Response learning confounds assays of inhibitory control on detour tasks

Animal Cognition - The ability to inhibit prepotent actions towards rewards that are made inaccessible by transparent barriers has been considered to reflect capacities for inhibitory control (IC)....     

-ings and -ers

This paper is about the semantic structure of verbal and deverbal noun phrases. The focus is on noun phrases which describe actions, perceptions, sensations and beliefs. It is commonly thought that actions are movements of parts of the agent's body which we typically describe in terms of their effects, and that perceptions are slices of sensible experience which we typically describe in terms of their causes. And many philosophers hold that sensations and beliefs are states of the central nervous system which we generally describe in terms of their typical causes and effects. For example 'Brutus's killing of Caesar' is thought to describe a movement of a part of Brutus's body – e.g. the thrust of an arm – in terms of one of its effects, namely, Caesar's death. And 'Hyman's visual perception of a table in front of him' is thought to describe the visual experience I'm having right now in terms of its cause. The object of the paper is to show that these doctrines misrepresent the semantic structure of verbal and deverbal noun phrases.     

Adolescent Responses to Depressive Parental Behaviors in Problem-Solving Interactions: Implications for Depressive Symptoms

The purpose of this study was to explore the relations between child responses to interparental depressive behavior and subsequent child depressive symptomatology. Data were collected on 156 two-parent families. Families completed questionnaire data and participated in problem-solving interactions, which were coded using a microsocial observational system. Three potential child responses to interparental depressive behavior were examined: facilitative, aggressive, and depressive. Results indicated that for female adolescents the displays of facilitative and depressive behavior as well as the suppression of aggressive behavior in response to interparental depressive behavior were related to increases in depressive symptomatology. For males, on the other hand, the display of aggressive and depressive behavior in response to interparental depressive behavior was related to increases in depression. Results provide preliminary support both for the examination of child responses to conflictual marital behavior and for expanding the conceptualization of conflictual marital behaviors to include depressive as well as the more traditionally examined aggressive behaviors, in order to better understand the link between conflictual marital behavior and child depressive symptomatology.     

Inner speech as a learned skill

Three experiments are reported which address the problem of defining a role for inner speech. Experiments 1 and 2 establish that inner speech is acquired by normally developing readers between the ages of 8 and 11, and that both slow and fast readers show a similar pattern of acquistition, but do so at a different rate from normal readers. We suggest that the development of inner speech accompanies a strategy of reading aloud “with expression”; and that it is a manifestation of the need to prestructure oral utterances. These will thus contain the lexical items visible on the page within an appropriate prosodic envelope. Both segmental and suprasegmental phonemes contribute to meaning of spoken and, by analogy, written language. Experiment 3 showed that children at this critical point in learning to read comprehended text better when certain prosodic features were made visible on the text. Prosodic restructureing may thus be an important skill acquired by young readers as they progress toward fluent, silent adult reading.     

Interaction of asthmatics and their spouses: A preliminary study of individual differences

Some asthmatics show evidence of airways reactivity triggered by strong emotions. Six case studies of married patients with severe asthma are reported. The videotaped interactions of the asthmatic and his/her spouse were coded for affect and behavior. Repeated measures of pulmonary function and affective state were recorded before and after two interaction tasks. Over the course of the experimental period, two patients' pulmonary function improved and four patients' deteriorated. In general, decreased pulmonary function was associated with more self-rated hostility and depression. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the intra- and interpersonal factors that are important in asthma management.     

Multilevel covariance structure analysis of sibling substance use and intrafamily conflict

Conventional covariance structure analysis, such as factor analysis, is often applied to data that are obtained in a hierarchical fashion, such as siblings observed within families. A more appropriate specification is demonstrated which explicitly models the within-level and between-level covariance matrices of sibling substance use and intrafamily conflict. Participants were 267 target adolescents (mean age=13.11 years) and 318 siblings (mean age=15.03 years). The level of homogeneity within sibling clusters, and heterogeneity among families, was sufficient to conduct a multilevel covariance structure analysis (MCA). Parental and family-level variables consisting of marital status, socioeconomic status, marital discord, parent use, and modeling of substances were used to explain heterogeneity among families. Marital discord predicted intrafamily conflict, and parent marital status and modeling of substances predicted sibling substance use. Advantages and uses of hierarchical designs and conventional covariance structure software for multilevel data are discussed.     

Increasing achievement motivation and work productivity in a chronic psychiatric population

The major goal of this study was to determine if social reinforcement for behavior in a simulated work activity would increase achievement motivation, work interest, and simulated work activity production. Forty-five chronic psychiatric patients were randomly assigned to one of three groups: work sample with praise, work sample without praise, and a no-treatment control group. A 3 (between) × 2 (within) analysis of variance was run for each dependent measure, that is, achievement imagery, work interests, and simulated work production. The main effect for the interaction between trials and treatment was significant on each dependent measure. Follow-up Duncan Multiple Range Tests indicated that the praise group showed a significant improvement on each dependent measure, pre to post, as well as significantly greater improvement than the no-treatment control group and/or the work sample without praise group. These results are discussed in terms of the procedure used as a method for increasing motivation and in terms of possible generalization of results to other treatment situations.     

Validating a selection test,a predictive probability approach

The problem of inferring the validity of a selection test (x) as a predictor of some criterion (y) when completexy data are not available is investigated. The basic approach is to construct the predictive probability distribution of the unobservedy scores and then derive interval estimates of the least squares regression weights, the difference in averagey scores for selected and unselected cases, and the residual variance in predictingy fromx. Further, an approximation to the predictive distribution of the squared correlation betweenx andy in a future group is derived.     

The analysis of semigroups of multirelational systems

A finite family of binary relations on a finite set, termed here a relational system, generates a finite semigroup under the operation of relational composition. The relationship between simplifications of the semigroup of a relational system in the form of homomorphic images, and simplifications of the relational system itself is examined. First of all, the list of relational conditions establishing a relationship between a homomorphic image of the semigroup of a relational system and a simplified, or derived, version of that relational system, is reviewed and extended. Then a definition of empirical relationship is introduced (the Correspondence Definition) and it is shown how, in conjunction with a factorization procedure for finite semigroups (P. E. Pattison & W. K. Bartlett, Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 1982, in press), it leads to a systematic and efficient analysis for a relational system. Applications of the procedure to an empirical blockmodel and to a class of simple relational systems are presented.     

Judgments of similarity and spatial models

Ss judged the similarity between all pairs of stimulus objects under 3 conditions: when the objects were (a) Munsell 5R color patches varying in value and chroma; (b) parallelorams varying in size and tilt; and (c) circles-with-radius varying in diameter and angle of radius. For each set of judgments, the pattern of deviations from the Euclidean model was used to diagnose the most appropriate spatial model. The results confirm previous findings that the Euclidean space is appropriate for judgments of color patches, but that the city block space is appropriate for judgments of geometrie forms which vary on perceptually distinct dimensions.