Perceived motivational arousal as a mediator of the magnitude of goal valence

Two experiments were conducted to test the proposition that goal valence is a direct function of perceived motivational tension. In the first, subjects read short passages that were either erotic (high excitatory potential/positive affect), violent (high excitatory potential/negative effect), or educational (low excitatory potential/positive affect) just prior to being confronted with an avoidance motivational circumstance. It was predicted that once subjects were in the avoidance situation, residual arousal from the high excitement passages would be interpreted motivationally and would result in an enhanced (negative) valence of the outcome being avoided. Passage affect was expected to have no impact upon subjects' perception of the potential negative outcome. Results confirmed both expectations. Because of a weak arousal manipulation check in the violent passage condition, and the possibility that the results could potentially be explained in terms of misattribution of fear, the second experiment was conducted. The results of that study replicated the primary findings in Experiment 1, showed stronger evidence of arousal elicited by the violent passage, and revealed no significant differences in fear. Theoretical implications are discussed.     

Pictorial similarity judgments and the organization of visual memory in the rhesus monkey

The organization of visual memory for pictures was studied in the rhesus monkey. Two monkeys were tested in a same/different task in which sequentially presented pictures were compared to each other in a pair-wise fashion. The resulting confusion matrixes were analyzed using a multidimensional scaling procedure to obtain two- and three-dimensional graphic representations of the stimulus space. In Experiment 1, the monkeys' confusion errors caused pictures of human and rhesus monkey faces to fall in the same region of multidimensional space, which suggested that the monkeys categorized facial stimuli. A similar effect was found for pictures of different types of fruit. Experiment 2 replicated the categorization of faces with a more diverse collection of human and nonhuman primate faces. Experiment 3 explored the fruit category by varying stimulus attributes orthogonally. The results from this experiment showed that both monkeys encoded the pictures in this category by type of fruit (apples or grapes) and color (red or yellow). Taken together, these studies indicate that rhesus monkeys will treat some classes of pictorial stimuli categorically in visual memory.     

Role strain among school psychologists in the midwest

Recent studies of job burnout in numerous work settings, as well as studies showing discrepancies between the real and ideal work functions of school psychologists, share the possible interpretation that they involve role conflict as a contributing factor. In 1971, Lyons demonstrated significant relationships between role clarity and job-related tension, propensity to leave, satisfaction and turnover in a sample of nursers. These correlations were particularly strong for nurses high in need for clarity. The present study tested the generality of some of Lyons' findings in a sample of school psychologists. Job-related tension and propensity to leave the job were more highly correlated for those psychologists high in need for clarity than for those who were low. Correlations between other variables were also similar to Lyons' results, including the low relationships of propensity to leave and tension with need for clarity. Neither tension nor propensity to leave were related to organizational size or to respondent characteristics (age, sex, tenure, etc.). The involvement of conflicting expectations and individual variables in creating and responding to role strain are discussed.     

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.     

The MRC psycholinguistic database

This paper describes a computerised database of psycholinguistic information. Semantic, syntactic, phonological and orthographic information about some or all of the 98,538 words in the database is accessible, by using a specially-written and very simple programming language. Word-association data are also included in the database. Some examples are given of the use of the database for selection of stimuli to be used in psycholinguistic experimentation or linguistic research.     

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.     

Sentence retention and transformation theory

The number of words recalled in addition to a sentence can be used to measure the amount of space a sentence occupies in immediate memory. Generally an active sentence (K) requires less space in memory than a passive negative sentence (PN). But in the present experiments it was found that when subjects were presented with a block of sentences of only one syntactic form, there was no longer a difference in the amount of space needed to store K and PN sentences. However, the difference between K and PN reappeared when the tense of the verb in successive sentences was varied, even though the material was still presented in a block of either all K or all PN sentences.

These results were interpreted as suggesting that subjects were remembering words and phrases from each sentence rather than deriving kernal strings and remembering transformation tags.     

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.     

Persuasion,reactance, and judgments of interpersonal appeal

Female undergraduates were or were not exposed to an opinion statement that threatened to a greater or lesser degree their freedom to make an independent assessment of the relative attractiveness of two males. Measures of perceived attractiveness and choice indicated a persuasion effect among subjects exposed to the mild statement and contrary opinions indicative of reactance among subjects exposed to the strong statement.     

Learning mechanisms in matching to sample.

A model system and an experiment on early learning and decision processes in matching-to-sample and oddity-from-sample tasks are presented. The model system is based, in part, on videotaped records of pigeons' looking responses before they chose 1 of 2 comparison stimuli. In order to see the wavelength stimuli recessed behind the pecking keys, the pigeons had to move in front of them. Although there were slight increases in the acceptance probability with switches between the stimuli before a choice response, the overall decision strategy was close to a Markov choice process in which choice proportions could be predicted by the product of each rejection probability and the final acceptance probability. Learning involved learning to discriminate rather than learning to adopt a stricter criterion for an acceptable sample match.