Variations in working memory capacity predict individual differences in general learning abilities among genetically diverse mice

Up to 50% of an individuals' performance across a wide variety of distinct cognitive tests can be accounted for by a single factor (i.e., "general intelligence"). Despite its ubiquity, the processes or mechanisms regulating this factor are a matter of considerable debate. Although it has been hypothesized that working memory may impact cognitive performance across various domains, tests have been inconclusive due to the difficulty in isolating working memory from its overlapping operations, such as verbal ability. We address this problem using genetically diverse mice, which exhibit a trait analogous to general intelligence. The general cognitive abilities of CD-1 mice were found to covary with individuals' working memory capacity, but not with variations in long-term retention. These results provide evidence that independent of verbal abilities, variations in working memory are associated with general cognitive abilities, and further, suggest a conservation across species of mechanisms and/or processes that regulate cognitive abilities.     

Emergence,Drop-Back And Reductionism in Living Systems Theory

Millers Living Systems Theory (LST) is known to be very comprehensive. It comprises eight nested hierarchical levels. It also includes twenty critical subsystems. While Millers approach has been analyzed and applied in great detail, some problematic features remain, requiring further explication. One of these is the relationship between reduction and emergence in LST. There are at least four relevant possibilities. One is that LST exhibits neither clear reductionism nor emergence, but is essentially neutral in this regard. Another is that the apparent comprehensiveness of LST is illusory, as the approach remains vulnerable to reduction that could ultimately reduce it to a shadow of its present self. The charge of reductionism has been made by critics leading Miller to defend this theory vehemently as nonreductionist in nature. A third possibility is that LST is not reductionist, but is in fact an emergent theory. Miller makes this claim quite strongly. A fourth possibility, and in some ways the most analytically problematic, is that LST exhibits evidence of both reductionism and emergence simultaneously. Some critics might see this fourth situation as evidence of a troubling paradox or anomaly that must be resolved before further progress can be made in the explication and application of LST. The purpose of the paper is to remove this apparent anomaly. The paper removes this anomaly by differentiating between new-variable emergence and transformational emergence. No concrete evidence is found to contradict Milers claim of emergence in LST, and thus no true anomaly exists.     

Culture-based perceptions of academic achievement among low-income elementary students

This study examined the influence of culture on students' perceptions of academic success. Students read scenarios depicting hypothetical classmates achieving success through the cultural themes of individualism, competition, communalism, or verve. Students reported their social endorsement for the hypothetical classmates. A 2x4 repeated measures analysis, examining the effects of cultural group and cultural theme on students' endorsement, revealed an interaction between the two variables. African American students were significantly more accepting of communal and vervistic high-achieving peers than European American students. European American students endorsed individualistic and competitive high achievers significantly more than African American students. These and other findings suggest that the value students attach to academic success should not be understood in the absence of cultural considerations.     

Emerging neurotechnologies for lie-detection: promises and perils

Detection of deception and confirmation of truth telling with conventional polygraphy raised a host of technical and ethical issues. Recently, newer methods of recording electromagnetic signals from the brain show promise in permitting the detection of deception or truth telling. Some are even being promoted as more accurate than conventional polygraphy. While the new technologies raise issues of personal privacy, acceptable forensic application, and other social issues, the focus of this paper is the technical limitations of the developing technology. Those limitations include the measurement validity of the new technologies, which remains largely unknown. Another set of questions pertains to the psychological paradigms used to model or constrain the target behavior. Finally, there is little standardization in the field, and the vulnerability of the techniques to countermeasures is unknown. Premature application of these technologies outside of research settings should be resisted, and the social conversation about the appropriate parameters of its civil, forensic, and security use should begin.     

Perceptions of Non-College-Bound,Vocationally Oriented High School Graduates

In-depth structured interviews of 309 high school graduates judged to be non-college-bound explored perceptions of their (a) educational experiences, (b) vocational experiences, (c) self-concepts, and (d) family relationships. Interview data were compiled two years after high school graduation from subjects residing in urban, “rurban,” and rural environments in four mid-central states. Content analysis of written reports of subjects perceptions resulted in four major conclusions: (a) employment-bound, non-college-oriented students perceive the school, the counselors, and other personnel within the school as favoring the college-bound student; (b) counselors were not perceived as being helpful in assisting employment-bound youth to satisfactory vocational decisions; (c) subjects were unable to articulate meaningful concepts of self; and (d) generally, they did not perceive parents as being at all helpful in resolving personal, educational, and vocational problems.     

Visual perception of rapidly presented word sequences of varying complexity

Four experiments are described that determine whether or not syntactic complexity affects the visual perception of rapidly presented word sequences. The results indicate that sentences containing only one sentence in the underlying structure are more accurately reported than sentences containing two underlying sentences. It is shown that this result is not due solely to distortion of the input, but is likely to reflect the rate at which structural representations of the input can be developed.     

Acquisition and extinction of a simple motor skill as a function of delay of knowledge of results

The present experiment demonstrates that the effects of delay of knowledge of results (KR) in a line drawing task depend upon the dependent variable which is considered and the original response tendency of the subjects. Delay of KR interfered with the acquisition of the correct response when number of correct responses is the dependent variable. When KR was omitted the immediate-KR group continued to make more correct responses than the delayed-KR group. However, there was a significant reduction in correct responses for both groups. When absolute error was the response measure there were no significant differences between immediate-and delayed-KR groups either during acquisition or extinction. Analysis of the type of response made during extinction suggested that the overshooting effect obtained by previous investigators may be typical of short responders trained under conditions of immediate reinforcement but not of those trained under delayed-KR.

Greenspoon and Foreman (1956) obtained clear cut evidence that the effectiveness of knowledge of results (KR) in a line drawing task varies inversely with the time delay between the response and KR. On the other hand, Bilodeau and Bilodeau (1958) were unable to demonstrate a similar effect in five different experiments. Bilodeau and Ryan (1960) hypothesized that the Greenspoon and Foreman findings could not be replicated and they did in fact obtain null results. However, Dyal (1965) has recently replicated the Greenspoon and Foreman results for the case of a 30 sec. delay interval.

The purpose of the present experiment is twofold: (a) to provide replication of Green-spoon and Foreman's study at the 20 sec. delay interval used by Bilodeau and Ryan, and (b) to determine the effect of elimination of KR on a simple motor response which has been formed on the basis of KR.     

THE CATEGORY SCALE EQUATION

It has been claimed that the nearly logarithmic form of some category scales supports Fechner's law. However, by assuming that the concepts of similarity and difference are quantitatively complementary, it is possible to deduce the category scale equation from the similarity function. Thus, the category scale equation cannot be taken as evidence of the validity of Fechner's law.