Talker continuity and the use of rate information during phonetic perception

Research has shown that speaking rate provides an important context for the perception of certain acoustic properties of speech. For example, syllable duration, which varies as a function of speaking rate, has been shown to influence the perception of voice onset time (VOT) for syllableinitial stop consonants. The purpose of the present experiments was to examine the influence of syllable duration when the initial portion of the syllable was produced by one talker and the remainder of the syllable was produced by a different talker. A short-duration and a long-duration /bi/-/pi/ continuum were synthesized with pitch and formant values appropriate to a female talker. When presented to listeners for identification, these stimuli demonstrated the typical effect of syllable duration on the voicing boundary: a shorter VOT boundary for the short stimuli than for the long stimuli. An /i/ vowel, synthesized with pitch and formant values appropriate to a male talker, was added to the end of each of the short tokens, producing a new hybrid continuum. Although the overall syllable duration of the hybrid stimuli equaled the original long stimuli, they produced a VOT boundary similar to that for the short stimuli. In a second experiment, two new /i/ vowels were synthesized. One had a pitch appropriate to a female talker with formant values appropriate to a male talker; the other had a pitch appropriate to a male talker and formants appropriate to a female talker. These vowels were used to create two new hybrid continua. In a third experiment, new hybrid continua were created by using more extreme male formant values. The results of both experiments demonstrated that the hybrid tokens with a change in pitch acted like the short stimuli, whereas the tokens with a change in formants acted like the long stimuli. A fourth experiment demonstrated that listeners could hear a change in talker with both sets of hybrid tokens. These results indicate that continuity of pitch but not formant structure appears to be the critical factor in the calculation of speaking rate within a syllable.     

Interpersonal evaluations,attitudes and attraction

The effect of interpersonal evaluations (e.g., judging a person's intelligence) on attraction toward an anonymous person (person-one) was investigated. The study was conducted to assess attraction in five interpersonal relationships in which evaluations commonly occur. Attraction of subjects toward person-one was greater for positive than for negative evaluations when person-one evaluated either the subjects or himself, when a second anonymous person evaluated person-one and the attitudes of person-one were similar to those of the subjects, and when the second person evaluated both person-one and the subjects. When person-one evaluated the subjects, attraction toward person-one was found predictable using the Byrne-Rhamey rule.     

Verbal feedback and the feature-positive effect in children

A pair of displays having common elements may be differentiated by the presence of a distinctive feature in one of the displays. When required to discriminate between such displays presented simultaneously, young children more readily learn to confine their responses to the display containing the distinctive feature (feature-positive condition) than to the display which does not contain the distinctive feature (feature-negative condition). The effect of explicit verbal feedback for incorrect choices on the learning of discriminations of this type was examined in 3- to 5-year-old children. In the feature-positive case, explicit feedback for incorrect responses increased the tendency to respond directly to the distinctive feature when responding on the positive display and greatly reduced errors. In the feature-negative case, explicit feedback for incorrect responses increased the tendency to avoid the distinctive feature in favor of a common feature when responding on the negative display. In this case, however, consistent avoidance of the distinctive feature on the negative display was not always followed by the development of consistent choice of the positive display, and errors continued to occur at a high rate throughout training for most subjects. These results reflect the difference in the structure of the feature-positive and feature-negative tasks.     

The acquisition of taste aversions in humans with eating and drinking disorders

A written questionnaire or interview concerned with acquisition of illness-induced (taste) aversions to foods and drinks was given to three groups of people with eating and drinking disorders. These groups consisted of 101 male and 1 female hospitalized alcoholics, 8 male and 8 female college-student heavy consumers of alcohol and 18 females with anorexia nervosa and/or bulimia. In most respects taste-aversion acquisition in these three groups was similar to taste-aversion acquisition in a general college-student population previously studied by Logue, Ophir and Strauss (1981), and to taste-aversion acquisition in other species. In all three groups the aversions were more likely to be reported as having been formed through forward rather than simultaneous or backward conditioning, and long-delay learning was frequent. The aversions usually formed to the tastes rather than to the appearance or other aspects of the foods and drinks. Extinction appeared more effective in decreasing the aversions than did forgetting. While the illness responsible for the aversions forming was usually attributed to the subsequently aversive food or drink, in at least one third of the cases subjects reported that something else might have caused their illness. Aversions were more likely to have formed to relatively less familiar and less preferred foods and drinks. However, the hospitalized alcoholics reported fewer aversions, less generalization of aversions, and stronger nausea as the cause of the aversions than did Logue et al.'s (1981) subjects. About 15% of these subjects reported taste aversions to alcoholic beverages. The college-student heavy consumers of alcohol reported no generalization of their taste aversions, but in other respects were similar to Logue et al.'s subjects. Thirty-one percent of these subjects reported taste aversions to alcoholic beverages. The anorexic and bulimic subjects were also similar to Logue et al.'s subjects with the exception that they, like the hospitalized alcoholics, reported stronger nausea as the cause of the aversions. These data may help to understand and treat people with eating and drinking disorders     

