The masking of octave-band noise by broad-spectrum noise: A comparison of infant and adult thresholds

Localization responses to a 4,000-Hz octave-band noise in a background of broad-spectrum noise were obtained from infants, 6, 12, 18, and 24 months of age, and adults. A two-alternative, forced-choice procedure was used to determine thresholds at each of two levels of masking noise, 42 and 60 dBC. Adults were also tested for their localization of pure tones in noise and their detection of octave-band noises with the more traditional two-interval, forced-choice task. Increasing the masking noise from 42 to 60 dBC resulted in comparable threshold shifts for all age groups. However, infant thresholds were 16–25 dB higher than those obtained for adults. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.     

AN ANALYSIS OF SOME VARIABLES INFLUENCING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF REPRIMANDS

Although several studies have shown that social reprimands can function as punishers, no study reported to date has isolated any of the factors influencing reprimand efficacy. Three experiments were conducted to investigate several factors. Experiment 1 used an alternating treatments design and was conducted on two elementary school boys, one of whom was in a special education class. Results showed that verbal reprimands delivered with eye contact and firm grasp of the student's shoulders reduced disruptive behavior to a greater extent than did verbal reprimands delivered without eye contact and grasp. Both types of reprimand were more effective than a baseline condition during which disruptive behavior was ignored. Experiment 2 also used an alternating treatments design and was conducted on one elementary school boy. Results demonstrated that reprimands delivered from one meter away were considerably more effective than reprimands delivered from seven meters away. Experiment 3 used a reversal design and was conducted on two pairs of elementary school children, one a pair of boys and the other a pair of girls. Results demonstrated that reprimands delivered to just one member of the pair reduced the disruptive behavior of both members of the pair. Thus, the effects of reprimands “spilled” over to nonreprimanded students.     

Emotional stimulation, defensive orientation, and hemispheric activation

Lateral eye movements (LEM) were measured for 32 right-handed subjects while responding to questions rated for verbal and visual-spatial cognitive content and for varying levels of emotionally stimulating content. The results indicated that eye movements were distributed to the right and left in response to verbal and spatial items, respectively, and that emotional content enhanced leftward responding. In addition, the defensive style of subjects, as measured by a defense mechanism inventory, interacted with the cognitive and affective dimensions of questions and was a determinant of LEM.     

The effects of confederate prompt delivery style in a standardized social simulation test

Role plays or social simulations are presently one of the most common methods for assessing social skills. Although social simulation techniques have become quite popular, little is known about the psychometric adequacy of many of the role-play instruments which have been developed. This investigation was an attempt to determine certain properties of one particular social skills assessment instrument: the Simulated Social Interaction Test. The effects of various confederate prompt delivery styles on the judged social competency level of subjects in the Simulated Social Interaction Test were examined. Two confederates, one male and one female, were trained to portray three confederate prompt delivery styles: (a) unreceptive, (b) neutral, and (c) receptive. In order to determine if judges would compensate for the different confederate prompt delivery styles, two sets of trained judges rated the levels of skill and anxiety generated by the 30 subjects tested. One set of judges was screened from the confererate delivery while observing the simulation; the other set of judges followed the more common rating procedure (i.e., they were not screened from the confederates' deliveries). Data analysis examined variation in subject performance under each condition and according to each set of judges for both overall social skills and anxiety ratings. Confederate prompt delivery style was found to affect subjects' rated performance. There was also suggestive evidence that judges were sometimes able to compensate for different confederate delivery styles. The practical and theoretical implications of the results are discussed.This study was funded in part by a research grant from the Veterans Administration.     

