“That man’s father is my father’s son”: The roles of structure,strategy, and working memory in solving convoluted verbal problems

Normative data (N=896) collected on solutions to the traditional reasoning problem “Brothers and sisters have I none,/That man’s father is my father’s son” was the platform for a set of experiments to investigate the roles of problem structure, subject strategy, and working memory in error making in a class of verbal problems. The normative data revealed that the modal, but incorrect response to the brothers and sisters problem was “himself,” whereas the correct response of “son” was given by only 17% of subjects for the traditional version above, rising to 40% for a reordered novel version. This problem’s structure, identified as adouble-modifier structure, was found to produce similar response patterns across a range of verbal problems. Results from (1) syntactical structure manipulations (e.g., “My father’s son is the father of that man”), and (2) efforts to teach subjects to use a linear strategy (a sequence of steps), interpreted within a framework of Just and Carpenter’s (1992) capacity theory of comprehension, suggested that working memory overload varies across within-structure modifications and subjects. Further-more, this overload may be compounded by subjects’ choices of strategy.     

A dilemma for internal realism

Conclusion Given my dilemma, then, we should think twice before following Putnam away from metaphysical realism. Internal realism can offer only a false sense of philosophical security. And now we may doubt that it can offer even that.     

The Holocaust and Its Effects on Survivors: An Overview

The Nazi Holocaust has had continuing and widely reverberating consequences not only for the Jewish survivors but for the world at large. These consequences are detailed, first through a personal account of an Auschwitz survivor, and then through a discussion of the adaptive measures of concentration camp inmates and the long-term psychiatric and psychological effects on survivors and their families. The Survivor or Concentration Camp Syndrome and its relationship to the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is described. Indirect effects of the Holocaust have been manifested in various ways, particularly through various levels of psychologic denial displayed by Holocaust criminals and (at least during the early postwar period) by the German public. The Holocaust has had profound effects on the ways the Jewish people regard themselves and are seen by others. Finally, the Holocaust can be seen as offering a kind of paradigmatic signature to the worldview of the end of the 20th century, emphasizing the persistence of evil and the limitations of the idea of progress.     

False Consensus,Stereotypic Cues,and the Perception of Integrative Potential in Negotiation1

We argue that negotiators' fixed-sum perceptions are caused by the same judgment process that creates false consensus. Bargainers' reliance on their own preferences as a cue to others' preferences leads them to anticipate a fixed-sum conflict. When presented with stereotypic cues, subjects in a negotiating experiment anticipated the variable-sum nature of the task and subsequently realized highly efficient settlements extremely quickly. Surprisingly, even when the party's preferences were unrepresentative of the stereotype, agreements were no less efficient than in the absence of the cue. The implications of these findings for bargaining research and practice are discussed.     

Perfectionism and Suicide Ideation in Adolescent Psychiatric Patients

This study was conducted to examine the relations between dimensions of perfectionism and suicide ideation in an adolescent psychiatric sample. A sample of 66 adolescents from an inpatient psychiatric facility completed the Child and Adolescent Perfectionism Scale, the Child's Hopelessness Scale, and the Suicide Ideation Questionnaire. Overall, the results indicated that socially prescribed perfectionism was associated with greater suicide ideation and that it, along with hopelessness, accounted for unique variance in suicide ideation scores. The findings are discussed in terms of their practical and theoretical significance as well as their consistency with similar research with adults.     

Adaptiveness: A moderator of the adverse impact of hassles?

Adaptiveness constitutes coping consistently with Stressors so to reduce distress or, at worst, not aggravate it. Accordingly, it should moderate the adverse impact of hassles. Undergraduate volunteers (N = 200) responded to measures of hassles, adaptiveness, and the criteria of subjective distress, psychiatric symptomatology and minor physical ailments. In all three regression analyses, hassles made a substantial positive contribution and adaptiveness a small negative contribution to adverse outcome. The interaction between hassles and adaptiveness was non-significant in all three cases. Alternative interpretations were identified to guide further research.     

Do college studentsstill prefer companies without employment drug testing?

Two experiments examined the effects of drug testing policies on undergraduates' behavioral intentions and attitudes toward the company. Study 1 (n=267) manipulated type of drug testing and consequences of detected use. Study 2 (n=267) manipulated the presence of applicant and employee drug testing. Subjects in both studies showed stronger intentions to apply to a company with random employee testing than one with no employee testing. Study 2 also found that an interaction between company policy and subjects' attitudes toward drug testing affected attitudes toward the company. Both studies suggest that employee drug testing may now foster recruitment.Study 1 was conducted while the author was at Ohio University and was presented in an earlier version at the Eastern Psychological Association's 64th Annual Meeting, Arlington, VA, April 16–April 18, 1993.I thank Candie Burbick and Jamie Winters for their work as student assistants. I also thank Jane Kestner, Kim Mastrangelo, James Rogers, and the JBP reviewers for their suggestions.     

Children‘s ability to remember an occurrence of a repeated event

The authors summarise the findings of four recent experiments whichexamined childrens capacity to remember a particular occurrence of arecurring event. Issues discussed include the timing of the interview, thetype of errors, the questioning techniques, the age of the child, theconsistency of the childs account, and the impact of an interveninginterview. Implications for professionals who conduct investigatory orevidentiary interviews with child witnesses are discussed and suggestionsfor future research are also offered.