Long-term memory for pictures and sentences

Two experiments were conducted to examine the fan effect in recognition memory for pictures and sentences. Subjects in the first experiment memorized sets of pictures (N= 13) or sentences (N=13) in which the study items comprised concept combinations (e.g., the clock is on the television) that could be unambiguously depicted in each modality. The fan effect, contrasting study items involving unique- and shared-concepts combinations, was observed in the recognition reaction time data for sentences but not for pictures. Subjects in the second experiment (N= 17) memorized sets of pictures and sentences in which, in addition to the unique and shared intramodality conditions used in Experiment 1, subjects memorized items in each modality that shared concepts with items in the alternative modality. Although the fan effect was reduced for sentences in the second experiment, the intramodality results were qualitatively comparable to those obtained in Experiment 1. The results in the intermodality conditions indicated that, although pictorial study items influenced reaction time to sentences with which they shared a concept, the reverse was not the case. The results were thought to be inconsistent with the view that pictures and sentences enjoy a common representational format in long-term memory.     

Comparison of adult schizophrenics with matched normal native speakers of English as to “acceptability” of English sentences

This study tried to make some determinations as to whether the distortions observed occasionally in speech in chronic schizophrenics was, at root, a thought disturbance or a problem of comprehension and use of standard English speech. We compared 25 normal college students with 25 educationally matched inpatients at Camarillo State Hospital, Camarillo, California, who had been diagnosed as chronic undifferentiated schizophrenics in the judgment of sentences as being either relatively acceptable or unacceptable. The sentences (from Maher's 1972 study) varied in the degree to which they violated Chomsky's selection restriction rules: animate versus inanimate, human versus animal, and concrete verus abstract. Using Tuley's comparison test, we found no significant difference between normal and schizophrenic subjects in determining sentence acceptability or in the detection of sentence rule violations. The performance of chronic schizophrenics in rating sentences as relatively ungrammatical was not significantly different from that of normals. In addition, schizophrenics did not turn out to be significantly less sensitive to the number and types of selection rule violations in sentences. It seems probable that distortion in thought processes, rather than inability to use the semantic and syntactic rules of English speech, might be the underlying cause of the bizarre speech patterns which occur at times in the language of schizophrenics.     

Predicting Repeated Behavior from Intention: The Issue of Scale Correspondence

The present study examined the issue of scale correspondence (Courneya & McAuley, 1993), using the repeated behavior of regular physical activity. Scale correspondence refers to the consistency of the scales between intention and behavior assessments when examining repeated behaviors. Eighty-five undergraduate students completed five different self-report scales that have been used for intention and repeated behaviors. The time period between intention assessment and reported behavior was one month. The results indicated that violating scale correspondence, particularly the continuous/dichotomous distinction, resulted in attenuated correlations. Moreover, not all forms of scale correspondence were equally satisfactory, with the continuous-open form being the most effective. Discussion focused on: (a) implications for the theories of reasoned action and planned behavior, (b) the conceptual basis of the intention construct, (c) the prevalence of single-item assessments of intention, and (d) the possible contribution of shared method variance to the improved correlations.     

Reporting observer agreement on stuttering event judgments: A survey and evaluation of current practice

A survey of articles appearing in three national journals over a five-year period was conducted in order to examine current practice in reporting observer agreement on stuttering event judgments. Of 55 articles in which observer agreement was deemed critical, 47 reported at least one observer agreement procedure. A total of eleven agreement procedures were reported and current practice is characterized by five procedures which account for 92% of the articles in which procedures are reported. Problems with using these five indices to represent observer agreement are detailed and several alternatives are discussed.     

Treatment fearfulness and distress as predictors of professional psychological help-seeking

Only a small proportion of people who experience psychological distress seek professional psychological help. Treatment fearfulness is one of a number of factors thought to influence people's tendency to seek or avoid mental health treatment. The aim of the present study was to provide additional validity information on the Thoughts About Therapy Survey (TAPS) (Kushner & Sher, 1989), and to determine whether fear of therapy and psychological distress were predictive of help-seeking. A non-clinical student sample completed measures of their treatment fears, expectations, anxiety, psychological distress and help-seeking likelihood. Concurrent and construct validity was confirmed for TAPS. Image Concerns, Stigma Concerns, Coercion Concerns and psychological distress were related to the likelihood that subjects would seek professional psychological help. Results are discussed in relation to educational approaches for reducing treatment fearfulness and the potential for increasing appropriate professional help-seeking.     

Measures of job perceptions: Gender and age of current incumbents,suitability, and job attributes

Two ways of examining the gender and age stereotypes of jobs, characteristics of current incumbents and potential suitability, were compared. Female (n = 70) and male (n = 66) college students, predominantly Caucasian ranging in age from 18 to 57 years, provided their gender and age perceptions for 58 jobs. Although the two concepts have not been clearly distinguished in the literature, they are conceptually and (as found here) empirically distinct. The important roles of current incumbents, suitability, and job attribute perceptions for discrimination research are presented.