Sentence interference in the Stroop task

In two experiments on Stroop interference, we examined whether sentences can be processed without the intention of the reader. Participants named the ink colors in which words in sentences were printed, and the ink colors in which the same words, randomly arranged, were printed. In Experiment 1, sentences yielded longer response times (RTs) and more errors than did nonsentences, but only when they included words that were highly relevant to the color-naming task (i.e., color and color-related words). In Experiment 2, sentences yielded more errors than did nonsentences, and sentences in which the color words matched the set of ink colors yielded longer RTs than did nonsentences. The results indicate that sentence processing can be obligatory when the component words are highly relevant to the task.     

Derived Relational Responding As An Operant: The Effects Of Between-Session Feedback

The Psychological Record - Relational Frame Theory (RFT) views derived relational responding as an overarching operant class of behavior. One approach to the analysis of derived relations from the...     

Relocation and Well-Being in United Methodist Clergy and Their Spouses: What Pastoral Counselors Need to Know

The well-being of relocated, male Florida Annual Conference United Methodist clergy and clergy spouses (N = 124) was compared with that of nonrelocated male United Methodist clergy and clergy spouses (N = 153). Results revealed no significant differences in well-being between relocators and nonrelocators. Clergy spouses exhibited significantly lower well-being than did clergy. Perceptions of relocation, stress level, and coping resources were significant predictors of clergy well-being. However, only stress level and coping resources predicted spouse well-being. Qualitative analysis of participants' responses revealed that pastoral counselors should address issues such as grief, powerlessness, loneliness, and clergy family reluctance to seek counseling services.     

Detecting Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: The Role of Counselors

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a physical illness, the cause of which is unknown. Known also as chronic fatigue immune dysfunction syndrome and myalgic encepalomyelitis, the illness has a probable incidence of 2 to 3 per 1,000 among adults and adolescents and is seen also in children. Only a small minority of cases are diagnosed, and only 25% of those suffering from CFS suspect this as the diagnosis. For this reason, counselors often see persons with unsuspected cases and may play an important role in detecting and referring these clients appropriately. Case histories are used to illustrate how suspected cases of CFS can be distinguished from depression and other mental health conditions in counseling practice.     

Narcissistic Illusions in Self-Evaluations of Intelligence and Attractiveness

In this study we compared the ability of narcissism and self-esteem to predict positive illusions in self-evaluations of intelligence and physical attractiveness in a sample of 146 college students. Narcissism predicted both types of illusion for males and females; self-esteem predicted intelligence self-illusion for males. Both males and females overestimated their own intelligence, with males, but not females, also overestimating their attractiveness. Positive illusions for intelligence and attractiveness were correlated. Males showed greater positive illusions than females, with this effect at least partly attributable to observed gender differences in narcissism.     

Fewer reasons for staying alive when you are thinking of killing yourself: The brief reasons for living inventory

The Linehan Reasons for Living Inventory is a 48-item scale on which respondents rate how important each item would be for living if suicide were contemplated. The inventory possesses good psychometric properties and can distinguish suicidal from nonsuicidal people among shoppers, psychiatric inpatients, college students, and adolescents. As its length limits its utility in many institutional and screening settings, the purpose of this study was (1) to develop a brief form of the Reasons for Living Inventory appropriate for clinical use and (2) to examine the predictive validity of this brief measure, named the Brief Reasons for Living Inventory (BRFL), to distinguish suicidal from nonsuicidal prison inmates. Results indicate that the brief form was as good as either the Beck Depression Inventory or the Beck Hopelessness Scale at predicting suicidality in this population. Further study is needed to validate the BRFL with different institutionalized and other populations as well as to assess its ability to discriminate suicide ideators from those engaging in overt suicidal behavior.Support for this project was provided in part by the New York State Office of Mental Health Bureau of Forensic Services and the New York State Department of Correctional Services.     

Auditory induction: Reciprocal changes in alternating sounds

When portions of a sound are replaced by a potential masker, the missing fragments may be perceptually restored, resulting in apparent continuity of the interrupted signal. This phenomenon has been examined extensively by using pulsation threshold, auditory induction, and phonemic restoration paradigms in which two sounds, the inducer and the inducee, are alternated (ABABA ... ), and the conditions required for apparent continuity of the lower amplitude inducee are determined. Previous studies have generally neglected to examine concomitant changes produced in the inducing sound. Results from the present experiments have demonstrated decreases in the loudness of inducers using inducer/inducee pairs consisting of tone/tone and noise/noise, as well as the noise/speech pairs associated with phonemic restorations. Interestingly, reductions in inducer loudness occurred even when the inducee was heard as discontinuous, and these decreases in loudness were accompanied by graded increases in apparent duration of the inducee, contrary to the conventional view of auditory induction as an all-or-none phenomenon. Under some conditions, the reduced loudness of the inducer was coupled with a marked alteration in its timbre. Especially profound changes in the inducer quality occurred when the alternating stimuli were tones having the same frequency and differing only in intensity-it seems that following subtraction of components corresponding to the inducee, an anomalous auditory residue remained that did not correspond to the representation of a tone.     

Transfer of compound and component solution modes

The present experiment compares the shift performance of four groups on the following types of shift problems: a component problem following a previous component problem with a different relevant dimension, a component problem following a compound problem, a compound problem following a previous compound problem with a different relevant dimension, and a compound problem following a component problem. Facilitation of shift performance was found following prior solution of a problem of the same type either compound or component, while interference resulted from prior solution of the other type of problem. The shift effects are interpreted in terms of Levine’s (1974, 1975) transfer hypothesis and an extension of the attention theory of Zeaman and House (1963, 1974).     

Visual search in multicharacter arrays with and without gaps

Subjects searched through briefly presented arrays of letters in a controlled order, indicating quickly which of two possible targets had occurred. Some arrays contained gaps—three missing letters. Reaction time (RT) and accuracy were both improved by a gap after the target; improvement was less when the gap preceded the target. To account for these results, a new model is proposed, one which calls for overlapping processing of successive array items. This is not a “hybrid” model, but a third alternative between the two extremes of serial (zero overlap) and parallel (complete overlap). Quantified, the overlapping model generates U-shaped serial-position curves and produces RT predictions in good accord with our data from arrays with and without gaps. The predicted functions for RT vs. array size are concave upward; however, for arrays of five or less they are virtually linear and not very different in slope for positive and negative trials. Although this model is primarily designed for RT, with some additional assumptions it can be extended to accuracy results.     

The effects of visual similarity on proofreading for misspellings

In three experiments, subjects read prose passages and circled misspellings in them. The misspelled words were created by replacing a single letter with another one. The visual similarity between the correct letter and the one that was substituted for it increased the percentage of proofreading errors. The results suggest that proofreaders search through a visual representation of the text and that a hierarchical feature test is applied to this representation, according to which subjects give first priority to resolving letter envelope and second priority to discriminating additional visual features. A sophisticated-guessing decision rule is also implicated for the misspellings that do not alter letter envelope: Subjects are tolerant of missing letter features but are intolerant of additional features.