Susceptibility to Affect: A Comparison of Three Personality Taxonomies

This study had three major goals: to clarify the relationships between Eysenck's, Gray's, and Cloninger's personality taxonomies, to show that traits from these taxonomies predict differential sensitivities to emotional states, and to explore the relationship between sensitivity to an emotional state and how much that state is actually experienced. A factor analysis of traits from Eysenck's, Gray's, and Cloninger's personality taxonomies resulted in three factors that were named reward sensitivity, impulsivity-thrill seeking, and punishment sensitivity. These factors predicted a global measure of affect, emotional reactions to a laboratory mood induction, and self-reported affect in daily life. Generally, reward sensitivity predicted positive, but not negative emotions, whereas punishment sensitivity predicted negative, but not positive emotions. Impulsivity-thrill seeking predicted few emotions in either context. Coherence among the relationships found across methodological contexts suggests that the traits that predict emotion susceptibilities in the laboratory similarly predict emotional experience in ongoing daily life.     

Efficacy of a brief group psychoeducational intervention for bulimia nervosa

This study compared a brief group treatment that was designed to be purely educational (ED) with a longer course of individual cognitive-behavioural (CB) therapy intended to represent more standard clinical care. Participants were 65 women who sought treatment at Toronto General Hospital, met DSM-III criteria for bulimia nervosa at a normal weight and reported vomiting at least twice weekly. Results indicated that the CB treatment, as expected, was generally more effective than the ED intervention, but on several important outcome indices both treatments appeared to be equally effective for the healthiest 25-45% of the sample. The more intensive individual CB treatment was associated with greater improvement in patients who were more severely symptomatic. However, the ED intervention proved significantly more cost-effective and it was suggested that a sequential treatment program might achieve the superior benefits associated with the longer individual CB treatment at a reduced cost.     

Stimulus-specific processing consequences of pattern goodness

Two issues concerning the effects of visual pattern goodness on information processing time were investigated: the role of memory vs. encoding and the role of individual stimulus goodness vs. stimulus similarity. A sequential “same-different” task was used to provide differentiation of target item or memory effects from display item or encoding effects. Experiment 1 used four alternative stimuli in each block of trials. The results showed that good patterns were processed faster than poor patterns for both “same” and “different” responses. Furthermore, the goodness of the target item had a greater effect on reaction time than did the goodness of the display item, indicating that memory is more important than encoding in producing faster processing of good stimuli. Effects of interstimulus similarity on processing time were minimal, although isolation of good stimuli in a similarity space could explain many of the results. Experiment 2 replicated the results of Experiment 1, despite the fact that differences in similarity space had been minimized by using only two alternative stimuli in each block. In addition, the speed of processing a “same” pair was essentially independent of the particular alternative stimulus in a block. These results suggest that in this task, there is a processing advantage for good stimuli that is stimulus specific, with the effect operating primarily in memory.     

A SELF-EVALUATION TOKEN SYSTEM versus AN EXTERNAL EVALUATION TOKEN SYSTEM ALONE IN A RESIDENTIAL SETTING WITH PREDELINQUENT YOUTH1

This study compared the effects of self-evaluation and adult-dispensed tokens on room-cleaning behavior of six predelinquent youths in a residential token-economy setting. The self-evaluation token system proved to be as effective as the external adult-administered system in increasing room-cleaning behavior and was more effective in maintaining performance after contingencies were withdrawn. The self-evaluation token system increased resistance to extinction, compared to the external token system, and appeared to be a useful component for a traditional token-economy system.     

Letter identification as a function of type of perceptual limitation and type of attribute

It is argued that the distribution of errors in letter identification depends on two factors: (a) whether the set of letters is defined by features that exist or do not exist or by dimensions that exist at some positive value, and (b) whether errors are produced by process limitation in which the letter patterns are distorted or by state limitation in which there is inadequate energy. A specific hypothesis tested was that error distributions reflect the attribute structure under both types of limitation if dimensions define the letter set, but only under a process limitation if features define the letter set. Under a state limitation, feature set errors are primarily produced by a loss of features, so that a letter with more features is called a letter with fewer features more often than conversely. An experiment completely validated the hypothesis under test. In addition, the relative discriminabilities of two dimensions defining a dimension set of letters was reversed from state to process limitation. Thus the attribute structure derived from error distributions is not invariant across types of perceptual limitation, nor are distances between letter pairs always symmetric.     

