Short-term retention of superimposed and of spatially distinct multiletter visual arrays

On each trial, Ss attempted to retain a series of five visually presented letters while concurrently “shadowing” (repeating aloud) a rapid series of aurally presented letters. If serial-position accuracy is ignored, they were able to store more than only the last letter of a typical series, even though all five letters appeared on the same screen, and that performance was superior to the retention of five auditorily presented letters. Together, these findings suggest that a form of visual storage might have been employed for the retention of visual stimuli and, specifically, one that was relatively immune to erasure as compared to “iconic” storage. In further support of that hypothesis, retention of such visual series as measured by free-recall accuracy was not inferior to that of five letters, each of which was presented on a separate screen.     

The effect of an additional task on recall accuracy in serial short term memory: Preemption of rehearsal or acquisition?

In a serial short term memory test, being either visual or auditory, Ss got the additional instruction to make immediate binary classification responses (BcRs) to those items that occured after a marker which was presented somewhere in the list. The results show a general negative effect of BcRs on recall accuracy of both visually and auditory presented lists i.e. both on items which had been classified during presentation and on those which had occured before the marker arrived. The findings are contrary to the view that BcRs preclude acquisition of the items, but the hypothesis is confirmed that BcRs preempt intra trial rehearsal.     

Conditioning two types of enuretics

Acquired enuretics (children who resume wetting after a period of dryness) have been distinguished from persistent enuretics (children who were never dry) in that the wetting of the former has been viewed as symptomatic of conflict and not modifiable by conditioning procedures. The present study compares these two types on measures of conditioning outcome and effectiveness, initial pathology and post-treatment adjustment.     

Correlates of Marijuana Use Among College Students1

Students who have smoked marijuana are compared with non-users on a variety of attitudinal and demographic characteristics. Approximately 36% of the sample of over 5,000 college students from a national survey report usage of the drug. The major demographic characteristics that separate users from non-users are religious affiliation, region of the country, and sex. With respect to collegiate institutions, the selectivity of the institution, the students' academic aspirations, and grade-point average all prove to play a significant role. Anti-war activities and sentiments also prove highly significant. A Multiple Classification Analysis (MCA), which compares the relative contribution of each variable to drug usage, shows that anti-war protest, religious affiliation, and sex are the most significant predictors of marijuana usage. A variety of mechanisms playing a possible role in fostering drug use are discussed.     

Subject differences in cross-modality matching

Forty-eight Ss performed four tasks each: (1) magnitude estimation of area, (2) magnitude estimation of numerousness, (3) cross-modality matching of force of handgrip to area, and (4) cross-modality matching of force of handgrip to numerousness. An additional 48 Ss performed Tasks 2 and 4. Psychophysical power functions were fitted to the data of each S for each condition. Higher correlations between individual exponents were found for conditions employing a common response (i.e., estimating or squeezing) than were found for conditions with the same set of stimuli. Individual differences among exponents stem more from the idiosyncratic use of the dependent variable than from different sensory characteristics.     

Educating Disadvantaged Urban Children in Suburban Schools: An Evaluation1

A 1-year experimental program that transported a total of 38 “volunteer” disadvantaged city children to schools in a nearby suburban community was evaluated in grades 1 and 2. Twenty-six of the 38 children were in a total of 12 different classes at these two grade levels. At the conclusion of the program, transported first graders displayed significantly higher average gains in reading, mathematics, and listening skills than did counterparts who remained in the city school. Among second graders, achievement mean gains for the transported group did not differ significantly from those of the counterpart group. Suburban children in classes containing city youngsters displayed no measured detrimental effects on achievement, when compared to similar classes without city children. In general, year-end affective measures indicated that most groups of students preferred integrated classes that were mostly white, and they also felt these classes were among the smartest.