The Number of Distinct Basic Values and Their Structure Assessed by PVQ–40

Sixty-eight outpatients from a veterans' administration psychiatry clinic and community mental health center were assessed with 3 measures of depressive personality disorder (DPD)-the Diagnostic Interview for Depressive Personality Disorder (Gunderson, Phillips, Triebwasser, &; Hirschfeld, 1994), the Depressive Personality Disorder Inventory (Huprich, Margrett, Barthelemy, &; Fine, 1996), and the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis II Disorders (First, Gibbon, Spitzer, Williams, &; Benjamin, 1997a)-to evaluate their convergent and discriminant validity. Evidence supporting the measures' validity was mixed. The rate of convergence of depressive personality diagnoses across 3 measures was less than optimal, but the degree of intercorrelation among the measures was strong. Although depressive personality scores had moderate levels of intercorrelations with other personality disorders, the degree of intercorrelation decreased substantially after controlling for depressive symptoms. I conclude that further work is needed to strengthen the validity of measures of DPD.     

The Effects of Subject-and Experimenter-Induced Defensive Response Sets on Picture-Frustration Test Reactions

Thirty male college students, half scoring high and half low on the MMPI K-scale, were administered a multiple-choice (M-C) modification of the Rosenzweig P-F Study under three instructional sets. Two of these sets were induced by E and compared with the third which represented S's normal test-taking set. The two induced sets included (1) a “should” set in which concern for the social consequences of behavior was accentuated, and (2) a “wish” set in which concern for social consequences was minimized, and freedom of self-expression was accentuated.

It was hypothesized that Ss making extremely high or low scores on the K-scale would likewise score differently on the M-C, P-F test. High K, defined by its authors as a measure of test defensiveness, and low K, as test-taking candidness, would be associated with P-F score patterns reflecting these test-taking attitudes: High K Ss showing Impunitive (M) dominant reaction patterns and low K showing Extrapunitive (E) or Intropunitive (I) dominant patterns. These hypothèses were confirmed except that intropunitive responses were extremely rare in the entire subject sample.

It was further hypothesized that the typical high K pattern would be induced in low K Ss under the “should” instructional set and the low K pattern would be elicited from high K Ss under “wish” instructions. This expectation was confirmed. It was suggested that the technique of manipulating responses via test taking instructions can generate correction factors useful in projective as well as structured personality tests.     

Trait anxiety and trait anger measured by ecological momentary assessment and their correspondence with traditional trait questionnaires

Ecological momentary assessments (EMA) of anxiety and anger/hostility were obtained every 25–30 min over two 24-h periods, separated by a median of 6 months, from 165 employees at a university in the Northeast. We used a multilevel trait-state-error structural equation model to estimate: (1) the proportion of variance in EMA anxiety and anger/hostility attributable to stable trait-like individual differences; (2) the correspondence between these trait-like components of EMA anxiety and anger/hostility and traditional questionnaire measures of each construct; and (3) the test–retest correlation between two 24-h averages obtained several months apart. After adjustment for measurement error, more than half the total variance in EMA reports of anxiety and anger/hostility is attributable to stable trait-like individual differences; however, the trait-like component of each construct is only modestly correlated with questionnaire measures of that construct. The 6-month “test–retest” correlations of latent variables representing the true 24-h EMA average anxiety and average anger are quite high (r ? 0.83). This study represents the longest follow-up period over which EMA-based estimates of traits have been examined. The results suggest that although the trait component (individual differences) of EMA momentary ratings of anxiety and anger is larger than the state component, traditional self-report questionnaires of trait anxiety and anger correspond only weakly with EMA-defined traits.     

The dark side of incremental learning: A model of cumulative semantic interference during lexical access in speech production

Naming a picture of a dog primes the subsequent naming of a picture of a dog (repetition priming) and interferes with the subsequent naming of a picture of a cat (semantic interference). Behavioral studies suggest that these effects derive from persistent changes in the way that words are activated and selected for production, and some have claimed that the findings are only understandable by positing a competitive mechanism for lexical selection. We present a simple model of lexical retrieval in speech production that applies error-driven learning to its lexical activation network. This model naturally produces repetition priming and semantic interference effects. It predicts the major findings from several published experiments, demonstrating that these effects may arise from incremental learning. Furthermore, analysis of the model suggests that competition during lexical selection is not necessary for semantic interference if the learning process is itself competitive.     

