The effects of intergroup comparison on the polarization of opinions

This study investigates the expression of attitudes by individuals within the context of groups. A link is made between two theoretical areas: that of intergroup relations and that of the effects of group interaction on the expression of opinions. It is argued that individuals in groups adopt more polarized attitudes to achieve a more positively distinct group identity, and to afford themselves identification with that group. Subjects individually expressed their opinion on an issue, while the salience of group membership was varied by evoking the identity of an alternative group which held opposed opinions on the issue. When their own group identity was more salient, subjects tended to express their opinions in a more polarized manner, and in a manner more in keeping with the presumed view of their group. Also, they attributed to the other group attitudes that were more polarized and more in keeping with their presumed view of the issue.     

Evaluation of a coaching strategy to reduce swimming stroke errors with beginning age-group swimmers

A coaching strategy to decrease errors in swimming strokes with swimmers who had not improved under "standard" coaching procedures was investigated using a multiple baseline design across subjects and swimming strokes. The procedure resulted in a large decrease in errors on swimming strokes during sessions in a training pool. Stimulus generalization of improved performance to normal practice conditions in the regular pool was observed with all but one swimmer. This improvement was maintained during two maintenance phases lasting approximately 2 weeks, as well as under standard coaching conditions during at least a 2-week follow-up. For two swimmers, error rates on one of the strokes showed a gradual increase between the third and fifth week of follow-up, but brief remedial prompting sessions immediately corrected their performance. Some beneficial response generalization to other components of the stroke being trained was observed, but no improvements were found on untrained strokes. The error correction package did not disrupt practice, require excessive amounts of the coach's time, or necessitate the use of cumbersome apparatus. In addition, the coach and the swimmers considered the procedures to be effective, and expressed their willingness to participate in them again in the future.     

Social Class and Reported Changes in Behavior After Job Loss

Reports were obtained from middle-class and working-class unemployed British men about change or lack of change since job loss in 37 different behaviors. The behaviors were grouped into Domestic Work, Domestic Pastimes, Other Pastimes, Book Reading, Recreations, Entertainment Through Money, and Social Contacts. Contrary to findings from 1930s research, significant increases in social contact and book reading were reported since job loss. Other significant increases were reported within all categories except Entertainment Through Money, where a significant decline was recorded. A number of social class differences were found. For instance, middleclass unemploycd men were significantly more likely than their working-class counterparts to report increased book reading for study and more visits to the public library. Working-class respondents were significantly more likely to report increased looking around shops without buying and reduced visits to the pub. Several significant associations between reported behavior changes and aspects of psychological and general health were observed.     

Nondeterministic three-valued logic: Isotonic and guarded truth-functions

Nondeterministic programs occurring in recently developed programming languages define nondeterminate partial functions. Formulas (Boolean expressions) of such nondeterministic languages are interpreted by a nonempty subset of {T (“true”), F (“false”), U (“undefined)}. As a semantic basis for the propositional part of a corresponding nondeterministic three-valued logic we study the notion of a truth-function over {T, F, U} which is computable by a nondeterministic evaluation procedure. The main result is that these truth-functions are precisely the functions satisfying four basic properties, called \( \subseteq \) -isotonic, \( \subseteq \) ^?-isotonic, hereditarily guarded, and hereditarily guard-using, and that a function satisfies these properties iff it is explicitly definable (in a certain normal form) from “if..then..else..fi”, binary choice, and constants.     

Emotionality of encoding activity in face memory

The effects of emotionality of study tasks on face recognition were examined. Subjects made either personality decisions or self-comparisons about the people shown in a series of photographs. The personality traits judged during the encoding tasks had been selected to be either arousing or relatively nonarousing. Face recognition performance was best after an emotional nonself study task, on both immediate and delayed tests. In a companion study examining these manipulations in verbal memory, self-reference study tasks produced the best word recognition, with no difference due to the emotionality of nonself tasks. These results suggest emotionality and self-awareness have different effects on facial and verbal memory. A final study indicated that the effect of emotionality disappeared if it was added to self-reference. As regards self-reference differences in face and verbal memory, this series of experiments seems to rule out an emotionality confounding. It was concluded that self-images are less effective mnemonic aids than the propositional self-concept.     

The influence of psychoticism and extraversion on classical eyelid conditioning using a paraorbital shock UCS

An experiment is described in which the effects of Psychoticism and Extraversion on classical eyelid conditioning were examined using a balanced design involving two levels of paraorbital shock intensity and two levels of response threshold. Questionnaire measures of Anxiety and Impulsivity were also analysed together with subjective ratings of the UCS. Results were broadly consistent with Eysenck's personality theory in that subjects scoring high on Psychoticism demonstrated lower levels of conditioning.     

Participation by women in behavior analysis

The participation of women in behavior analysis as authors of articles published in the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (JEAB) and the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (JABA), as members of the Association for Behavior Analysis (ABA), and as contributors to the 1982 ABA convention was examined. Since the inception of JEAB and JABA, men have appeared as authors far more frequently than women, although women have published relatively more frequently in the latter journal than in the former. Across years, there has been an upward trend in the proportion of JEAB authors who are female; this is not the case for all JABA authors, although it does hold for senior authors. In 1980-1981 and 1981-1982, females represented approximately half of ABA's student and affiliate members but less than a third of its full members. Approximately a third of the contributors to posters and symposia and a seventh of those delivering invited addresses at the 1982 ABA convention were women.     

Learned helplessness in groups

Group learned helplessness is demonstrated in Experiment I. Groups of 2 tried to turn off noise by their joint action. In the solvable group (S), noise offset was contingent on their sequence of button pushing. In the yoked, unsolvable group (U), noise offset was independent of all sequences of button pushes they produced. In a practice group (O). subjects practiced coordinated sequences of button pushes with their partners, but heard no noise. Later, all 3 groups were tested in pairs in a shuttlebox which required coordinated joint responding to turn off noise. The unsolvable group escaped more poorly than the other 2 groups, paralleling helplessness effects with individuals. Experiment 2 and 3 found no transfer from individual helplessness training to group testing and no transfer from group helplessness training to individual testing. We suggest that the same mechanism, the expectation of response ineffectiveness, may mediate both individual and group learned helplessness.