Gender differences on the WPPSI,the WISC-R,and the WPPSI-R

The WPPSI, WISC-R, and WPPSI-R were administered in a counterbalanced design to 72 children between the ages of 5 years, 10 months, 16 days, and 6 years, 7 months, and 15 days to test the hypothesis that mean verbal IQs on these scales would be higher for boys than for girls. Results indicated that the mean verbal IQs for boys were significantly (p<.05) higher than those for girls on all three scales. Also, significant (p<.05) differences favoring boys were found onVocabulary andComprehension subtests on all three scales. These differences are probably a peculiarity of these scales and may not need any elaborate theoretical explanation. However, clinical uses of verbal and performance IQ discrepancies may not justifiably ignore the examinees’ gender.     

Gender differences in reasoning ability measured by letter series items

Letter series and number series tests, consisting of items based on identical rules, were administered in a counterbalanced design to 320 (160 female and 160 male) undergraduates in order to investigate the gender differences in inductive reasoning ability measured by letter and number series tests. Results indicated that female college students obtained significantly higher (p<.05) means on letter series tests, but showed no such superiority on number series.     

Simultaneous and independent acquisition of multisensory and unisensory associations

Although humans are almost constantly exposed to stimuli from multiple sensory modalities during daily life, the processes by which we learn to integrate information from multiple senses to acquire knowledge of multisensory objects are not well understood. Here, we present results of a novel audio-visual statistical learning procedure where participants are passively exposed to a rapid serial presentation of arbitrary audio-visual pairings (comprised of artificial/ synthetic audio and visual stimuli). Following this exposure, participants were tested with a two-interval forced-choice procedure in which their degree of familiarity with the experienced audio-visual pairings was evaluated against novel audio-visual combinations drawn from the same stimulus set. Our results show that subjects acquire knowledge of visual-visual, audio-audio, and audio-visual stimulus associations and that the learning of these types of associations occurs in an independent manner.     

Explaining the effects of a decision intervention on mammography intentions: The roles of worry,fear and perceived susceptibility to breast cancer

Objective: This study examines the effects of a mammography decision intervention on perceived susceptibility to breast cancer (PSBC) and emotion and investigates how these outcomes predict mammography intentions.

Design: Randomised between-subjects online experiment. Participants were stratified into two levels of risk. Within each stratum, conditions included a basic information condition and six decision intervention conditions that included personalised risk estimates and varied according to a 2 (amount of information: brief vs. extended) × 3 (format: expository vs. untailored exemplar vs. tailored exemplar) design. Participants included 2465 US women ages 35–49.

Main Outcome Measures: PSBC as a percentage, PSBC as a frequency, worry, fear and mammography intentions.

Results: The intervention resulted in significant reductions in PSBC as a percentage for women in both strata and significant increases in worry and fear for women in the upper risk stratum. Of the possible mediators examined, only PSBC as a percentage was a consistent mediator of the effect of the intervention on mammography intentions.

Conclusion: The results provide insight into the mechanism of action of the intervention by showing that PSBC mediated the effects of the intervention on mammography intentions.     

Enhancement from targets and suppression from cues in fast task-irrelevant perceptual learning

Task-irrelevant perceptual learning (TIPL) refers to the phenomenon where the stimulus features of a subject's task are learned when they are consistently presented at times when behaviorally relevant events occur. In this article, we addressed two points concerning TIPL. First, we address the question, are all behaviorally relevant events equal in their impact on encoding processes? Second, we address the hypothesis that TIPL involves mechanisms of the alerting attentional system. Two experiments of fast-TIPL were conducted in which the attentional state of participants was manipulated by using an alerting cue (visual or auditory) that informed participants of the arrival of an upcoming target. Images were presented with task-related stimuli (cues, targets and distractors) and subjects were tested on their memory of those images. Results indicate that memory for target-paired images was enhanced and cue-paired images were suppressed relative to that of distractor-paired images. The alerting cue increased the ability to recall target-paired images presented after this cue, although this result depended on the proportion of cued trials in a session. These results demonstrate a complex interplay between task-elements and the encoding of stimuli paired with them where both enhancement and suppression of task-paired stimuli can be found depending whether those stimuli are paired with task-targets or cues.     

Index Volumes I to VI (1980 to 1986)

From 1982 to 1985, the direct selling sector of our economy slumped badly. Most direct selling companies searched for traditional solutions to this dilemma, such as slicker promotions, better recruiting, and so forth. One company, Mary Kay Cosmetics, stood out by pioneering a miniature revolution in direct sales. In particular, one individual became a key player in guiding and directing this revolution—Dr. Blair Stephenson.     

The Effects of 10 Mgs. of Benzedrine Sulfate and Low Oxygen Tension on the Span of Attention for Letters,and Other Factors

The three wishes of a random sample of 100 subjects were obtained from each of five age groups: elementary, junior high, high school, early college (18–24 years), and late college (25–50 years). The wishes were placed in appropriate categories and into subcategories including possessions, activities, maintenance, achievement, and altruism. Exploratory measures of “confidence” and “sense of personal control” were taken for each subject. Sex and socioeconomic condition were analyzed. Results supported previously established trends of increasing generality, increasing altruism, and decreasing materialistic content up to different ages in adolescence and early adulthood depending on the data chosen to relate to the generalizations. In addition, a gradual increase in achievement wishes through middle adulthood was observed. The measure of “sense of personal control” was found to yield significant variation, while the data related to “confidence” varied only within chance limits. Comparisons with previous studies led to speculation that achievement orientations of adolescents may have lessened over the past decade.