Multipotential Abilities and Vocational Interests in Gifted Adolescents: Fact or Fiction?

The widely held view that highly intellectually gifted adolescents are multipotential in their abilities and career interests was investigated in two samples (N = 322 and N = 217) of gifted high school seniors. Three measures of intellectual abilities—verbal, mathematical, and mechanical—and a measure of vocational interest based upon nonacademic talented activities and accomplishments that yielded scores for vocational interest in three areas—Science, Social, and Artistic—were administered. Contrary to the widely held view, a very large proportion of intellectually gifted adolescents reported a differentiated pattern of both abilities and interests, and a very small proportion reported the expected high-flat ability and interest profiles. The findings suggest that the working assumptions of career education and counselling of intellectually gifted adolescents should perhaps be reconsidered.     

Naming versus matching in color constancy

In this paper, a replication of the color-constancy study of Arend and Reeves (1986) is reported, and an alternative method is presented that can be used for the study of higher order aspects of color constancy, such as memory, familiarity, and perceptual organization. Besides a simultaneous presentation of standard and test illuminants, we also carried out an experiment in which the illuminants were presented successively. The results were similar to Arend and Reeves’s; however, in the object-matching condition of the successive experiment, we found an overestimation, instead of an underestimation, of the illuminant component. Because the results of matching experiments are difficult to interpret, mainly due to their sensitivity to instruction effects, we introduced another type of color-constancy task. In this task, subjects simply named the color of a simulated patch. It was found that, by applying such a task, a reliable measure of the degree of identification of object color can be obtained.     

An Implicit Theory of Intelligence-Related Mental Activities

ABSTRACT Mental act verbs are used to study implicit theories of intelligence as represented by mental activities. First, the multidimensional structure of the verbs was studied using a sorting task. The resulting structure was interpreted primarily in terms of three properties: a working property that refers to the operational aspect of information processing (and that is closely related to depth of a cognitive activity), a judgment property, and a creativity property. Second, the notion of intelligence was projected onto the structure, rating the verbs to determine how much intelligence they represented. We discovered that mental activities scoring high on intelligence were related primarily to the working property and to in-depth processing.     

Gamma-L-glutamyl-L-aspartate, interacting with NMDA receptors, affects appetitive visual discrimination tasks in mice.

gamma-L-glutamyl-L-aspartate (gamma-LGLA), which interacts with NMDA receptors, has been shown to impair retention of an active avoidance task in mice. Here, we specified the behavioral effects of gamma-LGLA on acquisition and retention of appetitive nondelayed visual discrimination tasks. Three experiments were conducted: the peptide (0.25 and 2.5 microM/kg/25 ml. ip) was administered 3 min after each of the first six sessions of either original learning, reversal 1 or reversal 3. gamma-LGLA affected acquisition of the original task and of the first reversal, as revealed by an absence of improvement on initial sessions and an increased number of sessions to reach criterion fixed at 7 of 10 correct choices on three consecutive sessions. This deficit did not result from an action of the peptide on position habits (repetition of spatial choices) nor on motivational processes, suggesting a specific interference of gamma-LGLA with acquisition and memorization of the visual rule. In contrast, gamma-LGLA had no effect on acquisition of the third reversal, in which the positively reinforced visual stimulus was identical to that used on the first reversal. These results show that the behavioral deficits of gamma-LGLA, which had previously been demonstrated in an aversive task, can be generalized to appetitive tasks based on acquisition of a new rule.     

Integration of features in comparing multifeature stimuli

For a series of trials, the subject indicated whether or not two face-like stimuli were identical with respect to the features they contained (a positive or negative response, respectively); reaction time (RT) was recorded. The stimuli were separated by .5 or 4.0 sec, and each contained either two or three features. On some trials, the features of the first stimulus were represented within a single head outline; on others, they were distributed over several spatially separated outlines (components). Positive-response RT increased with the number of stimulus features and with the number of first-stimulus components (c); these two factors were additive. Negative-response RT increased with c, decreased with the number of differing features, and these two factors interacted. These effects did not vary with interstimulus interval. The results indicate that the subject did not integrate the first-stimulus components, but instead compared the second stimulus to each component, holistically (for positive responses) or analytically (for negative responses).     

Using visual codes for comparisons of pictures

In two experiments, Ss indicated for a series of trials whether or not two pictures of common objects had the same name (a positive or negative response, respectively). The pictures were separated by one of three interstimulus intervals (ISis), and reaction time (RT) was recorded. In Experiment I, positive trials involved pictures that were identical (identity match), mirror images (mirror match), or physically different but had the same name (name match). The stimuli came from either an S set, in which name-match pairs were physically similar, or a D set, in which name-match pairs were physically dissimilar. The mean RTs for mirror and identity matches were virtually the same but faster than name-match RTs, an advantage that decreased with increasing ISI. It was expected that name-match RT for the S set would be less than for the D set, indicating a facilitative effect of physical similarity; however, the identity-match RTs showed the expected difference. These results were extended in Experiment II, which involved only the identity and name matches, in pure sessions (which included positive trials of just one type) or mixed sessions (which included both types of positive trials). For mixed sessions, name- as well as identity-match RTs differed between the S and D sets. These results provide evidence for the use of visual codes in comparing nonidentical pictures, codes that apparently vary with experimental context and task demands.