The retention of nouns,adjectives, and verbs of sentences

This research compared the retention of nouns, adjectives and verbs of sentences. A model of the structure underlying the retention of sentences and in which deep structure constituent propositions are hierarchically related, was used to make predictions concerning the retention of these word classes. The model was not supported by the data and it was determined that latencies to recognize the words of a previously presented sentence were the same for all classes of words. This result indicated that for recognition (but not necessarily for other memory tasks), each word of a sentence is seperately or equally accessible (as long as inter-word imagery is the same). However, a further experiment showed that, although word class is not a variable, the image-arousing capacity of a word is. Latencies and error rates were much lower for high-imagery words than for low-imagery ones. The findings on error rates in recognizing words were interesting and pointed to a different model where the meaning representations and syntatic functions of words have an active role in sentence retention.     

An unobtrusive measure of personality?

The use of unobtrusive measures has been advocated for some time by methodologists and research workers. (Webb et al., 1966). Recently Wing and Baddeley (1978) used simple measures of handwriting as indices of stress. They found that the height of the letter and the length of ticks (check marks), indicating answers to questions, increased significantly after alcohol intake.It has been shown in the past that measures based on the dimensions of letters or digits provide a sensitive index of stress (Baddeley et al., 1969; Legge et al., 1964). However, it has not yet been shown whether there is any relationship between the size of circles around ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers to a personality questionnaire, and the scale scores it is measuring.This paper reports an investigation whose aim it was to relate circle size to the scale scores of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Psychoticism, and the Lie-scale of the EPQ (Eysenck and Eysenck, 1978).     

Central deafness and subcortical motor aphasia

Clinical and autopsy studies were made on a right-handed man who had central deafness and subcortical motor aphasia, and the literature on central deafness and on subcortical motor aphasia was analyzed. Central deafness is due to bilateral destruction of the primary auditory cortex. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish from word deafness and from auditory agnosia, which are due to pathology in other parts of the temporal lobes. There is almost always some preserved hearing in central deafness, possibly from some auditory pathway other than the classical pathway. In this patient the subcortical motor aphasia was due to bilateral destruction of the motor cortex for the mouth and throat. In some other cases subcortical motor aphasia was due to the same pathology that usually causes Broca's aphasia; in these cases the unexpected preservation of writing was perhaps related to some difference in how language functions were organized in the brain.     

Production deficits in aphasia: A voice-onset time analysis

An experimental study was conducted to examine phonetic and phonemic deficits in the speech production of aphasics. Subjects included four Broca's aphasics, four Conduction aphasics, five Wernicke's aphasics, one nonaphasic dysarthric patient, and four normal controls. The subjects read a list of words containing word-initial stop consonants which were subsequently measured acoustically for voice-onset time. The results showed that Broca's aphasics exhibit a more severe production disorder than Conduction aphasics who in turn exhibit a more severe disorder than Wernicke's aphasics, in accord with clinical observations. In addition, although Broca's aphasics produced both phonetic and phonemic errors, the results showed that they have a pervasive phonetic disorder which affects their correct target productions as well as the total number of phonetic errors produced. This deficit however seems to be a speech deficit rather than a low-level motor control problem. In contrast, the Wernicke's aphasics show a deficit characterized by isolated phonemic mistargeting errors. Finally, the pattern of productions for the Conduction aphasics indicates that some patients show a predominantly phonetic disorder similar to the Broca's aphasics and others show predominantly a phonemic disorder similar to the Wernicke's aphasics.     

The lateral coding of rotations: a study of the simon effect with wheel-rotation responses

A number of experimental studies have consistently shown the locus of spatial S-R compatibility effects to be the selection of the response within an abstract memory code. The purpose of the present study was to test, in the particular case of wheel rotations, the general proposition that any response that a subject internally codes in terms of left and right may be interfered with by the lateral location of the stimuli in a Simon paradigm. Experiment 1 showed that the auditory Simon effect occurred in a task where the subjects had to rotate a steering wheel bimanually either clockwise or counterclockwise according to sound pitch, despite the fact that responses of this kind are undefined with respect to laterality. Experiment 2 confirmed this result in a unimanual rotation condition and suggested that the ear-rotation compatibility effect may be added to the effect of a biomechanical factor, pronation versus supination, supporting the idea of an abstraction motor code. In Experiment 3, subjects rotated the steering wheel with their hands on the lowest part of the wheel. When the response movement made the spot of a C.R.T. move laterally in accordance with the performed rotation, the subjects coded their response directly in terms of its effect on the visual display. For subjects not receiving visual feedback, no compatibility effect occurred. however, the individual data were compatible with the notion that some subjects in this group coded their responses in terms of wheel rotations, and others in terms of hand movements.     

The dimensionality of attributions of causality and responsibility for an accident

Effects of the dimensionality of responsibility and causality attributions were investigated. An accident was described. Subjects cued to respond with causality attributions increased their attributions with event severity. Subjects cued to respond with moral responsibility attributions decreased attributional levels with increasing severity. Assignments of guilt varied specifically with the cued attributional concept.     

Mouse killing in rats induced by lesions of the medial hypothalamus or medial accumbens: short-term preoperative exposure to a mouse does not suppress the killing

Rats were either exposed or not exposed to a mouse in their living cage for a 48-hr period. At the end of this time a bilateral lesion was made in the medial accumbens region or in the medial hypothalamus. When tested 2 days postoperatively, the killing frequency among rats that had been exposed to mice preoperatively was not significantly lower than that of rats that were not preoperatively exposed. The ineffectiveness of preoperative experience in suppressing the mouse killing induced by medial accumbens and medial hypothalamic lesions is similar to that found previously with dorsal-median raphe lesions and olfactory bulb lesions and is in contrast to the ease with which preoperative experience prevents mouse killing induced by septal lesions and serotonergic lesions induced by 5,7-dihydroxytryptamine.