Semantic and imaginal factors in learning as related to age

Sixty subjects apiece from third and sixth grade populations were given a twelve-item paired-associate list to learn under either regular or imagery instructions. The paired associates were presented in sentences or phrases which represented varying degrees of semantic correspondence between study and test trials. It was found that the semantic manipulations influenced learning similarly in the two grades, while imagery instructions produced different effects at each grade level.     

Nicotinic-dopaminergic relationships and radial-arm maze performance in rats

Accurate performance on the radial-arm maze is dependent upon the integrity of nicotinic-cholinergic, muscarinic-cholinergic, and dopaminergic systems. Pharmacological blockade of these systems with mecamylamine, scopolamine, or haloperidol impairs choice accuracy in the maze. We have previously demonstrated that the performance deficit caused by muscarinic blockade is enhanced by coadministration of the nicotinic antagonist, mecamylamine, and is diminished by coadministration of the dopamine antagonist, haloperidol. In the present study, it was found that the choice accuracy deficit produced by nicotinic blockade is enhanced, not antagonized, by coadministration of haloperidol. Thus, although both nicotinic and muscarinic cholinergic systems are involved in radial-arm maze performance and antagonists of these receptors are additive in the deficits they cause, nicotinic and muscarinic interactions with dopaminergic systems are opposite in nature.     

Orienting versus learning instructions in children's free recall: New evidence

Ninety-six first graders were given a list of either words or pictures to process under three types of incidental orienting instructions (semantic, directed at list organization; semantic, directed at individual item characteristics; and physical) and an intentional-learning instruction. For pictures and words, list organizational instructions were the most effective, and were superior to intentional-learning instructions. In contrast, individual item-orienting instructions were not better than intentional-learning instructions on either list. Additionally, different patterns of instructional effects emerged on the two list types, which were interpreted with respect to both available data and contemporary processing theories.     

Videotaped simulated families as a tool in family therapy outcome research

Twenty-two therapists who had treated 57 families in brief conjoint family therapy under supervision responded to a videotaped simulated family as if they were treating it. Their responses were audiotaped and coded on a system devised for this study. Positive relationships were found between the ratings of expertise based on the coding system, and independent ratings of the treated families' satisfaction with treatment and the status of the presenting symptoms 6 months after termination. Videotaped simulated families are potentially useful as standardizable methods of revealing individual differences in therapists for family therapy outcome research.     

The operant conditioning of conversation

Human conversation is a natural place to begin the study of social responses. In a conversation, a number of individuals use one another's responses as cues for their own behavior. So long as a conversation is being held, the speakers must talk in some order. Four experiments were conducted to test whether differentially reinforcing a group of speakers can bring the order of speakers under experimental control. The results are all consistent with the hypothesis. The paper also devises and evaluates different procedures for studying conversational sequences and examines associated statistical problems.     

An exploratory analysis of sex differences in gossip

This study examined sex differences in the quantity, targets, tone, and topics of gossip in the conversations of 76 male and 120 female college students. Contrary to popular beliefs, results indicated that the gossip of men and women contained similarities as well as differences. The data revealed that women spent more time gossiping than men and that women were much more likely than men to gossip about close friends and family members. However, no significant sex differences were uncovered regarding the derogatory tone of gossip and men and women were found to gossip about many of the same topics.We are grateful to Karl Seman, Marilla Ross, Robin Ansher, and Jack Schmaly, who served as observers during the data-collection phase of the study, and to Richard Weiner, who conducted the statistical analysis. We also gratefully acknowledge the contributions made by Ralph L. Rosnow.     

A Differential Geometric Description of the Relationships among Perceptions

We present a differential geometric method for measuring and characterizing the perceptions of an observer of a continuum of stimuli. Because the method is not based on a model of perceptual mechanisms, it can potentially be applied to a wide variety of observers and to many types of visual and auditory stimuli. The observer is asked to identify which small transformation of one stimulus is perceived to be equivalent to a small transformation of a second stimulus, differing from the first stimulus by a third small transformation. The observer's identification of a number of such transformations can be used to calculate an affine connection on the stimulus manifold. This quantity describes how the observer encodes an evolving stimulus as a perceived sequence of "reference" transformations. This type of encoding is a multidimensional generalization of Fechner's method and reduces to his psychophysical scale when the stimulus manifold is one dimensional and the reference transformation is chosen to be a just noticeable difference. The intrinsic aspects of the nature of the observer's perceptions can be characterized by the curvature and torsion tensors derived from the connection. The multidimensional analogues of psychophysical scale functions exist if and only if these quantities vanish. Differences between the affine connections of two observers characterize differences between their perceptions of the same evolving stimuli. The affine connections of two observers can also be used to map a stimulus perceived by one observer onto another stimulus, perceived in the same way by the other observer. Unlike multidimensional scaling techniques, this method does not assume that the observer has a sense of distance (a metric) or that he/she can otherwise compare stimulus pairs that are oriented along perceptually different directions in the manifold. The method was used to measure the affine connections of observers of a dot moving on different background graphics; e.g., a blank screen, a grid, or two converging lines similar to those used to create the Ponzo illusion. The results comprise quantitative measurements of the background graphic's influence on each observer's perceptions of straightness, parallelism, and distance. The measurements demonstrate differences between the perceptions of the two observers. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.