Consummatory Contrast Effects in Nondeprived Rats Following Shifts in Sucrose Concentration

Successive positive and negative contrast effects in consummatory behavior were investigated following shifts in sucrose concentrations in nondeprived subjects. Forty-four male albino rats were given daily 5-min access to either a 4%- or 32%-sucrose solution across a 14-day preshift period. Subjects in each group were then assigned to either a control or shifted condition. Shifted groups were upshifted (4–32%) or downshifted (32–4%) for a 10-day postshift period. Negative contrast was apparent in both lick rate and time spent at the drinking tube across the first 4 days of postshift. Positive contrast effects were not obtained, but rather a significant effect opposite to positive contrast occurred. The improbability of the ceiling effect explanation for the present results is discussed. Differences relative to deprivation state and the role of perceptual (taste) factors in contrast effects are also examined.

     

Dissociative effects in different prime domains

These experiments were performed to examine the effects of different types of primes across variations in prime set size, prime strength, and prior study in verification and lexical decision tasks. The primes consisted of taxonomic category names, associates, or rhymes that defined either small or large sets of related concepts, and they were either strongly or weakly related to their targets. Targets either were or were not studied prior to the priming task. The results indicated that, for taxonomic primes, shorter decision latencies were obtained when set size was smaller and when the target was studied before the priming task. In contrast, for rhymes, neither set size nor prior study had reliable effects. For all three types of primes, decision latencies were faster for stronger than for weaker prime-to-target relationships. These findings are contrasted with the results of manipulating these variables in episodic tasks such as cued recall, and they are interpreted in the context of a components-of-processing approach.     

Profiles of Counseling Pioneers: A Visit With Kathleen and Gilbert Wrenn

The authors have had the honor of knowing Gilbert and Kathleen Wrenn for 20 years; this story is about them. As Gilbert stated, “I am not a lone star, but part of a constellation… ”(Wachowiak & Aubrey, 1976, p. 76). The authors are privileged to know that for Gilbert, Kathleen (his partner of 72 years in 1996) is the center of that constellation. This article briefly captures pieces of the journey of 72+ years, on which Gilbert and Kathleen, each at 96 years of age, are continuing to travel together.     

Rethinking women's ways of knowing: Gender commonalities and intersections with postformal thought

Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule (1986) identified five ways of knowing in women: silent, received, subjective, procedural, and constructed. This study examined the extent to which they were used by both women and men and their intersection with postformal, relativistic thought (Sinnott, 1989b). As listed, the ways of knowing fall along a continuum of increasingly complex thought; hence, overlap between constructed knowing and relativistic thought was expected. Thirty female and 30 male university students (aged 27 to 43 years) completed a structured interview about ways of knowing, solved two hypothetical everyday problems, and completed the Bem Sex Role Inventory. Age predicted neither ways of knowing nor relativistic thought; increasing education was predictive of relativistic thought but not constructed knowing. Neither women nor men relied on received knowing; women used subjective knowing more than men did, while the opposite was true for procedural knowing. While there were no gender differences in relativistic thought or constructed knowing, femininity was associated positively with both. Finally, procedural knowing decreased while constructed knowing increased with increasing evidence of relativistic thought.     

Rights to privacy in research: adolescents versus parents

Conducting research on adolescents raises a number of ethical issues not often confronted in research on younger children. In part, these differences are due to the fact that although assent is usually not an issue, given cognitive and social competencies, the life situations and behavior of youth make it more difficult to balance rights and privacy of the adolescents. In this article, the three ethical principles of beneficence, justice, and respect for persons are discussed in terms of their application to the study of adolescents. Then, seven vignettes are presented to illustrate how these principles apply to real-life situations. How to balance the rights of adolescents and their parents is discussed, using adolescent girls and their parents for illustrative purposes.     

Properties of cognitive maps constructed from texts

Subjects in three experiments read texts describing the locations of landmarks in a fictitious town. Later they drew sketch maps and verified sentences describing the relative locations of the landmarks. We predicted that subjects would develop mental models of the town that were organized around important landmarks (“anchors”), as are cognitive maps constructed through real-world navigation. More specifically, we expected that landmarks used in the text as reference points for describing the locations of some other landmarks would emerge as anchors in the subjects’ cognitive maps and would consequently be recalled more accurately. Results showed that subjects represented such reference-point landmarks more accurately than they did the locations of other landmarks. This effect was independent of: (1) the perspective from which the text was written (route or survey); (2) whether or not a map was present at learning; (3) the order of information in the text (linear or anchors-first), and (4) the amount of information available to the subjects while drawing sketch maps (the full text, the landmark names only, or no information).     

Characteristics of spatial memory span: Is there an analogy to the word length effect, based on movement time?

In studies of verbal short-term memory it has been shown that the length of words to be remembered affects the size of memory span. This word-length effect is attributed to relationships between the rate of rehearsal of verbal material and the time it takes to speak the words being rehearsed. For spatial memory span there may also be an internal rehearsal system linked to overt responding, and if there is a strong analogy to be drawn between the verbal and spatial domains then movement time between spatial targets should predict the number of spatial locations that can be recalled. In the experiments reported here the time taken to move between spatial targets is varied by altering the size of targets and the distance between them. No difference between span performance on a nine-block spatial span task were found, either on immediate recall or on recall after an interval. When recall is of items from an array of 27, grouped in nine sets of three, with only one location in any set being presented on any trial, there is an effect of display size. This effect is consonant with the argument that movement time is related to spatial rehearsal, but other explanations are also possible. However, if recall in this task is scored over the nine sets rather than over the 27 items, then there is no difference between the displays. The results indicate that performance on the normal nine-block spatial-span task cannot be predicted by movement time.     

The Social Ecology of Residential Pattern and Memberships In Immigrant Churches

In this paper, we utilize GIS (Geographic Information System) mapping data to locate eleven immigrant congregations and the residential addresses of their members in Houston, Texas. Combining this information with ethnographic data allows us to understand how ecological variables impact organizationalcharacteristics of religious institutions. Specifically, we combine GIS and ethnographic data on immigrant congregations in Houston, Texas, to analyze characteristics that make them more parish or niche-like in structure. We demonstrate that the combination of GIS techniques and standard field methods yields the greatest potential to provide a comprehensive understanding of what congregations mean to their members.