Avoidance of Nervous Strain in Experimental Extinction of the Conditioned Motor Reflex

A picture-redundancy task was introduced for measuring stimulus encoding strategies used by illiterate subjects during redundant-stimulus PA learning. A prototype experiment was executed with black preschool children serving as the illiterate subject population. The results of the prototypic experiment suggested that the young illiterate children employed both two-cue and single-cue processing strategies. It was concluded that the picture-redundancy task should prove useful for further investigations of stimulus encoding among illiterate subject populations.     

A Study of the Emotion of Excitement

Abstract

Kohts, N. Infant Ape and Human Child; Instincts, Emotions, Play, Habits. [Ditia chimpanze i ditia tcheloveka; v ikh instinktakh, emotiakh, igrakh, privytckkakh i vyrazitelnykh dvizheniakh.] Scientific Memoirs of the Museum Darwinianum in Moscow, v. III, 1935. Pp. xvi+596 c. 145 plates.     

Warmth and Contingency and Their Relationship to Maternal Attitudes Toward Parenting

In this study, the authors addressed the question of whether maternal parenting behaviors in terms of sensitivity, warmth, and contingency with respect to small infants were equally represented in attitudes toward parenting. Sixty mothers from central Germany with middle-class socioeconomic backgrounds were videotaped with their 1st born 3-month-old infant in a free-play and a caregiving episode in their home. The different maternal parenting components were behaviorally analyzed. Maternal attitudes toward parenting were assessed with self-report measures. The results showed that behavioral sensitivity was significantly associated with attitudes related to contingency, whereas behavioral warmth and contingency were not associated with maternal attitudes. The authors interpreted differential associations as a reflection of intuitive and explicit parenting strategies, with only sensitivity being explicitly represented.     

Improving Children's Mental Rotation Accuracy With Computer Game Playing

The authors investigated the relation between mental rotation (MR) and computer game-playing experience. Third grade boys (n = 24) and girls (n = 23) completed a 2-dimensional MR test before and after playing computer games (during 11 separate 30-min sessions), which either involved the use of MR skills (the experimental group) or did not involve the use of MR skills (the control group). The experimental group outperformed the control group on the MR posttest but not on the pretest. Boys outperformed girls on the pretest but not on the posttest. Children whose initial MR performance was low improved after playing computer games that entailed MR skills. The findings imply that computer-based instructional activities can be used in schools to enhance children's spatial abilities.     

Asymmetries in the Regulation of Visually Guided Aiming

An experiment was conducted to examine the contribution of sensory information to asymmetries in manual aiming. Movements were performed in four vision conditions. In the full-vision condition (FV), subjects were afforded vision of both the hand and the target throughout the course of the movement. In the ambient-illumination-off condition (AO), the room lights were extinguished at movement initiation, preventing vision of the moving limb. In the target-off (TO) condition, the target was extinguished upon initiation of the movement. In a no-vision (NV) condition, ambient illumination was removed and the target was extinguished upon initiation of the response movement. Results indicated that accuracy was superior in the full-vision and target-off conditions and when movements were made by the right hand. Movements made by the right hand were also of shorter mean duration. The magnitudes of performance asymmetries were uninfluenced by vision condition. Analyses of movement kinematics revealed that movements made in conditions in which there was vision of the limb exhibited a greater number of discrete modifications of the movement trajectory. On an individual-trial basis, no relationship existed between accuracy and the occurrence of discrete modifications. These data suggest that although vision greatly enhances accuracy, discrete modifications subserved by vision reflect the imposition of nonfunctional zero-order control processes upon continuous higher-order control regimes.     

A Test of the Adams-Creamer Decay Hypothesis for the Timing of Motor Responses

The Adams-Creamer hypothesis states that S uses the decay of proprioceptive feedback from an early portion of a movement to cue a timed response at some later time. This hypothesis was tested by creating passive left-arm movement in one group and withholding it from another, and having Ss make a right-hand response when exactly 2.0 sec. had elapsed since the end of the movement Ss with left-arm feedback had less absolute and algebraic error, and greater within-S consistency than did the no-movement control Ss and, when KR was withdrawn, Ss with left-arm movement regressed less than did Ss without the left-arm movement, which provided 2 lines of support for the decay hypothesis.     

Rapid Aimed Limb Movements: Differential Effects of Practice on Component Submovements

Three experiments are reported in which subjects practiced rapid aimed limb movements (arm pointing and wrist rotation) toward a visible target region. Subjects were required to minimize their movement durations while still landing in the target. The movement trajectories were examined to assess the effects of practice on separate component submovements of the limb movements. The results revealed that practice improved primarily temporal, not spatial, aspects of performance. Practice reduced the overall movement durations, but had different effects on the individual submovements: Practice allowed subjects to reduce the amount of time spent performing final corrective submovements, but actually increased slightly the time needed to produce the initial ballistic submovement. The results suggest that practice in the present task primarily enhanced the ability to use feedback information, but there was also some evidence of changes in the ballistic, preprogrammed portion of the movements. The results demonstrate that analysis of submovements can reveal important details of the underlying motor control processes.