The assessment of empathy in early childhood

In much of the literature on empathy in young children, researchers have assessed empathy with the FASTE (Feshbach and Roe Affective Situations Test for Empathy). Consequently, much of the literature on early affective responsiveness and the role of empathy in prosocial development is dependent on the validity of the FASTE. However, examination of the literature on gender differences in young children's empathy has suggested a methodological flaw in picture/story techniques such as the FASTE; children's responses to these instruments appear to vary as a function of the interaction of sex of experimenter with sex of subject. In the present study, we empirically examined the effects of sex of experimenter on children's responses to the FASTE. Eighty preschool children were randomly assigned by sex to four male and four female experimenters and were administered the FASTE. Children scored higher when interviewed by a same-sex experimenter, especially if only the stories that the children comprehended (the happy/sad episodes, not the anger or fear episodes) were examined. The implications of the findings for interpreting the literature on children's empathy (especially gender differences in empathy) are discussed.     

Book reviews

Patterns of Redundancy: A Psychological Study. By A.C. Staniland. London: Cambridge university Press. 1966. Pp. viii + 216. 45s. $50.

Signal Detection theory and Psychophysics. By David M. Green and John A. Swets. London and New York: Wiley. 1966. Pp. xi + 455. 104s.

Acquisition of Skill. Edited by E.A. Bilodeau. New York and London: Academic Press. 1966. Pp. xiii + 539. £5.0

Readings in Verbal Learning: Contemporary Theory and Research. Edited by Donald H. Kausler. London and New york: Wiley. 1966. Pp. xii + 578. 60s.

Experiments in Visual Perception. Edited by M.D. Vernon. London: Penguin Modern Psychology. Pp. 430. 8s 6d.

Motivation. Edited by Dalbir Bindra and Jane Stewart. London: Penguin Modern Psychology. 1966. Pp. 352. 8s. 6d.

Pattern Recognition: Theory, Experiment, Computer Simulations, and Dynamic Models of Form Perception and discovery. Edited by Loenard Uhr. New York and London: wiley. 1966. Pp. xii + 393. 68s. cloth, 45s. paper.

Advances in the Study of Behavior. Volume I. Edited by D. S. Lehrman, R. A. Hinde and E. shaw. New York and London: Academic Press. 1965. Pp. x + 320. 76s.

Fields of Psychology. Edited by J. P. Guilford. Third Edition. Princeton, N. J. and London: Van Nostrand. 1966. Pp. x + 350. 72s.

Attitudes. Edited by M. Jahoda and N. Warren. London: Penguin Modern Psychology. 1966. Pp.375. 8s. 6d.

Personality Assessment. Edited by Boris Semeonoff. London: penguin Modern Psychology. 1966. Pp. 443. 8s. 6d

The Psychology Of Learning. By R. Borger and A. E. M. Seaborne. Harmondsworth. Middx.: penguin Books (Pelican Orginal). 1966. Pp. 243. 5s.

Eliminating the Unconscious: A Behaviourist View Psycho-analysis. By T.R. Miles. Oxford and London: Pergamon. 1966. Pp. xviii + 171. 17s. 6d.

Manuel Pratique de Psychologie Experimentale. By Paul Fraisse. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. 2nd edition, 1963. Pp. 392. 20F.

Abstraction and Concept Formation. By Anatol pikas. London: Oxford University press (Harvard University Press). 1966. Pp.xiii + 303. 56s.

Tactics of Scientific research. By Murray Sidman. London and New York: Basic Books. 1966. Pp. x + 428. $17s. 6d.

Psychodynamics and Hypnosis: New Contributions to the practice and theory Of hypno-therapy. Compiled and Edited by Milton V. Kline. Springfield. Illinois: Thomas. 1966. Pp. xi + 194. $8.75.

Psychology: The Science of Mental Life. By G.A Miller. London: Penguin Books. 1966. Pp. 415.7s. 6d.

The Memory System of the Brain. By J. Z. Young. London: Oxford University Press. 1967. Pp. vii + 128. 28s.     

The structure of visual pattern associates and pattern goodness

Two tasks were used with a total set of 126 dot patterns. In one task Ss rated the goodness of each pattern. In another task they produced a dot pattern as an associate to each of the patterns used as a stimulus. The distributions of the associates suggest that the total set of patterns is both partitioned and nested. Groups defined by rotation and reflection are partitioned, thus kept intact. These groups in turn form a series of nested subsets., Both partitioning and nesting produce subsets of different size. The size of these subsets is related to pattern goodness, with good patterns coming from small subsets.