The relationship between personality, approach to learning and academic performance

This study considers the relationship between students' approaches to learning, as measured by a short-form of Entwistle and Tait's (1995) Revised Approaches to Studying Inventory (RASI), the Big Five personality factors, as measured by Cattell's 16PFi, and the background variables of age, gender and prior educational achievement and academic performance. Subjects were 146 social science undergraduate students at a university in Scotland. Structural equation modelling identifies the Big Five personality factor scores account for between 22.7% and 43.6% of the variance across scores on the three approach to learning dimensions. Four of the Big Five personality factors and the three approach to learning dimensions were found to be poor predictors of academic performance. A linear regression analysis with academic performance as the dependent variable and age, prior educational attainment and conscientiousness as independent variables, accounted for 24.1% of the variance in performance. Our investigation suggests approach to learning is a subset of personality. However, we conclude it makes sense to measure these two groups of variables separately in educational settings.     

Perceptual masking: Peripheral vs central factors

Perceptual masking was studied under binocular and dichoptic conditions in order to separate peripheral and central interference effects. Under binocular conditions, when the test flash (TF) and the blanking flash (BF) fell on both retinas, both retroactive and proactive masking were demonstrated. Under dichoptic conditions, when the TF fell on one eye and the BF on the other eye, thus eliminating opportunity for intraretinal interference, there was partial retroactive perceptual masking and no proactive masking. These results suggest that binocular proactive masking is due to peripheral light adaptation, that binocular retroactive masking is due to both peripheral and central effects, and that dichoptic masking is due solely to central retrochiasmal interference. It is proposed that dichoptic retroactive perceptual masking affords a method of investigating central perception time, i.e., the time to consolidate a perceptual experience.     

Commentary: The role of intrapersonal psychological variables in academic school learning

Intellectual abilities may contribute up to 25% of the variance in measures of academic school learning. However, the role of intrapersonal variables other than cognitive ability (personality traits, motivational dynamic factors, transitory emotional states) has usually been considered as fairly trivial. Past research, to the contrary, suggests that under stressful conditions, the relative contribution of such intrapersonal factors may even become predominant in influencing achievement. When analyses are based on change scores rather than single-occasion measures (which include trait contamination variance), the influence of emotional states on learning is shown to be very significant indeed.     

Hierarchical attention in discriminating objects at different levels of specificity

An implicit assumption of studies in the attentional literature has been that global and local levels of attention are involved in object recognition. To investigate this assumption, a divided attention task was used in which hierarchical figures were presented to prime the subsequent discrimination of target objects at different levels of category identity (basic and subordinate). Target objects were identified among distractor objects that varied in their degree of visual similarity to the targets. Hierarchical figures were also presented at different sizes and as individual global and local elements in order to investigate whether attention-priming effects on object discrimination were due to grouping/parsing operations or spatial extent. The results showed that local processing primed subordinate object discriminations when the objects were visually similar. Global processing primed basic object discriminations, regardless of the similarity of the distractors, and subordinate object discriminations when the objects were visually dissimilar. It was proposed that global and local processing aids the selection of perceptual attributes of objects that are diagnostic for recognition and that selection is based on two mechanisms: spatial extent and grouping/parsing operations.     

A contribution to the study of phenomenal causation

In his studies of the perception of causality, Michotte describes a number of “impressions” concomitant with precisely defined experimental conditions, of which “Launching” and “Triggering” are two of the most important. Two major factors influencing the nature of the impressions are the relative speeds of the two rectangles representing objects participating in dynamic inter-relationships, and the length of path of the more passive of the two objects. This investigation was an attempt to discover the quantitative relationships obtaining between these two independent variables and the dependent variable of the subjects' responses to the experimental conditions.     

Effects of Irrelevant Sounds on Phonological Coding in Reading Comprehension and Short term Memory

The effects of irrelevant sounds on reading comprehension and short-term memory were studied in two experiments. In Experiment 1, adults judged the acceptability of written sentences during irrelevent speech, accompanied and unaccompanied singing, instrumental music, and in silence. Sentences varied in syntactic complexity: Simple sentences contained a right-branching relative clause ( The applause pleased the woman that gave the speech ) and syntactically complex sentences included a centre-embedded relative clause ( The hay that the farmer stored fed the hungry animals ). Unacceptable sentences either sounded acceptable ( The dog chased the cat that eight up all his food ) or did not ( The man praised the child that sight up his spinach ). Decision accuracy was impaired by syntactic complexity but not by irrelevant sounds. Phonological coding was indicated by increased errors on unacceptable sentences that sounded correct. These error rates were unaffected by irrelevant sounds. Experiment 2 examined effects of irrelevant sounds on ordered recall of phonologically similar and dissimilar word lists. Phonological similarity impaired recall. Irrelevant speech reduced recall but did not interact with phonological similarity. The results of these experiments question assumptions about the relationship between speech input and phonological coding in reading and the short-term store.     

Is schizophrenia what it was? A re-analysis of Kraeplin's and Bleuler's population

It has been noted that the term "schizophrenia" is now applied to a group in many ways dissimilar to Emil Kraepelin's cases of dementia praecox and Eugene Bleuler's of schizophrenia. No detailed explanation has been offered for the difference. This article offers evidence that Kraepelin's and Bleuler's concepts were derived from a population largely suffering from organic disorders including the Parkinsonian sequelae of encephalitis lethargica; it describes the conceptual confusion which followed the introduction of the concept of post-encephalitic Parkinsonism and discusses some implications for the modern concept of schizophrenia. It is suggested that the differences between earlier and later groups of schizophrenics may be accounted for by the decline in prevalence of post-encephalitic Parkinsonism and of the neurological and behavioral sequelae of other diseases, and by the parallel unsystematic development of the concept of schizophrenia.     

Evaluating a treatment without extinction for elopement maintained by access to stereotypy

Elopement is a common and potentially dangerous form of problem behavior. Results of a functional analysis found that the elopement of a child with autism was maintained by access to stereotypy in the form of door play. We implemented functional communication training and contingency-based delays dependent on the absence of elopement and increased the amount of time the participant waited prior to engaging in stereotypy. We also conducted treatment-extension probes, with the participant waiting up to 10 min without elopement.