Interaction of concurrent generative and expressive activity in production of typewritten lists

Ten touch-typists type lists of abbreviated month names under four directional instructions (Forward, Backward, Centre-out and End-in). The lists were typed on a teletype unit linked to a laboratory computer, and the duration of Start, Inter-word, Inter-letter, carriage Return, and Quit response times (RTs) were recorded throughout production of each list. The major effects of direction of listing were on the Inter-word RTs. However, there were also consistent effects on Inter-letter RT (an index of keyboard skill) and Return RT (an index of list formatting operations). These results are discussed in relation to the notion of a ‘working memory’ of limited capacity.     

Generation of a pictorial code

In Experiments I and II direct measures were obtained of the time required to convert a picture or a sentence to a report of visualization or to a simple drawing, latencies were faster for pictures than for sentences and were affected by the surface form of the sentence. In Experiment Ill, Ss matched pictures or sentences against a test picture under conditions of simultaneous or successive presentation. “Yes” and “No” response times were affected by sentence form under both conditions, although the difference between sentence-picture and picture-picture comparisons was virtually eliminated under the successive condition. In Experiment IV, Ss held a sentence or picture in memory over a 1,500-msec interval at the end of which a test picture or an instruction to draw the design was presented. Construction latencies were shorter in response to pictures than sentences, and there were effects of sentence form on verification time. Some implications of these results are discussed.     

Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater: The catharsis hypothesis revisited1

Boys between the ages of 9 and 10 participated in one of three experimental activities. One involved movement and aggression, the second movement devoid of aggression, and the third minimal movement of a nonaggressive nature. Aggressive fantasy decreased in the aggressive movement and minimal movement groups but increased in the nonaggressive movement group. The results are consistent with a cathartic view of the functional relationship between aggressive behavior and aggressive fantasy when the effects of movement and completion of an aggressive response are considered. This study supports the notion that the enactment of an aggressive goal response is essential to the occurrence of a cathartic effect and points up the importance of controlling for movement in investigations of the relationship between aggressive fantasy and aggressive behavior. An additional, exploratory investigation of daydreaming suggests that children who are high in aggressive fantasy are likely to daydream more frequently than children low in aggressive fantasy.     

Anxiety and sex role in body landmark functions

Two hypotheses were evaluated. One proposed that the more prominent a body landmark the less anxiety will be evoked by a theme linked to that landmark. The relation was determined between landmark prominence and anxiety evoked by a taped message appropriate to the landmark-linked theme. Two female samples were studied. The findings supported the hypothesis. A second hypothesis proposed that enhancing awareness of body landmarks under threat conditions is positively related to degree of masculinity and negatively related to degree of femininity. Changes in landmark awareness during appropriate taped messages were studied in two male and two female samples. Masculinity-femininity was also measured. The findings were particularly supportive of the hypothesis relating masculinity to mobilization of landmarks.     

CPQ validity: The relationship between Children's Personality Questionnaire scores and teacher ratings

Scores on the Children's Personality Questionnaire (CPQ) were correlated with scores from rating scale items selected by a panel of raters measuring the same behavior as a CPQ scale. Data were obtained on a normal sample of school children in grades three to six and on two referred groups, underachievers and chilren with behavior or social problems. The teachers of the children were asked to complete two rating scales on each child. Correlations between rating scale scores and CPQ scores suggest that, in general, the CPQ does not measure the traits it purports to measure.     

Effects of bilateral alternation on perceived temporal uniformity of auditory and somesthetic pulse trains

Certain attempts to account for the apparent loss of information when stimuli are presented in rapid alternation between the two sides of the body imply that some elements of the alternatingstimulus train are deleted. This implication forces the prediction that the train of surviving stimuli will be nonuniformly spaced. Yet observers do not report such temporal nonuniformity. The perceptibility of actual nonuniformity in stimulus trains was here found to be strikingly poorer for bilaterally alternating than for unilateral pulses, a finding qualitatively consonant with deletion models. Quantitatively, however, thresholds for perceived nonuniformity were so low as to require that deletion models include a mechanism allowing central respacing of the surviving train. “Stream segregation” is considered as an alternative to deletion models.     

Oral report of words and word approximations presented to the left or right visual field

Subjects reported letter strings forming words, pronounceable high approximations to words, and unpronounceable low approximations to words presented tachistoscopically to the left or right visual field (LVF, RVF). (a) For number of strings totally correct, the same RVF superiority was obtained with high approximations as with words, the field difference with low approximations being negligible. (b) In contrast, for letter scores from partially correct strings, RVF superiority did not vary with string type. Finding (a) is interpreted to indicate that the left hemisphere is differentially specialized for processing words as units and that requiring oral report makes pronounceable strings processable as word-like units. Finding (b) suggests that the left hemisphere is not specialized for processing subword fragments.     

Public policy and human service institutions

This paper discusses reasons for the apparent lack of interest by both the policy sciences and psychology in human service institutions and provides examples of the relationships between policy and politics and policy and economics in human service institutions. It suggests that two basic assumptions, labeled the professionalism myth and the individualism myth, have been major contributors to this state of affairs. Both the neglect given these institutions and the failure to examine the universe of alternatives in policy formulation are emphasized. Finally, the paper raises the question: Where has psychology been?