Effects of visual familiarity on “same” and “different” decision processes

An experiment was conducted in which subjects matched upper and lower case versions of well-known abbreviations, such as BBC and etc, and meaningless controls. “Same” RT showed a familiarity effect for upper case versions of abbreviations such as BBC and GPO, but not for the lower case versions bbc and gpo. The converse did not occur for abbreviations such as etc, which were thought to occur most frequently in lower case. The “different” RT was inhibited by familiarity, with pairs such as IBM GPO being classified less rapidly than their lower case versions or controls. These effects occurred for subjects instructed to report “No” for “same” displays and “Yes” for “different” displays as well as for subjects given a conventional decision-report assignment. Some implications of these results for an account of the manner in which familiarity affects graphemic comparison processes are considered.     

Memory for music

Subjects created imaginal interpretations of classical music passages in accordance with themes which were either concrete and comprehensible or abstract and difficult to comprehend. Recognition memory for the musical passages was found to be superior in the former condition. The results support the hypothesis that meaningful interpretation of stimulus material is a major determinant of memory accuracy. The implications of the results for comparisons of music and language are also discussed.     

Comparative evaluation of the Job Club program with welfare recipients

About 1000 WIN welfare clients were selected in five cities: Harlem, New Brunswick, Milwaukee, Wichita, and Tacoma, and half were randomly assigned to the Job Club program. Of the continuing clients, 87% of the Job Club sample obtained jobs vs 59% of the Control sample at the 12-month follow-up and 80 vs 48% at 6 months. The Job Club was more effective in each of the five cities, for men and women, for high school graduates or dropouts, for blacks, whites, and Spanish, for handicapped or nonhandicapped, veterans or nonveterans, the young and the older, and for those required to participate as well as those who volunteered. The jobs obtained by the Job Club clients were comparable to the Control clients' jobs in terms of mean salary, full-time status, and type of job, and were more likely to be enduring, nonsubsidized, and obtained by the job-seeker's own efforts. Job Club members obtained employment in a median of six sessions (mean of 11); 90% obtained jobs within 23 sessions. Follow-up questionnaire data indicated comparable job retention in the two samples but slightly greater advancement and job satisfaction for the Job Club clients. The method appears to assure employment to virtually all participating welfare clients.     

Violation of a Spacing Norm in High Social Density

A field experiment investigated violation of the spacing norm which keeps distance between people in a particular type of crowding, high social density, when the number of people in an area is large but space is not necessarily restricted. The proportion of people passing a drinking fountain who drank from the fountain was observed in conditions of high and low social density and, for each of these densities, when a confederate stood one foot from the fountain and when no one stood near the fountain. Three hundred passersby were observed in each of the four conditions. The observations supported the conclusion that the spacing norm was followed in low social density ( p <.01) but violated under conditions of high social density for reasons other than lack of space. Interpretation focused on several concomitants of high social density, especially excessive social stimulation, and the accompanying tendencies to attribute less of the usual social meanings to people and honor fewer of their expectations.     

Fear of Success,Need Achievement,and Fear of Failure: A factor analytic study

Several tests of Fear of Success (FOS), Fear of Failure (FOF), and Need Achievement (nAch), plus Taylor's Manifest Anxiety Scale and a social desirability scale were administered to 104 males and 101 females. FOS, FOF, and nAch did not show factor validity. Results for predictive validity were also poor. Anxiety defined the first factor in the factor analysis. All first-factor tests negatively predicted female grade point average and American College Test scores. All the first-factor tests showed sex differences, with females scoring higher. A clarifying role for anxiety in the study of sex differences in achievement is indicated.     

A.R. Luria's role in the development of soviet psychology

Summary A.R. Luria is one of the most outstanding Soviet psychologists. He played a great role in the development of Soviet psychology and in the formulation of psychological problems on the basis of dialectical materialism. Together with L.S. Vygotskij and A.N. Leont'ev, he put forward a theory of the socio-historical genesis of higher, specifically human, mental functions. Luria carried out numerous investigations into the ontogenetic and historical development of these functions, as well as their disturbance with local brain lesions. As the founder, in the Soviet Union, of the new discipline of neuropsychology, he made a very significant contribution to the study of the cerebral mechanisms of mental activity.Originally published in Voprosy Psichologii 28 (4), 106–115 (1978), and translated by E. Scheerer. The translator gratefully acknowledges the help of Eunice and Josef Broek and Sonia Argyle     

Encoding specificity and modality effects in episodic memory

Summary A modified Brown-Peterson paradigm was employed to determine the extent to which proactive interference effects of a sensory nature would influence the occurrence of sensory encoding specificity effects in episodic memory. Subjects presented with an auditory or a visual study list of five to-be-remembered (TBR) words engaged in either an auditory or a visual arithmetic distractor task for 30 s, and then received the first word in the study list as an auditory or visual intralist retrieval cue or received no cue. Presentation of the intralist retrieval cue in the modality of the study list enhanced the effectiveness of the retrieval cue, whereas presentation of the retrieval cue in the modality of the distractor task decreased the effectiveness of the retrieval cue. Sensory encoding specificity effects were largest when the distractor task occurred in the modality opposite to the modality in which both the study list and the retrieval cue were presented.     

Avoiding Counselor Burnout Through Role Renewal

Counselor burnout has become a concern for the counseling profession. This article focuses on avoiding counselor burnout through role renewal and makes generic role renewal recommendations for the counselor facing the possibility of burnout.     

The visual accommodation response during concurrent mental activity

Concurrent mental activity seems to be a significant, nonvisual factor affecting the human accommodation response. Two experiments were conducted to determine the direction and magnitude of this accommodation response. Experiment 1 employed a concurrent, written backwards counting task. Experiment 2 employed a concurrent, mental imagery task of “thinking near” and “thinking far.” In both experiments, the concurrent secondary task effected a cumulative accommodative shift toward the visual far point of from .25 to .75 diopter away from a near (3.0 diopter) target. This accommodative shift was observed only in the presence of a stimulus field and not in open-loop (analogous to empty-field) conditions. In addition, a long-term instability in the open-loop method of obtaining the dark focus was observed. Similarities between this accommodative shift and the pupillary response are noted. The accommodation response is discussed in relationship to both an attention-sharing and an involuntary autonomic response model.     

A revised list of Spanish translations of operant terminology

The experimental analysis of behavior has grown enormously in Latin America within the last decade. This paper offers an updating revision of suggested Spanish translations of operant expressions.