A test of the self-perception explanation of the effects of rewards on intrinsic interest

An experiment was conducted to test the proposition that rewards undermine or enhance intrinsic interest in a task to the extent that individuals interpret their behavior as being motivated by the reward. It was predicted that when subjects were denied the opportunity to develop and confirm this attribution, rewards would not produce an undermining effect, but rather would enhance dispositions and behavior. Subjects were recruited to evaluate a new sugar-free soft drink. Two levels of incentives (reward-no reward), two levels of examination (opportunity-no opportunity), and three levels of outcome (good-neutral-poor) were employed. The results support the prediction that an incentive's effect depends on the examination opportunity. In the examination condition, rewarded subjects attributed their behavior more to external factors than did unrewarded subjects, but gave more negative product evaluations only after tasting it. In the no examination condition, there were no differences in the attributions made by rewarded and unrewarded subjects, and rewarded subjects were more positively disposed toward the product both before and after tasting it. These results are explained as a consequence of two properties of rewards, enhancement through reinforcement and undermining through discounting, and of hypothesis-testing processes.     

Interaction of genetics and separation in canine hyperkinesis and in differential responses to amphetamine

A model of childhood hyperkinesis, using the Telomian-beagle hybrid dog, is described, demonstrating the interactions of genetics and separation in the development of this syndrome and in the favorable responses of some of these dogs to amphetamine. This work represents the collaboration of three laboratories, utilizing chiefly methods of inhibitory training. Inducing separation distress enhanced the resistance to inhibitory training and the favorable responses to amphetamine.     

Loudness and loudness discrimination

A model is developed which holds that pure-tone intensity discrimination and suprathreshold loudness judgments are based on the same sensory representation. In this model, loudness is a power function of sound intensity. When two tones are presented sequentially, each gives rise to a loudness value along the sensory continuum. In intensity-discrimination experiments, threshold is reached when the loudness difference between the tones exceeds a criterial value. For suprathreshold presentations of tone pairs, judgments of loudness differences are based on the loudness difference between the two tones. The model is shown to accord well with data from both classes of experiments.     

The role of proprioception in the perception and control of human movement: Toward a theoretical reassessment

The theoretical role of proprioception in the perception and control of human movement is elusive because of the obvious inability to manipulate experimentally the various receptive systems. Individuals who have had the metacarpophalangeal joint and joint capsule removed and replaced with silastic inserts afford a unique opportunity to evaluate a principal source of proprioception, namely, slowly adapting joint afferents. In a set of experiments, we show that such individuals show no deficits in finger localization following joint replacement. We take this and other complementary findings as a preliminary basis for proposing a dynamic rather than kinematic account of movement production. In addition, we provide a reconceptualization of the function of proprioceptive information in the CNS. Our arguments focus on proprioceptive inputs as tuning or modulating interneuronal pools rather than providing dimension-pecific information to the brain, as is commonly assumed.     

An investigation of the arousal model of interpersonal intimacy

In a study designed to test Patterson's arousal model of nonverbal intimacy, the heartrate, gaze, smiles, body orientation, and body lean of each of 40 female subjects who interacted with an accomplice were measured. Within a factorial design, subjects were induced to view more or less favorably the accomplice, who subsequently increased or maintained the same level of nonverbal immediacy as she did in an earlier session. It was hypothesized that (1) an increase in the accomplice's immediacy would effect an increase in subjects' arousal (heartrate) which, in turn, (2) would lead to either reciprocal or compensatory nonverbal adjustments by subjects, depending on whether they viewed the accomplice more or less favorably, respectively. The results supported the first but not the second hypothesis. However, interpretation of the results suggests, nevertheless, that they may be consistent with the arousal model.     

A test of the hypothesis that Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient is the same for two tests administered to the same sample

In measurement studies the researcher may wish to test the hypothesis that Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient is the same for two measurement procedures. A statistical test exists for independent samples of subjects. In this paper three procedures are developed for the situation in which the coefficients are determined from the same sample. All three procedures are computationally simple and give tight control of Type I error when the sample size is 50 or greater.The author is indebted to Jerry S. Gilmer for development of the computer programs used in this study.     

Incorporating inferences in narrative representations: A study of how and why

Four experiments examined the conceptual organization of narrative passages and the extent to which these representations were explanatory in a variety of experimental tasks. The conceptual representation of a passage consisted of a graph of labeled nodes and labeled, directed arcs which were adopted from the Conceptual Dependency Theory. These representations included both explicitly stated information and inferences which had been empirically extracted by a question-answering procedure. Symbolic procedures for answering how- and why-questions were also delineated. The conceptual representations and the symbolic procedures that operate on these representations together accounted for 91% of the answers generated from question-answering protocols in Experiment 1, and also the rated quality of specific answers to specific questions in Experiment 2. Experiments 3 and 4 supported the hypothesis that structural properties of the representations can predict recall of explicitly stated nodes and verification ratings of inference nodes. The results provide encouraging support for the proposed graphic representations and also for the use of question-answering protocols in uncovering prose inferences.