Seeing to hear better: evidence for early audio-visual interactions in speech identification

Lip reading is the ability to partially understand speech by looking at the speaker's lips. It improves the intelligibility of speech in noise when audio-visual perception is compared with audio-only perception. A recent set of experiments showed that seeing the speaker's lips also enhances sensitivity to acoustic information, decreasing the auditory detection threshold of speech embedded in noise [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 109 (2001) 2272; J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 108 (2000) 1197]. However, detection is different from comprehension, and it remains to be seen whether improved sensitivity also results in an intelligibility gain in audio-visual speech perception. In this work, we use an original paradigm to show that seeing the speaker's lips enables the listener to hear better and hence to understand better. The audio-visual stimuli used here could not be differentiated by lip reading per se since they contained exactly the same lip gesture matched with different compatible speech sounds. Nevertheless, the noise-masked stimuli were more intelligible in the audio-visual condition than in the audio-only condition due to the contribution of visual information to the extraction of acoustic cues. Replacing the lip gesture by a non-speech visual input with exactly the same time course, providing the same temporal cues for extraction, removed the intelligibility benefit. This early contribution to audio-visual speech identification is discussed in relationships with recent neurophysiological data on audio-visual perception.     

Adjustment to hemodialysis treatment through behavioral controls

The present study was conducted to examine the hypothesis that compliant chronically ill patients, typically described as adjusted, reinforce more positive social environments using behavioral controls than noncompliant patients, typically described as maladjusted. Specifically, it is hypothesized that diet-compliant chronic hemodialysis patients emit significnatly more active involvement-in-treatment behaviors and more social behaviors than diet-noncompliant chronic hemodialysis patients. Subjects, who ranged in age from 30 to 77 years, were outpatients at a kidney center. Behavioral observations were conducted to assess the occurrence or frequency of (1) four involvement-in-treatment behaviors that are routinely taught to all patients and (2) two social behaviors, which were patient verbalizations and smiles. The results showed that compliant patients emitted significantly more involvement-in-treatment behaviors and smiles than noncompliant patients. Results support the proposed control framework that compliant, in contrast to non-compliant, chronically ill patients have recourse through positive behavioral controls when adjusting to the stresses of illness. It was proposed that through these controls, compliant patients reinforce positive environments rather than simply respond to life circumstances as given.     

Compound word effects differ in reading,on-line naming,and delayed naming tasks

Bimorphemic compound words (e.g.,blueberry), bimorphemic suffixed words (e.g.,ceaseless), and monomorphemic controls (e.g.,arthritis) were read in neutral sentence contexts in Experiment 1. The main result revealed longer first fixation durations on compound words than on control and suffixed words. Different effects emerged when naming tasks were used. An on-line naming task revealed substantially shorter naming latencies for compound words than for control and suffixed words. Naming latencies for compound and control words were equivalent in a delayed naming task. These results indicate that on-line naming latencies and word-viewing durations may yield diverging results. They also suggest that activation of constituent words of compound words occurs independently from the specification of conventional word meanings.     

Two types of pigeon key pecking: suppression of long- but not short-duration key pecks by duration-dependent shock

The key pecking of eight pigeons was maintained on a variable-interval 1-minute schedule of food reinforcement. Sometimes, all responses between 35 and 50 milliseconds in duration produced a shock; sometimes, all responses between 10 and 25 milliseconds produced a shock; sometimes, shocks were produced by pecks without regard to duration (nondifferential punishment), and sometimes shocks were delivered independently of responding. Punishment of 35- to 50-millisecond responses selectively suppressed those responses, while punishment of 10- to 25-millisecond responses and nondifferential punishment suppressed responding overall but did not suppress responses of particular duration. Punishment of 35- to 50-millisecond responses suppressed key pecking slightly less than did nondifferential punishment. Punishment of 10- to 25-millisecond responses and response-independent shock produced roughly equal amounts of suppression, substantially less than the other punishment procedures. The data support the view that there are at least two kinds of key peck, identifiable on the basis of duration, one of which (short duration) is insensitive to its consequences.     

Individual differences in cognition: Some relationships between personality and memory

Individual differences in cognition were studied in the form of the hypothesis that arousal, as indexed by personality measures of extraversion and neuroticism, affects the way in which verbal material is organized in memory. Subjects pretested on measures of these personality variables participated in either a paired-associates learning or a free-recall experiment. On the paired-associates task, subjects who were thought to be high on arousal made fewer errors when response terms were semantically similar than low arousal subjects. On the other hand, subjects thought low on arousal made fewer errors when response words were phonetically similar than high arousal subjects. On the free-recall task, low arousal subjects were found to cluster words together on the basis of semantic category at a higher rate than high arousal subjects. These results were taken to support the view that high arousal (as indexed by personality measures) leads to a focus on the physical aspects of verbal material, whereas low arousal leads to a memory organized around semantic aspects. The implications of these findings for other views of memory are discussed.