Alcohol consumption by college women following exposure to unsolvable problems: Learned helplessness or stress induced drinking?

Three experiments were intended to examine the relationship between alcohol, depression and learned helplessness. In Study I, more female undergraduate heavy drinkers than light drinkers were found to have critically elevated scores on a depression index. A sex difference in the relationship between drinking and depression is suggested since male depressives were equally distributed among drinking categories. In Studies II and III, female undergraduates were given unsolvable problems in a learned helplessness paradigm. Relative to controls these subjects reported increased depressive and hostile affect and drank more beer in a taste rating task. However, we failed to find deficits in anagram solution with those subjects given the learned helplessness manipulation. Specific questions are raised regarding the boundary conditions of learned helplessness while implications bearing on stress-related alcohol consumption are discussed.     

MENTAL ROTATION AND TYPICAL VIEWS: A HEURISTIC EXPERIMENT

Subjects were presented either with models set at an angle or with photographs of such models. They were required to remember the orientation (or the depicted orientation) and to reproduce it using similar models placed on a turntable. It was found that the subjects showed a systematic tendency to reproduce the settings of the depicted models as being closer to the one of the two ‘typical’ settings (profile and face on) than they really were. The continuum between the two ‘typical’ settings appeared to be divided into two unequal zones and the sense of the error made was dependent on the zone from which the stimulus originated. No similar effects were observed in the responses made to models.     

THE SKILL OF PICTORIAL PERCEPTION: AN INTERPRETATION OF CROSS-CULTURAL EVIDENCE*

A theoretical framework is proposed for understanding perceptual skills in their functional context. Pictorial perception is construed as a functionally specialised skill whose pervasive importance in modern education derives from the proliferation of pictorial materials in Western culture. Drawing on cross-cultural research, the major components of the skill are identified as (1) detection of appropriate contexts for its application, (2) selection of a limiting frame of reference, (3) use of conventional criteria of fidelity to recognise depicted items, (4) sensitivity to impoverished depth cues, (5) an expectation of finding in the picture most of the information necessary for its disambiguation, and (6) various assumptions about the range of cognitive inferences that may legitimately be made ‘beyond the information given’. Training studies are interpreted as suggesting that the skill can be enhanced through guided experience.     

Consequence analysis: Its effects on verbal statements about an environmental project

Typically, citizens lack relevant information concerning possible consequences of proposed environmental projects. Despite federal requirements for citizen participation in decisions about proposed roadway projects, no systematic procedures exist for educating citizens as to the possible consequences of such projects. The effects of a consequence analysis procedure on community residents' verbal statements about the favorability of a proposed roadway project were assessed. The consequence analysis procedure involved asking residents to rate the desirability and magnitude of each of 48 possible consequences of the proposed roadway project. Following the intervention, overall ratings of favorability of the project changed for nine of ten residents. Community residents' ratings of the quality of participants' justifications of their position on the roadway issue provided evidence of generalization to this collateral behavior.     

Effects of training students to identify the semantic base of prose materials

Feedback and feedback plus points toward a course grade were applied to the attentional behaviors (defined as the ability to identify the semantic base of text passages) of 30 undergraduate students participating in a reading comprehension development program. Correct underlining was increased, extraneous underlining was decreased, and postreading comprehension test scores improved as a result of the procedures. Scores on a standardized test of reading comprehension also increased significantly.     

Effects of the match between listener expectancies and coarticulatory cues on the perception of speech

Several experiments have attempted to establish the order in which various linguistic units (e.g., syllables and words) are processed. This article presents an alternative interpretation (the target-stimulus mismatch interpretation) for those earlier results. This interpretation states that the closer the match between the listener's expectancies about how the stimulus will sound (the target) and the sound of the acoustic stimulus the listener actually hears (the stimulus), the faster the listener will recognize the stimulus. This interpretation was tested in an experiment in which the match between the target and the stimulus was varied by manipulating the acoustic (coarticulatory) properties of the stimulus while the size of the target (syllable) was held constant. The results suggest that earlier findings explained in terms of linguistic units or levels can be explained more readily by the target-stimulus mismatch interpretation, and these results provide evidence that coarticulatory information is utilized by the perceiver of speech.     

The new experimental aesthetics—The beginning or the end?

In reference to recent work in aesthetics from a scientific perspective, Berlyne coined the phrase the new experimental aesthetics. Berlyne's contributions to this research area are discussed in terms of the philosophical, theoretical, and methodological issues central to the current literature. The paper concludes with a consideration of the future prospects for experimental aesthetics.This paper was presented at a symposium in honor of Daniel E. Berlyne at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, San Francisco, August 27, 1977. The presentation of this paper was supported by a grant from York University.