Reactions to Patients' Self-or Chance-Blaming Attributions for Illnesses Having Varying Life-style Involvement

The effects of the perceived accuracy of attributions of self blame and chance blame were examined in the context of health care. Health practitioners ( N = 147) rated interviews in which patients made self-or chance-blaming attributions for diseases with high (heart attack, stroke), or low (cancer, arthritis) life-style involvement, or acidental injuries. Three discriminant analyses yielded p < .001. Self-blaming heart and stroke patients were rated as coping better and acting more appropriately and typically than chance blamers. Other self blamers were rated as more depressed, poorly adjusted, coping poorly, not accepting disability, needing counselling and information. Additionally, self-blaming accident victims were judged as more dependent, less likeable, and having poorer prognoses than chance blamers. Realistic self blame for life-style diseases did not lead to victimization, but other self-blaming patients were stigmatized and the adaptiveness of self blame as a coping strategy was unrecognized.     

Cognitive dissonance as a mechanism in vocational decision processes

This study examined changes in cognitive-dissonance-related variables during the professional training period. Differences in levels and change in satisfaction with career choice, importance of career, certainty of career decision, self-occupational perceptions, general attitude toward career, time since career decision, and past experience were observed when students who left a collegiate professional training program before program completion were compared with those who remained in the program. Data supports the validity of D. Hershenson and R. Roth's (1966, Journal of Counseling Psychology, 13, 368–370) and V. Harren's (1979, Journal of Vocational Behavior, 14, 119–133) theoretical models of vocational decision and the Assessment of Career Decision Making scale.     

Non-Modality Specific Speech Coding: The Processing Of Lip-Read Information

Two experiments investigated the nature of the code in which lip-read speech is processed. In Experiment 1 subjects repeated words, presented with lip-read and masked auditory components out of synchrony by 600 ms. In one condition the lip-read input preceded the auditory input, and in the second condition the auditory input preceded the lip-read input. Direction of the modality lead did not affect the accuracy of report. Unlike auditory/graphic letter matching (Wood, 1974), the processing code used to match lip-read and auditory stimuli is insensitive to the temporal ordering of the input modalities. In Experiment 2, subjects were presented with two types of lists of colour names: in one list some words were heard, and some read; the other list consisted of heard and lip-read words. When asked to recall words from only one type of input presentation, subjects confused lip-read and heard words more frequently than they confused heard and read words. The results indicate that lip-read and heard speech share a common, non-modality specific, processing stage that excludes graphically presented phonological information.     

Metaphors do not use associations between concepts,they are used to create them

Does the interpretability and aptness of a metaphor depend on prior existing associative relations between the metaphor topic and vehicle? Lexical decision latencies for pairs of words drawn from apt, comprehensible metaphors were no faster than latencies for randomly paired words. In contrast, lexical decision latencies for associatively related word pairs were faster than latencies for randomly paired words. These data suggest that good metaphors do not use preexisting associations to achieve their effects. Instead, we argue tht people use metaphors to create new relations between concepts. Implications for a theory of metaphor comprehension are discussed.     

A rejoinder to Pribram

Summary Contrary to Pribram's assertion, Köhler proposed a functional isomorphism between brain processes and phenomenal events; the sense organs are not implied in the isomorphism principle. With respect to the facts of the Köhler-Pribram collaboration reliance on the written record is recommended.     

On the measurement of storage and retrieval contributions to memory development

We report two free recall experiments and a cued recall experiment in which a new two-stage model was used to obtain numerical measurements of age changes in various aspects of storage and retrieval. The subjects in all three experiments were 7-year-olds (second graders) and 11-year-olds (sixth graders). The major findings in the free recall experiment were that getting a trace into storage posed less of a problem for elementary schoolers than learning how to get it out on test trials, that retrieval development is more rapid during the elementary school years than storage development, and that the superiority of older children's storage and retrieval abilities tends to become more pronounced as learning progresses. A similar pattern of results was obtained under different conditions in the cued recall experiment.     

Integration of melody and text in memory for songs

Two experiments examined whether the memory representation for songs consists of independent or integrated components (melody and text). Subjects heard a serial presentation of excerpts from largely unfamiliar folksongs, followed by a recognition test. The test required subjects to recognize songs, melodies, or texts and consisted of five types of items: (a) exact songs heard in the presentation; (b) new songs; (c) old tunes with new words; (d) new tunes with old words; and (e) old tunes with old words of a different song from the same presentation (‘mismatch songs’). Experiment 1 supported the integration hypothesis: Subjects' recognition of components was higher in exact songs (a) than in songs with familiar but mismatched components (e). Melody recognition, in particular, was near chance unless the original words were present. Experiment 2 showed that this integration of melody and text occurred also across different performance renditions of a song and that it could not be eliminated by voluntary attention to the melody.