Demographic influences in sensation seeking and expressions of sensation seeking in religion, smoking and driving habits

A large sample of readers of a popular psychology magazine took the Sensation Seeking Scale (form V) and filled out a personal data form. The information in the data form was used to examine the relationship between SSS scores and demographic and experience variables. Sex and age showed strong relationships with the SSS. Education and occupation of the subjects and their parents showed lesser relationships with the SSS and primarily in females. Non-believers in conventional religion and infrequent church-goers had higher SSS scores than those who identify with such religions and attend church regularly. Smokers had higher scores than non-smokers although the relationship with amount of smoking was not a linear one. Driving habits of speeding related strongly to sensation seeking in a linear fashion.     

How much help do repeated presentations give to recognition processes?

A recent experiment by Haber and Hershenson (1965) had shown that in a recognition task one long look at a stimulus was always superior to two or more shorter looks summing to the same total presentation time. In order to explore this more fully and to account for opposite results in a different type of recognition task, as well as in a serial learning task, an improved replication of the earlier study was carried out using very short durations and single letters as stimuli. The same non-reciprocity was found, again strongly favoring duration over repetition as a determinant of clarity of a percept, even though repetition alone was also shown to be a significant independent variable. As a subsidiary finding, an error analysis showed that when a letter was misnamed it was nearly always confused with one that looked like it rather than one that sounded like it. Some discussion was offered as to the role of an auditory information storage in low memory load tasks such as this one, as well as some general implications for information processing analyses of the non-reciprocity of duration and repetition.     

Individual differences in phenomenological experience: states of consciousness as a function of absorption

State manifestations of the trait of absorption--a trait associated with differential responsivity to hypnosis, meditation, marijuana intoxification, and electromyograph (EMG) biofeedback--were assessed to determine (a) if absorption correlates with various (sub)dimensions of phenomenological experience, and (b) if individuals of differing absorption ability experience different states of consciousness. In two experiments 249 and 304 participants completed Tellegen's absorption scale and experienced several stimulus conditions. Each condition's phenomenological state was assessed by means of a retrospective self-report questionnaire and quantified in terms of intensity and pattern parameters. The results indicated that absorption correlated with increased and more vivid imagery, inward and absorbed attention, and positive affect; decreased self-awareness; and increased alterations in state of consciousness and various aspects of subjective experience. In addition, individuals of high absorption ability, relative to lows, experienced a different state of consciousness during ordinary, waking consciousness that became an altered state with eye closure and an hypnoticlike induction. The usefulness of the results for understanding altered-state induced procedures such as hypnosis is discussed.     

Developmental changes in face processing: results from multidimensional scaling

Multidimensional scaling procedures were used to investigate developmental changes in the ability to process previously unfamiliar faces. Eighty male subjects, aged 7, 9, 12, or adult, rated the similarity of pairs of faces. The faces were presented to subjects in either the upright or the inverted orientation. Multidimensional scaling analyses suggest that subjects of all ages use similar information in judging the similarity of faces. However, for upright faces, individual subjects under age 10 seem to use fewer features at a time. The results argue against a qualitative shift in face processing at age 10, and suggest that the improvement in face recognition ability noted at this age is due at least in part to an increased ability to consider more features simultaneously.