Levels of processing: Qualitative differences or task-demand differences?

In nearly all reported orienting task studies, the question is asked before the item or items are presented. This paper reports two experiments wherein the question was asked after the item was presented. These experiments found that an orthographic orienting task did not produce poorer retention than a semantic orienting task when (1) the orthographic task was presented in such a way to ensure that the list items would be encoded as units and (2) the test was designed to eliminate the effect of encoding elaboration to positive-response orienting questions. It was concluded that the depth-of-processing effect was composed of two components. One of these is a task-demand component that affects the probability of encoding target items as identifiable units. The second component of processing depth is trace elaboration to positive-response questions. In most experiments, the two components combine to produce better memory performance for targets presented with semantic orienting questions. However, the two components can be examined independently of each other to determine the degree to which each contributes to a particular experimental effect.     

Effect of two experimental sets on sleep structure.

The effect of four perceptual sets--First Night in a sleep laboratory, Second Night in a sleep laboratory, Shock Avoidance Night, Reward Night--on the distribution of sleep was examined with 12Ss. Both the shock avoidance and the reward conditions gave results similar to those characteristically found in the First Night Effect, i.e., increases in Stage 0, Stage 1, the latency to Stage 4, the number of Awakenings, and the number of Stage Changes coupled with a decrease in Stage 1-REM. The observed effects, however, were minimal and were interpreted as giving evidence for the sturdiness of the sleep process.     

Perceptual learning in visual category acquisition

The attribute structure of a set of dot patterns was studied by having subjects segment (parse) the dots of each pattern into parts or subunits by drawing circles around groups of dots from each pattern. These parsing data were obtained for subjects who had no prior experience with the patterns and for subjects who had previously learned to identify the patterns as members of one of four categories. Analyses of the parsing data indicated that category learning increased the salience of large subunits that were similar in orientation for patterns that were members of the same category. This evidence for perceptual learning was obtained even when the category training procedure required learning to identify the patterns individually, suggesting that attribute abstraction and item learning are not incompatible. It was also obtained without an increase in overall intersubject agreement. The latter result led us to question the usefulness of intersubject agreement as an index of category knowledge.     

Why women fail/succeed in ministry: Psychological factors

A study was made of the most and least successful women minister graduates of Christian Theological Seminary since 1959. Significant differences were found in several scales of the CTMM, the ACL and the MMPI. These indicated, for example, higher intelligence, a better self-image, more openness to feelings and to general human faults plus alternative viewpoints, more leadership ability and ability to take charge of their own lives, for the more successful women. Implications for helpful interventions were discussed.Dr. Cardwell is Assistant Professor of Psychology and Counseling and Director of the Pastoral Counseling Service at Christian Theological Seminary, 1000 West 42nd Street, Indianapolis, Indiana 46208.     

Long-delay taste aversion learning in an unpoisoned rat: Exposure to a poisoned rat as the unconditioned stimulus

M. J. Lavin, B. Freise, and S. Coombes (Behavioral and Neural Biology, 1980, 28, 15–33) have shown that if two rats consume a flavored solution and one is poisoned, the unpoisoned partner will also exhibit a flavor aversion during a later preference test. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that a sufficient condition for obtaining this aversion is that the poisoned partner be present with the unpoisoned rat after it has consumed the flavored solution. It is not necessary that the poisoned partner be present when the flavored solution is consumed or indeed have had any exposure to the flavored solution. Experiment 3 showed that the unpoisoned partner can exhibit a flavor aversion when there is a temporal gap of as long as 6 hr between consumption of the flavored solution and exposure to the poisoned rat.     

Simultaneous behavioral and neural (cochlear nucleus) measurement during signal detection in the rabbit

Classical conditioning of the rabbit nictitating membrane (NM) response was adapted as a model system for simultaneous measurement of behavioral and neural responses in auditory signal detection. Animals were trained to a 36-dB spectral-level white-noise CS paired with a corneal airpuff US. The CS intensity was then reduced to threshold, using a modified staircase procedure, and responses on detect and nondetect trials were compared for the same stimulus intensities. At threshold, the behavioral NM response was dichotomous, being present on detect trials and completely absent on nondetect trials. In marked contrast, evoked neural unit activity to the CS recorded from the anteroventral cochlear nucleus was clearly present and identical on both detect and nondetect trials, suggesting that the detection “decision” is made more centrally than the cochlear nucleus.     

The perception of briefly exposed point-sources of light

Point-sources of light (dots) were exposed for 10 to 50 msec, before five dark-adapted subjects in a dimly illuminated room. During voluntary fixation with one eye, the target was exposed some 10° on the nasal side of the optic axis. The intensity X duration of all targets was 2 X threshold and they consisted of either a single dot, or a pair of dots separated by a distance that was less than that required for two-point discrimination. In two-thirds of trials both the single-dot and the two-dot targets were perceived as short thin lines of various orientation. Although individual percepts were unpredictable, there was a preferred or most likely orientation for responses to the single-dot target; this was near to the horizontal for all five subjects. There was no significant difference between the preferred orientations for single-dot targets tested at sites more than 1° apart in the visual field. When two single-dot targets, separated by about 1°, were exposed simultaneously, the orientations of the perceived lines sometimes differed by as much as 80°; occasionally, one target was reported as a dot while the other was seen as a thin line. If the single-dot was briefly exposed between two continuously visible and parallel straight lines, the target usually appeared as a thin line, parallel to the framing lines. Some of these results appear to be consistent with the hypothesis that the human visual cortex, like that of the cat and monkey, contains neurones that are orientation specific.