Dimensions of behavior in children with speech and language disorders

The behavioral symptoms of a population of children with speech and language disorders (with a mean age of approximately 6 years) were studied with a teacher and a parent questionnaire. A factor analysis produced similar factors for both questionnaires: Hyperactivity-Conduct, Affect, and Language. An Asocial factor was also found with the teacher questionnaire. The factors of this study were in good agreement with the general factors of Aggression and Withdrawal found in other quantitative studies. Mean factor score profiles were reported for this unique population of children.The authors would like to thank Dr. Donald Guthrie for his statistical consultation and Dr. Howard Grey for the use of his patient population.     

A twin study of personality and temperament during middle childhood

In a study of 105 same-sex twin pairs, ages 7 to 10 years, maternal ratings on 23 bipolar scales yielded six factors designated as compliant morality, applied cognitive, sociability, emotionality, tough-mindedness, and activity-distractibility. Analyses by twin pairs (68 identical, 37 fraternal) indicated that correlations for identical pairs were significantly higher than fraternal pairs on all but one factor: tough-mindedness. Profile analyses for the six factors indicated that the profiles of scores across the factors were more concordant for the identical twin pairs. Correlations obtained from the individual scales produced differences between the identical and fraternal twin pairs as well. Overall, the data suggested that several components and the total organization of those components of personality and temperament are genetically influenced.     

Overt expression of experimenter expectancies,interaction with subject expectancies,and performance on a psychomotor task

Subsequent to success or failure experience, 48 subjects attempted a psychomotor task in order to escape or avoid an aversive stimulus (tone). Their attempts at solving the task over 24 trials were made in the presence of subject-experimenters each of whom had expectancies instilled regarding the solution to the task. The job of the subject-experimenters was to “offer information” on every third trials as the subjects attempted to solve the task. It was hypothesized that the expectancies of the subject-experimenters would be communicated to the subjects via periodic comments, that these expectancies would differentially affect the subjects' performance on the task, and that prior experience on a similar task would differentially affect subjects' performances on the task. The results demonstrated that the expectancies instilled in the subject-experimenters were communicated and influenced the performances of subjects as predicted. It appears that consistency with respect to the expectancies communicated played a major role in producing significant effects. Prior experience failed to produce significant differences on task performance, a finding conflicting with that of D.S. Hiroto (Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1974, 102, 187–193). The results are discussed from the perspective of using the overt, explicit communication of expectancies as a means for exploring the illusive phenomenon of the experimenter expectancy effect.     

A reconstructive-processing interpretation of the recognition failure phenomenon

The generality of the recognition failure phenomenon was the primary basis for the present research. It was hypothesized that the phenomenon obtains whenever an insufficient degree of compatibility exists between the task demands at recognition and those present during study. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that, despite a recognition task that was incompatible to conditions of encoding, subjects could actively reconstruct aspects of the initial situation, and hence recognition failure was minimized. It was assumed that the stimulus material — categorized word pairs — facilitated this reconstructive process. Experiment 3 was designed specifically to examine further the reconstructive process as well as recognition failure. The results indicated that (a) the nature of this process could be mathematically predicted, and (b) subjects seldom failed to recognize words they recalled. The results of the present study strongly suggest an important boundary condition of the phenomenon of recognition failure. Moreover, Tulving and Wiseman's (1975) quadratic function could not predict accurately the obtained magnitude of recognition failure.     

Follow-up on welfare benefits received by Job Club clients

A follow-up was made of the welfare payments received by AFDC clients who had received job-finding counseling. At the 6th-month follow-up, welfare payments had been reduced by about one-half for the Job Club clients vs 15% for the control group.     

Incorporating inferences in narrative representations: A study of how and why

Four experiments examined the conceptual organization of narrative passages and the extent to which these representations were explanatory in a variety of experimental tasks. The conceptual representation of a passage consisted of a graph of labeled nodes and labeled, directed arcs which were adopted from the Conceptual Dependency Theory. These representations included both explicitly stated information and inferences which had been empirically extracted by a question-answering procedure. Symbolic procedures for answering how- and why-questions were also delineated. The conceptual representations and the symbolic procedures that operate on these representations together accounted for 91% of the answers generated from question-answering protocols in Experiment 1, and also the rated quality of specific answers to specific questions in Experiment 2. Experiments 3 and 4 supported the hypothesis that structural properties of the representations can predict recall of explicitly stated nodes and verification ratings of inference nodes. The results provide encouraging support for the proposed graphic representations and also for the use of question-answering protocols in uncovering prose inferences.     

Form and content in the conjoint treatment of sexual dysfunction: A controlled study

Forty eight couples with impotence, anorgasmia or loss of libido were randomly allocated to one of three treatment conditions: (i) modified Masters and Johnson (male and female therapist), (ii) modified Masters and Johnson (one therapist) and (iii) marital therapy and relaxation comparison procedure (one therapist). The major variables investigated were type of therapy, number of therapists (one or two) and sex of therapist. Post-treatment and one year follow-up assessments showed no significant difference in outcome between treatment approaches. No significant effects were found for sex of therapist and the interaction between sex of therapist and sex of presenter.