Does reward depletion influence spatial memory performance?

If spatial memory tasks are considered as foraging problems, it can be predicted that rats' difficulty in learning a win-stay task—revisiting part of a maze where food has recently been found—should be partly overcome if the food is not fully consumed at the first visit (nondepleted reward) rather than being all eaten (depleted reward). Three experiments confirmed and further analysed this result. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that it does not depend on the amount of food initially found; nor is win-stay performance affected by the amount of food actually eaten. Experiment 3 suggested that the effects of nondepleted reward are mainly due to the animals' being interrupted while eating, and very little to the fact that uneaten food is left behind. The results are discussed with regard to their implications for learning theory, and for the application of foraging theory to learning and memory experiments.     

The auditory recency advantage in longer term free recall is not enhanced by recalling prerecency items first

Gardiner and Gregg (1979) showed that in a free-recall paradigm in which each list word is embedded in a continuous stream of subject-vocalized distractor activity, recency recall was greater when the words were presented auditorily rather than visually. The experiment described here showed that this auditory advantage persisted even when list and distractor items were both spoken at a controlled pace by the experimenter, and that it was little influenced by instructions to give priority in recall either to the beginning or to the end of the list. These results strengthen the conclusion that this effect cannot be accommodated by any echoic memory theory and, because the effect was not enhanced when prerecency items were recalled first, demonstrate an additional difference between it and the somewhat similar auditory advantage found in immediate recall.     

Paid work,child care,and housework: A national survey of high school seniors' preferences for sharing responsibilities between husband and wife

A large national sample of high school seniors rated their preferences for the allocation of work and family duties within their own prospective marriages. The results indicate that many seniors favor half-time or full-time work for wives without children. On the other hand, the majority prefer that the mother of preschool children stay home, although half-time work is acceptable to many. Respondents who are male or White or did not have a working mother themselves are somewhat more conservative on these issues. Virtually all seniors view less than full-time employment by the husband as unacceptable. With regard to child care and housework, most seniors prefer equal sharing between the spouses. A comparison of four senior classes reveals a slight trend from 1976 to 1979 toward increased sharing of duties.     

A low-stress restraint procedure for EEG acquisition in awake rats

A restraint procedure was developed to reduce movement-related artifacts during the acquisition of EEG data from unanesthetized, unparalyzed rats. It combines the low-stress properties of a cloth restraint bag with the improved immobility of a rigid restraint device. The spontaneous behavior of the rat facilitates both the induction of and the subsequent release from restraint.     

Reconceptualizing of the overjustification effect: A template-matching approach

The paper reviews traditional attributional explanations for the over-justification effect in task motivation, isolates their weaknesses, and proposes an alternative account based on the notion that individuals process task information schematically. It is proposed that task information relating to motivation is interpreted by cognitive schema or “templates,” which identify tasks as being either instrumental or expressive in nature. When the expressive template is evoked, the task is perceived to be playlike and is experienced as inherently motivating. When the instrumental template is evoked, the task is perceived as a means to an end and task motivation results from the perceived value of the task for attaining intrinsic and/or extrinsic rewards. Structural characteristics of these templates are proposed. According to this account, overjustification effects occur when the perceived characteristics of tasks change such that the expressive template is replaced by the instrumental template and expressive motivation is transformed into instrumental motivation.     

Size invariance in curve tracing

Subjects decided whether two dots were on the same curve or on different curves in patterns consisting of two curves and two dots in displays that had an exposure duration of 200 msec or that remained in view until the subjects' response. The overall size of the patterns was varied by a factor of two. Furthermore, across experiments, we manipulated the predictability of the size of the pattern on a particular trial. On half of the trials, the two dots were on the same curve; across these trials, the distance between the dots, along the curve, was manipulated systematically while the Euclidean distance between the dots was held constant. On the other half of the trials, the two dots were on different curves. The time to respond same increased monotonically as curve distance between the dots increased, suggesting that subjects mentally traced the curve in order to perform the task. The absolute size of the pattern had little or no effect on the response times, indicating that it was curve distance relative to the overall pattern size, rather than absolute distance, that controlled response times. Furthermore, expectancies about pattern size had essentially no effect on performance. Taken together, the results suggest that the rate of tracing is determined by various stimulus properties that covary with the overall size of the pattern on which tracing takes place, such as the distance between the traced curve and nearby distractor curves, or the curvature of the traced curve.     

The job climate for women in traditionally male blue-collar occupations

Rapid growth has been observed in recent years in the number of women entering traditionally male blue-collar occupations, yet researchers have paid little attention to this pioneering group. The present study undertook a comparison of the job conditions of two groups of nontraditional women workers, tradeswomen (N=71), and transit workers (N=151); a third group, school secretaries (N=389), was studied as a comparison group of traditionally female workers. Results from a 16-page mail questionnaire revealed that women in traditionally male occupations encountered significantly more adverse working conditions than did their traditional counterparts, and, in addition, reported significantly less satisfaction and more stress at work. Tradeswomen were the most likely to experience sexual harassment and sex discrimination, and black tradeswomen to experience race discrimination. The degree of job satisfaction expressed by the secretaries was unexpected, since most evidence suggests that clerical workers lack autonomy, and encounter boredom and routinization on the job. These findings are discussed in terms of gender segregation and the need to focus future research efforts on specific occupational groups in order to make appropriate policy recommendations as well as to provide help for women in these jobs.This research was supported by grants from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (Grant No. 1 RO1 OH02162-01A1) and the College of Health and Human Development, The Pennsylvania State University. The authors wish to acknowledge the invaluable contributions of Patty Lambert, Ming Qi Wang, Mary Harmon, Joseph Vasey, Gina Jay, Darrell Harvey, and Haleh Rastegary.     

THE IMPACT OF ROLE STRESSORS AND PERSONAL RESOURCES ON THE STRESS EXPERIENCE OF PROFESSIONAL WOMEN

This study explored the contributions of role stressors and personal resources in predicting strain symptoms experienced by 117 professional women employed full-time in academia. Results of multiple regression analyses revealed that, while role stressors alone accounted for only a moderate amount of the variance in reported strain symptoms, 51 % of the variance was explained when both stressors and personal resources were combined. Womend, who experienced higher levels of personal control and social support as well as a greater number of roles occupied reported lower levels of strain symptoms. These results support the use of a transactional model of stress in future multiple role research.     

The fear potentiated startle effect

A differential conditioning study examined whether an acoustic startle probe, presented during extinction of an aversively conditioned visual stimulus, potentiated the reflex eyeblink response in humans and whether this potentiation varied with the change in affective valence of the conditioned stimulus. Sixty college students were randomly assigned to view a series of two slides, depicting either unpleasant/highly arousing, unpleasant/moderate arousing, neutral/calm, pleasant/moderate arousing or pleasant/highly arousing scenes and objects (duration: 8 sec). During preconditioning (8 trials) and extinction (24 trials) acoustic startle probes (white noise bursts [50 ms; 95 dBA] were administered during and between slide presentation). During acquisition (16 trials) CS+ was reinforced by an electric shock. Startle response magnitudes significantly increased from preconditioning to extinction and were substantially larger to CS+. Conditioned startle reflex augmentation linearly increased with the pleasantness of the slides. Furthermore, subjects showed a greater post-conditioning increase of judged aversiveness to slides that they had previously reported to be more pleasant, exactly paralleling the startle reflex results.