Sentence interference in the Stroop task

In two experiments on Stroop interference, we examined whether sentences can be processed without the intention of the reader. Participants named the ink colors in which words in sentences were printed, and the ink colors in which the same words, randomly arranged, were printed. In Experiment 1, sentences yielded longer response times (RTs) and more errors than did nonsentences, but only when they included words that were highly relevant to the color-naming task (i.e., color and color-related words). In Experiment 2, sentences yielded more errors than did nonsentences, and sentences in which the color words matched the set of ink colors yielded longer RTs than did nonsentences. The results indicate that sentence processing can be obligatory when the component words are highly relevant to the task.     

When Respect Means to Obey: Immigrant Mexican Mothers' Values for Their Children

We describe Mexican immigrant mothers' values for their children and their understanding of how children acquire those values. Fifteen mothers were given a Q-Sort task of parental values and interviewed at length using a semi-structured format. Analysis of the mothers' transcribed narratives revealed salient features of a cultural model of child development that constrasts sharply with current professional models. The emergent portrait of children was one of inactive learners whose ability to understand dictated social behavior, developed very slowly over the years, and was dependent on parental direction and instruction.     

Structural aspects of face recognition and the other-race effect

The other-race effect was examined in a series of experiments and simulations that looked at the relationships among observer ratings of typicality, familiarity, attractiveness, memorability, and the performance variables ofd’ and criterion. Experiment 1 replicated the other-race effect with our Caucasian and Japanese stimuli for both Caucasian and Asian observers. In Experiment 2, we collected ratings from Caucasian observers on the faces used in the recognition task. A Varimax-rotated principal components analysis on the rating and performance data for the Caucasian faces replicated Vokey and Read’s (1992) finding that typicality is composed of two orthogonal components, dissociable via their independent relationships to: (1) attractiveness and familiarity ratings and (2) memorahility ratings. For Japanese faces, however, we fond that typicality was related only to memorahility. Where performance measures were concerned, two additional principal components dominated by criterion and byd’ emerged for Caucasian faces. For the Japanese faces, however, the performance measures ofd’ and criterion merged into a single component that represented a second component of typicality, one orthogonal to thememorability-dominated component. A measure offace representation quality extracted from an autoassociative neural network trained with a majority of Caucasian faces and a minority of Japanese faces was incorporated into the principal components analysis. For both Caucasian and Japanese faces, the neural network measure related both to memorability ratings and to human accuracy measures. Combined, the human data and simulation results indicate that the memorahility component of typicality may be related to small, local, distinctive features, whereas the attractiveness/familiarity component may be more related to the global, shape-based properties of the face.     

Deterring the Onset of Smoking in Children: Knowledge of Immediate Physiological Effects and Coping with Peer Pressure,Media Pressure,and Parent Modeling1

Entering seventh grade, most children believe that smoking endangers their long-term health. Nevertheless, three sources of social pressure were found to often have an overriding influence to begin smoking: peers, models of smoking parents, and media. Interventions were developed to train children to cope with these pressures. Also stressed were immediate rather than long-term physiological effects of smoking. A dependent measure was utilized that generates increased validity of self-reports of smoking. A 10-week investigation was completed with 750 male and female students entering the seventh grade. Rates of onset of smoking in treatment groups were significantly lower than in a pretest-single posttest control group.     

The effect of strategy training and stimulus saliency on attention and recognition in preschoolers

Observing behavior and short-term recognition were studied in a training and test design. Preschoolers matched pictures from memory with training of a selective attending strategy or placebo practice. Both groups were then tested for retention of the strategies attained during training. For one-third of the subjects in each condition the relevant portions of the stimuli were made perceptually salient, for another third the irrelevant portions were salient, and for the rest no portions were salient. Strategy training enhanced relevant observing behavior and facilitated recognition accuracy in both training and test. The salient irrelevant cues interfered in training for the Placebo subjects. A second study examined the effect of three components of the strategy training procedure; verbal instructions, modeling, and fading. Verbal instructions, and to a lesser extent, modeling and fading, enhanced relevant observing behavior in both training and test but facilitated recognition accuracy only in training.     

Behavior modification in schools: ethical issues and suggested guidelines

This paper explores the major problems involved in the ethical and adequate use of behavior modification procedures in social settings. Problems are presented in the form of controversial issues which the concerned behavior change agent should be aware of at each step of a behavior change program: selection of the target child, data collection and record keeping, implementation of a behavior change program, personnel qualifications. Suggested guidelines for addressing the problems are provided.     

Identifying a school's real agenda: Nine steps

Nine steps are described which enable a school psychologist to determine the real agenda of a school system. The “real” agenda of a school is defined as those behaviors that are encouraged and discouraged by each school's culture on a daily basis. These steps include (a) community expectations, (b) grading system, (c) testing program, (d) school achievement level, (e) curricular options, (f) changes in personnel, (g) organizational changes, (h) budget implications, and (i) walking the halls.     

The usefulness of distinguishing between a defensive and a nondefensive external locus of control

The study's purpose was to determine whether a distinction can be made between individuals adopting an external locus of control as a defense and those adopting the orientation because it reflects their life experience. It was hypothesized that the two groups differ in the amount of personal responsibility they accept for task outcomes. Internals and externals were identified and then further designated as high or low in action taking. Among externals, a high action-taking score implied defensiveness. Subjects randomly received either success or failure feedback on a presumed task of interpersonal sensitivity. Defensive externals varied their causal attributions as a function of outcome, whereas nondefensive externals did not (p < .05). The distinction between defensive and nondefensive external control was thus supported.     

The effects of visual similarity on proofreading for misspellings

In three experiments, subjects read prose passages and circled misspellings in them. The misspelled words were created by replacing a single letter with another one. The visual similarity between the correct letter and the one that was substituted for it increased the percentage of proofreading errors. The results suggest that proofreaders search through a visual representation of the text and that a hierarchical feature test is applied to this representation, according to which subjects give first priority to resolving letter envelope and second priority to discriminating additional visual features. A sophisticated-guessing decision rule is also implicated for the misspellings that do not alter letter envelope: Subjects are tolerant of missing letter features but are intolerant of additional features.