activity. Degraded primary memory vectors are compared with intact secondary memory vectors, and retrieval likelihood is computed as the ratio of similarities. The model is shown to account for the major modality-based phenomena of the immediate serial recall literature, including modality-based temporal grouping effects and the negative effects of phonological similarity.     

Changing contexts and the field of community psychology

Conclusion The legacy of the Swampscott conference 25 years ago is palpable. The scientific accomplishments have been substantial. The four agendas I have presented for the future development of the field depend upon psychologists as individuals and psychologists as participants in our departments, colleges, universities, professional societies, and peer review panels to reduce the constraints that limit the definition and study of psychological phenomena in community settings (Schneider, 1990). As these constraints are addressed, new social norms can be established to expand and diversify the research process. There are some explicit positive side effects that can occur. A new working social structure can be created for how universities and communities can be resources for each other.The four topics I have presented are agendas for keeping at the task of generating active and expanding scientific traditions. These topics when addressed in the context of collaboration with other disciplines and citizens can develop an empirical base of shared wisdom about how to carry out community psychology research. In these ways the benefits of community psychology research can become more empowering for the public and more and more systemic for the scholar.These comments were presented as an Invited Address at the 2nd annual meeting of the American Psychological Society, June 8, 1990, Dallas, Texas.The following persons took time to read and comment on earlier drafts of these comments. I have benefited very much from their appraisals. Eileen Altman, Daniel Cervone, Seeley Chandler-Kelly, Nancy Dassoff, Penny Foster-Fishman, Steve Goldston, Peter Graves, Kenneth Heller, Robert E. Hess, David Henry, Ira Iscoe, Chris Keys, Benjamin Kleinmuntz, Ed Lichtenstein, Philip Mann, Kyoung Oh, Julian Rappaport, Dan Romer, Lonnie R. Snowden, Joseph P. Stokes, Edison J. Trickett, Abe Wandersman, and Marc Alan Zimmerman.     

Are FACES-II ‘family satisfaction’ scores valid?

It has been suggested that family satisfaction can be measured by having a person complete the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scale (FACES-II) twice: once as the person essentially sees the family (actual version), and once as they wish the family to be (ideal version). The discrepancy between the actual and ideal scores is contended to be a measure of satisfaction with family. Though conceptually attractive, this measurement strategy was not verified, as assessed in the present study by correlating the actual-ideal discrepancy scores with family discord (Index of Family Relations) scores. Clinical adoption of the actual-ideal discrepancy-score as a measure of family satisfaction is thus seen as premature, until more supportive evidence is demonstrated.     

Husserl vs. Derrida

This paper was presented as the Aaron Gurwitsch Memorial Lecture, sponsored by the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, Inc., at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, October 1988.     

Testosterone and personality among college students and military veterans

Relationships of serum and saliva to personality were examined among 401 college students in four laboratory studies and 5,236 military veterans in one archival study. Among the students, there were few relationships between testosterone and traditional personality measures. Among the veterans, MMPI scores and DSM-III diagnoses showed testosterone related to drug and alcohol abuse, antisocial and generally intemperate behavior, and effective disorders. Consistent with social control theory, correlations were higher among veterans who were lower in socioeconomic status. It appears likely that testosterone has innate effects that are socially undesirable but can be attenuated by bonds between the individual and society. Effect sizes were small, suggesting that testosterone will have noticeable effects only in large populations or individuals who differ markedly from the population mean. Further research should focus upon antisocial correlates of testosterone and conditions that produce marked changes in testosterone levels.     

Proof and truth in Lakatos's masterpiece

Proofs and Refutations is Lakatos's masterpiece. This article investigates some of its central themes, in particular: the nature of proofs ('Proofs do not prove, they improve'); the nature of definitions (real, not nominal); and the consequences of all this for ontology (platonism vs Popper's World Three).     

Who's to blame: Attributions regarding causality in spouse abuse

Spouse abuse is examined from the perspective of attribution theory. Aggressors are seen as attributing their violent behavior to external causes, whether by projecting their negative traits onto their spouses or by finding excuses which blame temporary environmental factors. In contrast, victims often attribute the abuse to defects within themselves or situational factors affecting their spouses. The attribution process seems affected by the frequency, intensity and duration of the abuse, with temporal factors playing an important role in the woman's internalizing style. Furthermore, inadequate early coping efforts play a powerful role in establishing cognitive-perceptual patterns that serve to perpetuate the abuse.     

Proactive interference plays a role in the word-length effect

The word-length effect is the advantage that lists of short words show over lists of long words in immediate recall. Typically, the word-length effect is used as strong support for decay-based theories of immediate retention. However, the present two experiments show that the traditional word-length effect emerges only after several trials in an experimental session, a result reminiscent of earlier findings in distractor-based short-term forgetting experiments. These results suggest that any complete account of the word-length effect will need to consider a role for proactive interference.