Compliance with homework to employ self-instructions in controlling ice water pain: an analogue to counseling

40 women were taught to use self-statements to cope with pain caused by ice water. The trainer used four different strategies for reassigning a homework task of using self-statements to cope with pain produced by immersing one hand in ice water. The strategies were equally effective in eliciting compliance with the homework assignment.     

Temporal proximity and reinforcement sensitivity in multiple schedules

Distributions of reinforcers between two components of multiple variable-interval schedules were varied over a number of conditions. Sensitivity to reinforcement, measured by the exponent of the power function relating ratios of responses in the two components to ratios of reinforcers obtained in the components, did not differ between conditions with 15-s or 60-s component durations. The failure to demonstrate the “short-component effect,” where sensitivity is high for short components, was consistent with reanalysis of previous data. With 60-s components, sensitivity to reinforcement decreased systematically with time since component alternation, and was higher in the first 15-s subinterval of the 60-s component than for the component whose total duration was 15 s. Varying component duration and sampling behavior at different times since component transition may not be equivalent ways of examining the effects of average temporal distance between components.     

Development of learning-disabled and normally achieving children's causal attributions

The causal attributions of learning-disabled (LD) and normally achieving (NA) children in grades 3 through 8 were compared. Attributions were measured by two scales that asked children to attribute hypothetical academic failure situations to factors that were either within (e.g., insufficient effort) or beyond (e.g., insufficient ability, blaming others) their control. Consistent with a learned helplessness hypothesis, LD girls, regardless of age, were more likely than NA children to attribute their failures to factors beyond their control. In contrast, LD boys' explanations for their failures paralleled those of NA children. That is, with increasing age the LD boys were more likely to attribute their failures to insufficient effort. Explanations and implications of sex differences in developmental patterns of LD children's causal attributions are discussed.The authors wish to thank Ruth Dusseault and Betty Wallace for their help in conducting this research. We also wish to thank the teachers, children, and administrators from the Leon County Schools for their cooperation.     

Autonomy as a Source of Pro-social Influence Among Incarcerated Adolescents1

Previous research has found that greater autonomy for incarcerated adolescents is associated with pro-social outcomes. The present paper interprets the pro-social impact of autonomy in terms of three established lines of research in social psychology: leadership style, coercive social control, and reactance. In addition, it attempts to clarify whether autonomy in this setting has a direct influence on residents' values or an indirect influence resulting from an increase in residents' acceptance of the treatment goals. Data were collected by questionnaires administered to 434 residents and 156 staff members at four residential institutions for adjudicated adolescents. The data were analyzed using a structural equation model with unobserved variables (LISREL). A model positing both direct and indirect influences of autonomy fit the data very well. Autonomy contributed to pro-social values both through greater acceptance of the treatment goals as well as through a direct influence on values.     

Regional cerebral glucose metabolism in aphemia: A case report

Local cerebral metabolism was determined in a patient suffering aphemia following cerebral infarction using the 18FDG-PET technique. The syndrome was characterized by profound ictal nonfluency with sparing of other language functions. Speech subsequently improved so that content and grammar were appropriate but mild dysprosody persisted. Conventional CT showed no lesion of the left hemisphere while PET revealed a discrete focus of hypometabolism on the left which partially resolved on serial studies. The metabolic lesion could be localized to the region of the inferior precentral gyrus and the adjacent subcortical space.     

Response selection strategies and realism of confidence judgments

Two studies were conducted to examine how response selection strategy is related to confidence ratings and to performance on general knowledge questions. In both studies subjects were asked to answer 80 general knowledge questions and to rate their confidence in the correctness of the answer selected. A pilot study, in which subjects thought aloud while answering general knowledge questions, was carried out to identify different response selection strategies. In the first study, 40 subjects were asked to indicate which of four strategies (immediate recognition, inference, intuition, or guessing) they used for selecting an answer. In Study 2, think aloud reports from 20 subjects were coded into the same four strategies. The distribution of strategies differed between the studies, but there were very similar relations among strategy, confidence, and correctness of answer in the two studies. Response selection strategy was related to correctness of answer when confidence was partialed out. More specifically, immediate recognition was associated with higher proportion correct than with the other strategies. It was also found that ratings of how difficult the knowledge questions were to fellow students of the subjects were on a much more realistic level than the confidence ratings were. It is concluded that people could improve their confidence judgments by taking into account (a) how difficult a question is to other people, and (b) the response selection strategy used for answering the question.     

Something amazing about the Peripatetic of Pallet: Abaelard's development of Boethius' account of conditional propositions

Mediaeval logicians inherited from Boethius an account of conditional propositions and the syllogisms which may be constructed using them. In the following paper it is shown that there are considerable difficulties with Boethius' account which arise from his failure to understand the nature of compound propositions and in particular to provide for their negation. Boethius suggests that there are two different conditions which may be imposed for the truth of a conditional proposition but he really gives no adequate account of how such propositions may be obtained. The true greatness of Peter Abaelard as a philosophical logician is revealed in what he is able to do with the material which he found in Boethius. It is shown that he developed a precise theory of conditionals giving an account of how true conditionals may be obtained and principles which may be used to reject others as false. Unlike Boethius Abaelard properly appreciates that conjunctions must be treated as logical units. Even he, however, falls victim to difficulties which arise when this connective is brought into contact with negation and the conditions which he lays down for the truth of a conditional.     

Flicker contrast sensitivity in normal and specifically disabled readers

Temporal contrast sensitivity for counterphase flicker was determined for specifically disabled and normal readers to investigate whether the two groups differ in the functioning of their transient systems. In experiment 1, temporal contrast sensitivity was measured over a range of temporal frequencies with a spatial frequency of 2 cycles deg-1. Disabled readers were less sensitive than the control subjects at all temporal frequencies. In experiment 2, temporal contrast sensitivity was measured at a temporal frequency of 20 Hz over a range of spatial frequencies. Disabled readers were less sensitive than the controls at all spatial frequencies, with the differences between the groups increasing as spatial frequency increased. Both these findings are interpreted as supporting the hypothesis of a transient-system deficit in the visual systems of disabled readers.