Functional constraints on sentence processing: A cross-linguistic study

English and Italian provide some interesting contrasts that are relevant to a controversial problem in psycholinguistics: the boundary between grammatical and extra-grammatical knowledge in sentence processing. Although both are SVO word order languages without case inflections to indicate basic grammatical relations, Italian permits far more variation in word order for pragmatic purposes. Hence Italians must rely more than English listeners on factors other than word order. In this experiment, Italian and English adults were asked to interpret 81 simple sentences varying word order, animacy contrasts between the two nouns, topicalization and contrastive stress. Italians relied primarily on semantic strategies while the English listeners relied on word order—including a tendency to interpret the second noun as subject in non-canonical word orders (corresponding to word order variations in informal English production). Italians also made greater use of topic and stress information. Finally, Italians were much slower and less consistent in the application of word order strategies even for reversible NVN sentences where there was no conflict between order and semantics. This suggests that Italian is ‘less’ of an SVO language than English. Semantic strategies apparently stand at the ‘core’ of Italian to the same extent that word order stands at the ‘core’ of English. It is suggested that these results pose problems for claims about a ‘universal’ separation between semantics and syntax, and for theories that postulate a ‘universal’ priority of one type of information over another. Results are discussed in the light of the competition model, a functionalist approach to grammar that accounts in a principled way for probabilistic outcomes and differential ‘weights’ among competing and converging sources of information in sentence processing.     

Vocal changes in stutterers and nonstutterers during monotoned speech

For years, reports have circulated that stutterers experience marked decrements in their stuttering when they speak or read in monotone. Wingate has suggested that the ameliorative effects of various novel speaking conditions on stuttering can be attributed to modifications in vocalization induced by such conditions. The present study was conducted to see whether this explanation would extend to monotoned speech as well. Ten teenage and adult stutterers and 10 normal speakers were tested in control and monotone reading conditions. Dependent measures were the frequencies of disfluency and stuttering, fundamental frequency, fundamental frequency standard deviation, vocal SPL, vocal SPL standard deviation, and fluent reading rate. Only within-group statistical comparisons were made, because members of the two groups could not be matched pairwise along critical vocal parameters. The major findings of this study indicated that across the two conditions, both groups significantly reduced their fundamental frequency, fundamental frequency standard deviation, vocal SPL and vocal SPL standard deviation. Only the stutterers exhibited a significant decrement in disfluency and stuttering. The normals did not evince enough disfluency in the control condition for a reduction to occur during monotoning. Neither group effected a reduction in fluent reading rates. These and other findings and interpretations are discussed relative to Wingate's modified vocalization hypothesis.     

Relationships of achievement motivation and sex-role identity to college women's career orientation

Two career orientation factors, Career Centeredness and Career Commitment, were predicted to relate differentially to women's achievement motivation and sex-role identity. Career Centeredness is an orientation which places a career above other life activities (e.g., recreation, family life, etc.) as a source of satisfaction whereas Career Commitment concerns the intention of steadily pursuing a career throughout life. The expectation that Career Centeredness would be more characteristic of masculine women and correlate higher with achievement motivation than would Career Commitment was generally supported. Results are discussed in terms of societal support for these two career orientations and of role conflict experienced by women with different sex-role identities.     

Toilet training,cueing, praise,and self-cleaning in the treatment of classroom encopresis: A case study

This study was designed to ameliorate encopresis in a 6-year-old male child in the school setting. The procedure consisted of toilet training, cueing, praise, and self-cleaning. Prior to intervention, encopresis was a daily event at home and school. The intervention was successful in reducing the soiling to near zero at school, with no reported changes at home. Implications discussed for school psychologists were: (a) handling the intervention through a consultation model, (b) using the simplest approach before attempting more powerful procedures, and (c) attempting treatment in spite of the fact that other treatment attempts at home had been unsuccessful.     

Projecting pastoral care in revival preaching: Billy Graham

Conclusion How may the evangelist project pastoral care in his preaching? This discussion sought to delineate some of the answers to this question. However, these cannot become answers for any herald of the Gospel unless he exercises an honest, sustained, self-critical probe into the inter-relatedness of his own being, attitudes toward congregants, and preaching. Erich Fromm asserts: There is no concept of man in which I myself am not included.²⁹ Likewise, there is no discussion of preaching or of a preacher in which each minister should not include himself-self-evaluatively, perhaps confessionally.