The “Flash” System: A Field Study of Altruism1

This study evaluated the effectiveness of an experimental automated highway-help system for stranded motorists (the Flash system). Direct and indirect helping behavior rates as a function of the race and sex of supposedly stranded drivers on the Flash-equipped highway were compared to helping rates on a comparable, non-Flash-equipped highway. The results indicated that the automated system produced (a) higher overall helping rates and (b) higher helping rates for white persons, with type of help (direct or indirect) interacting with confederate sex.     

The effect of verbal size information upon visual judgments of absolute distance

When an 0 views a blank triangle of light under completely reduced conditions, he is able to make use of verbally conveyed information about the size of this stimulus when he is attempting to judge the absolute distance of the stimulus. Although between-Os variance is rather large in this situation, group mean distance estimates are highly veridical. This is further evidence for the view that, when the 0 is given a retinal subtense, any kind of information about size enables him to make a judgment of absolute distance, just as information about distance enables him to make a judgment of absolute size.     

The stochastic model of mental testing theory and an application

An axiomatization of mental test theory is presented. The presentation deals explicitly with the following concepts: true score, parallel forms, reliability, validity, and combined test score.This project was supported by the Office of Naval Research under Contract N6onr 270-(20) and by the National Science Foundation, Grant NSF G-642. Work now continued under Nonr 1858-(150) and NSF G-22889.     

Variables determining the effects of delay in reinforcement,

Procedures were discovered for maintaining a small fixed-ratio performance under 24-hr delay in reinforcement, by appropriate manipulation of the length of delay, amount of food delivered, and size of the fixed ratio. Other experiments showed that (1) the parameters discovered in the first experiment could produce the same result without the complex history of the first procedures; (2) the same parameters of the delayed-reinforcement procedure could maintain an explicit chain of responses; (3) gradual increase in the delay in reinforcement from small to large values was not a necessary condition for achieving the major result, if large amounts of food were delivered as reinforcement and all of the behaviors were first under good control of the relevant stimuli with short delays.     

Reducing Causality to Transmission

The idea that causation can be reduced to transmission of an amount of some conserved quantity between events is spelled out and defended against important objections. Transmission is understood as a symmetrical relation of copresence in two distinct events. The actual asymmetry of causality has its origin in the asymmetrical character of certain irreversible physical processes and then spreads through the causal net. This conception is compatible with the possibility of backwards causation and with a causal theory of time. Genidentity, the persistence of concrete objects, can be given an explanation in causal terms. The transmission theory is shown to escape difficulties faced by two important alternative theories of causation: Salmon's (1984) Mark Transmission Theory and Dowe's (1992a) Conserved Quantities Theory.     

Distraction and time estimation

It is argued that events which occur during an interval of time which is being judged may be classified in terms of their effects on the alertness of the subject, and in terms of the degree to which they distract him from the task of detecting and processing time-relevant cues. A distracting task, defined by the number of arithmetical operations a subject was required to perform, was presented while reproductions of an interval were being made. The data support the prediction that the higher the level of distraction, the less time a subject will judge to have elapsed during an objective period.     

Evaluation of social competence training in the schools

A social competence program for high risk children is described and evaluated in this paper. Advanced undergraduates majoring in psychology used interpersonal problem-solving techniques to work with 32 maladapting first through third graders who were seen on a small group basis. The intervention program was conducted for 14 weeks. Compared to a control group of 32 children, results indicated that children in the program made siginficantly greater gains in classroom adjustment as rated by teachers. Additionally, socimetric status served as a criterion for evaluating program effectiveness. Results demonstrated that children who participated in the social competence training made significantly greater gains in peer acceptance as measured by a brief sociometric questionnaire than the controls. The implications of these findings and the methodological limitations of the study are discussed.     

Event-related potentials in a two-interval forced-choice detection task

In an attempt to elucidate the nature of the subject’s strategy in a two-interval forcedchoice auditory detection task, event-related potentials were studied at two intensities which yielded mean accuracies of 82% and 98%. Subjects reported the observation interval in which they judged the signal to be present and the confidence of the judgment. Principal components varimax analyses yielded four components: a CZ maximal P300, a Slow Wave, a slow negative shift, and a late negative component. The P300 amplitude findings suggest that different strategies are utilized for high-confidence and low-confidence detections. At high confidence, P300 amplitude is large for the observation interval in which the signal is presented, indicating a strategy involving serial independent detection. However, the P300 latency findings at high confidence suggest that absence of the signal in the first observation interval is nonetheless noted: P300 latency in response to signal presence is shorter for the second observation interval than for the first observation interval. At low confidence, P300 is small or absent for both observation intervals, indicating a deferred decision, presumably arrived at through comparison of the two percepts.     

Semantic facilitation across sensory modalities in the processing of individual words and sentences

The effect of semantic priming upon lexical decisions made for words in isolation (Experiment 1) and during sentence comprehension (Experiment 2) was investigated using a cross-modal lexical decision task. In Experiment 1, subjects made lexical decisions to both auditory and visual stimuli. Processing auditorily presented words facilitated subsequent lexical decisions on semantically related visual words. In Experiment 2, subjects comprehended auditorily presented sentences while simultaneously making lexical decisions for visually presented stimuli. Lexical decisions were facilitated when a visual word appeared immediately following a related word in the sentential material. Lexical decisions were also facilitated when the visual word appeared three syllables following closure of the clause containing the related material. Arguments are made for autonomy of semantic priming during sentence comprehension.     

The retinal reference of the tilt aftereffect

Day and Wade (1969) proposed that visual “normalization” and the visual tilt aftereffect depend upon the gravitational orientation of test and inducing figures and that the retina! orientation of these figures is irrelevant. Their failure to distinguish between “normalization” and aftereffect is pointed out, and an analysis of their experiment suggested that it could not yield data which would unambiguously support either the gravitational or the retinal viewpoint. An experiment was reported in which a tilt aftereffect was found to occur under conditions where inducing and test figures could not vary in gravitational orientation. It was concluded that retinal orientation is a sufficient factor in the tilt aftereffect situation; whether it is a necessary factor or whether gravitational orientation is also sufficient remains to be determined.