Instruction effects on watch keeping in a “simple” vigilance task

Two experiments were conducted to determine the effect of variation in pretask instructions on performance on a simple vigilance task. In both experiments one group was told that the task would be challenging (Group C) and the other group, that the task would be monotonous (Group M). In Experiment 1 time-related decrements were found in the percentage of correct signal detections and in the number of incorrect responses. The results of Experiment 2 indicated time-related decrements, but no group differences, in percentage of correct detections. Group M also made progressively fewer false alarms, while false-alarm rates for GTOUP C did not change over time. Differences in mechanisms underlying performance decrements are discussed.     

Liberating Behavior from Time-Bound Control: Expanding the Present Through Hypnosis1

Temporal perspective was experimentally manipulated by verbal instructions to expand the present while minimizing the significance of past and future. The reactions of trained hypnotic subjects to this induction were compared with hynotic simulators and nonsimulating controls. In a fourth group, time sense was made salient but no suggestion given to alter it. Across a variety of tasks, self-report measures, and behavioral observations, this modification of the boundaries between past, present, and future resulted in profound consequences among the hypnotic subjects. Changes in affect, language, thought processes, sensory awareness, and susceptibility to social-emotional contagion, accompanied an expanded present orientation. Nonreactive measures distinguished simulators from hypnotic subjects who apparently were better able than control subjects to incorporate the induced time distortion and perceive it as a viable alternative to their traditional time perspective. Some implications of time as a pervasive, non-obvious, independent variable in the social control of cognition and behavior are outlined.     

Stroop interference with response,comparison, and encoding stages in a sentence-picture comparison task

The paper discusses a Stroop variant of the word-picture comparison task analyzed by Chase and Clark (1971). The locatives above or below were printed at the center of a reference square, and Ss reported “Yes” if there was a word or an array of Xs in the location specified and “No” if there was not. Under the control (Xs) conditions, above displays were classified faster than below displays and true displays faster than false displays. These effects were unaltered when the words “yes” or “no” or “right” or “wrong” were printed in place of the Xs, although there was a small overall increase in response latency under these Stroop conditions that was independent of agreement or disagreement between the distractor and the response to be made. When the locatives up and down were printed on the display, a substantial Stroop effect was observed, and the above-below and true-false effects were eliminated. These results are discussed in relation to theories about the nature of Stroop interference and processes involved in sentence-picture comparisons.     

Multidimensionality of anxiety in children

In order to investigate the multidimensional nature of anxiety in children, the responses of 125 emotionally disturbed and 120 normal children to the Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale were subjected to one principal components factor analysis using an oblique rotation. Three anxiety factors, Anxiety: Worry and Oversensitivity, Anxiety: Physiological, and Anxiety: Concentration, and 2 Lie factors, Lie: Social Impeccability and Lie: Over Self-control, emerged which accounted for 72.9% of the total variance. The clinical meaningfulness and the research implications are discussed.     

A common auditory-visual space” Evidence for its reality

This experiment compares two hypotheses concerning the relation between auditory anti, visual direction. The first, the “common space” hypothesis, is that both auditory and visual direction are represented on a single underlying direction dimension, so that comparisons between auditory and visual direction may be made directly. The second, the “disjunct space” hypothesis, is that there are two distinct internal dimensions, one for auditory direction and one for visual direction, and that comparison between auditory and visual direction involves a translation between these two dimensions. Both these hypotheses are explicated, using a signal detection theory framework, and evidence is provided for the common space hypothesis.