Interpersonal dominance and coronary prone behavior

Type A “coronary-prone behavior” is a risk factor for coronary artery and heart disease. Questionnaire research indicates that interpersonal dominance is one of the strongest behavioral correlates of the Type A behavior pattern, although little effort has been made to demonstrate a link between the behavioral manifestations of interpersonal dominance and Pattern A responding. This study was conducted to establish such a link. All possible combinations of extreme As (N = 42) and Bs (N = 42) were matched in dyads that negotiated extreme bipolar opposite positions on a “teacher dismissal” issue. Analysis of process and outcome behaviors suggested that type A individuals are unilaterally more dominant than their Type B counterparts. Possible physiological mechanisms mediating dominance and cardiovascular disease are discussed.     

An investigation of the ability to process inferences in language following right hemisphere brain damage

Twenty-two right hemisphere brain-damaged and 22 non-brain-damaged patients were given a multiple-choice recognition task which contained true statements, statements which were inferentially true but not actually heard before, and false statements. It was hypothesized that if right hemisphere brain damage disturbs the ability to comprehend inferences, these subjects, unlike their normal counterparts, would not falsely recognize true inferences as heard before. This hypothesis was not confirmed. However, the right hemisphere group was poorer than controls at rejecting false statements. This behavior was speculated to be a retrieval difficulty, which was exacerbated if the information contained spatial or semantically similar material.     

Decision processes in visual discrimination of line orientation

The contribution of decision factors to the meridional variations in line orientation discrimination was determined for two-alternative forced-choice experimental designs. Using Johnson's (1980) formalization of decision processes in discrimination tasks, we identified three decision factors: the decision rule, memory variance, and criterial noise. In a first experiment, we showed the effect of experimental design on orientation discrimination to be similar at horizontal and oblique standard orientations, indicating that the meridional variations in orientation discrimination were not due to a decision rule anisotropy. In a second experiment, the effect of the interstimulus interval was also found to be similar at both standard orientations, suggesting that the memory variance is isotropic in the orientation domain. The results of two other experiments supported the hypothesis that the meridional variations in orientation discrimination are not due to a criterial noise anisotropy. These different results strongly suggested that the oblique effect in line orientation discrimination is due to sensorial factors rather than to decision factors. Therefore, they further support the hypothesis linking the anisotropy of the preferred orientation distribution of Area 17-S cells (a single physiologically defined class of cells in the primary visual cortex) and the meridional variations in line orientation discrimination.     

Perceptual organization of behavior: a hierarchical control model of coordinated action

The behavior of individual subjects is compared with a hierarchical control system model of behavioral organization. Subjects varied the position of two control handles simultaneously to keep the distance constant between two pairs of lines. Three variations on this basic experiment that illustrate some fundamental properties of coordinated action are shown: first, how independent actions, compensating for unpredictable and undetectable disturbances, can produce a single behavioral result; second, how the ability to produce a particular result is maintained when the connection between action and result is changed; and third, how two independent outputs can appear to be related as coordinative structures when one output disturbs a result being controlled by the other. The correlation between the behavior of subjects and model in all experiments is typically on the order of .99. A detailed examination of the operation of the model shows that actions are structured by perception, not by central commands or equations of constraint.     

Disruption of reference in aging

A homogeneous sample of normal adults living in a religious order in a study of age effects on reference as a cohesive device in discourse production and comprehension. Narrative and procedural discourse were examined across various levels of complexity and stimulus/response requirements. Results indicate that significant ambiguity of reference emerges in the younger elderly group (age 64-76) in comparison to the middle-aged group (age 27 to 55), and increases markedly in the older elderly group (age 77-92). Related impairments of comprehension and cognition were also observed. These findings are interpreted to be general features of linguistic variation with advancing age. Communicative consequences of ambiguous reference are discussed.     

Range effects in successive discrimination

In two sets of experiments we examined pigeons' discrimination performance with a visual flicker-rate continuum, using a conventional successive discrimination procedure. In the first experiment, responses during the intermediate stimulus value were never reinforced, while responses during stimuli on either end of the continuum were reinforced periodically. In the second experiment, responses during stimuli from one end of the continuum were never reinforced, while responses during stimuli from the other end of the continuum were reinforced periodically. Results from both experiments show that discrimination between unchanged positive and negative stimulus values is a function of the range over which the total stimulus set varies. These range effects are comparable to effects found in absolute judgment tasks in human and animal psychophysics. In addition, the range effects reported here are not due to channel capacity, but may depend instead on variability in judgment criteria.     

The Zeigarnik effect and intrinsic motivation: Are they the same?

The present study focused on delineating the parameters under which intrinsic motivation leads an individual to reengage an activity from those that result in the Zeigarnik effect. In a posttask free-choice period, participants not completing the experimental task displayed more reengagement behavior than participants completing the task (the Zeigarnik effect). When participants were also provided self-efficacious performance feedback via a prearranged competitive outcome manipulation, there was no evidence of the Zeigarnik effect, while there was support for intrinsic motivation from competent self-efficacious performance feedback. Results were discussed in terms of distinguishing between intrinsic motivation and the Zeigarnik effect as sources of reengagement motivation. It was concluded that, in the presence of self-efficacious performance feedback, the competent-incompetent impression was more salient than task-completion feedback.Preparation of this article was supported by Texas Christian University grant TCU/RF 5-23757.     

Type A behavior,anger expression,and reactions to anger imagery

The experiment investigated the effects of Type A behavior, anger expression, and gender on perceptions of control and heart rate. Jenkins Activity Survey defined Type A and B subjects, categorized as either high or low in anger expression, were asked to recall, image, and generate self-referent statements about angry situations. State anger and heart rate were measured during all of the anger induction conditions, and ratings of imagery vividness and perceptions of control for self and others were taken following the recalled and imaged anger conditions. The results, with both the heart rate and self-report measures, indicated that the effects of the independent variables were interactive and situationally dependent. Type A behavior was associated with increased heart rate in two experimental conditions (mood anger and recalled anger), and, in one instance, this effect was amplified in male subjects (recalled anger). The self-report results yielded interactional effects that most commonly took the form of high anger expression, with male Type A's providing higher ratings of state anger, more vivid anger imagery, and lower perceived self-control ratings than did other categories of subjects. Taken together, these results suggest that anger expressiveness, particularly among males, amplifies the usual reactions attributed to Type A's, and that such effects are mediated by the threat of loss of control. Further, the observed interactive relationships limit the generalizability of A/B differences and raise definitional questions about Type A behavior.