Associative asymmetry,availability, and retrieval

Associative frequency, the ease with which a word comes to mind in free association, is taken as a measure of general response availability. As expected from this view, in both controlled experiments and in reanalyses of previously published correlational data, high associative frequency words were judged to be more familiar and were easier to recall but harder to recognize than low associative frequency words, even with meaningfulness, imagery, length in letters, and frequency excluded as factors. When used as foils in a recognition experiment, high associative frequency words attracted more responses than low associative frequency words. In addition, associative frequency and meaningfulness correlated only moderately and had different patterns of correlations with other variables, suggesting that the number of associations leading to and from a word differ.     

The generalization of the effects of a cognitive-behavioral treatment program for aggressive children

A cognitive-behavioral treatment program for aggressive children was assessed using 12 outcome measures classified into five categories which reflected a continuum of generalization of treatment effects. From a summer daycamp 41 children, ages 7 through 12, were selected based on aggressive behavior displayed during the first week of camp. They were randomly assigned to either a treatment group or a nontreatment control group. Treatment consisted of four weeks of coping-skills training using behavioral rehearsal and self-instruction training. Considering all 12 measures, treatment was found effective (F=2.90, p < .01). The most meaningful results included improved interpersonal problem-solving skills and a decrease in being disciplined for fighting. No changes were found, however, in physical or verbal aggression and in peer rating of aggression. Modest support for the effectiveness of these treatment procedures was identified, although caution is needed in considering their clinical utility. Further research and application appear justified.     

Deep dysphasia: An analog of deep dyslexia in the auditory modality

A right-handed patient, with two left hemisphere lesions, a small one in the prefrontal lobe and a larger one in the temporal, presents an unusual syndrome: a massive deficit for oral language (expression and comprehension) contrasting with a fairly good preservation of written language (expression and comprehension). The processing of isolated words and sentences has been extensively tested with repetition and dictation tasks. The patient performs rather well with nouns, verbs, and adjectives, poorly with adverbs and function words, and completely fails with nonsense words. A remarkable feature of his repetition is the frequency of semantic paraphasias. Thus, this patient exhibits a behavior rather similar to deep dyslexia, hence the possible label "deep dysphasia." The paper presents a "preunderstanding" hypothesis to account for such behaviors.     

Attentional biases and the right-ear effect in dichotic listening

Most dichotic listening experiments permit subjects to deploy attention in any way they choose. We argue that this adds uncontrolled variance to the observed right-ear advantage. In the first experiment, more robust laterality effects were obtained in an identification task with focused than with divided attention. Such differences were not found in the second experiment, when a detection procedure was used. Virtually all the laterality effect observed in the second study could be attributed to subjects who were biased attenders, in the sense that they exhibited more intrusions from the right ear to the left than vice versa. However, rather than indicating that laterality effects are simply attentional bias, this effect can be attributed to an asymmetry of perceptual discrimination.     

Inferential processing of context: Studies of cognitively impaired subjects

Language comprehension tasks involving pronoun coreference were administered to a group of demented patients, a group of patients with cardiac disease, and groups of normal elderly persons and young adults. Pronoun coreference was constrained by either lexical, syntactic, or contextual cues. No differences were found between old and young subjects for any task. While the demented patients were impaired on all tasks, the cardiac patients were specifically impaired in the inferential processing of context.     

Employment Instability among Less-Qualified Young Workers

More than 40% of a sample of less-qualified Scottish school-leavers, surveyed in 1979, left their first jobs early in their occupational careers. Although most of these left voluntarily, further analysis suggests that their instability was generated more by occupational than by personal factors: it was mainly the product of unstable jobs rather than of unstable workers. Many of the young people who left their first jobs subsequently became unemployed; their chances of finding new employment depended on personal factors more than on their earlier occupational experiences. There was considerable occupational mobility among those who found new jobs.     

Allocation of attention according to informativeness in visual recognition

In visual identification, is visual attention attracted to more informative elements, i.e. to elements which are more critical for identification? This question was investigated by having subjects detect some visual probes while performing a primary task that involved identification. The probes were located in the neighbourhood of highly or poorly informative parts of the identified stimuli. Three experiments that followed this rationale were conducted. In Experiment I, it was found that when subjects searched for a target letter in lines of identical background letters, they detected more dots near the feature that distinguished between the target and the background letters. In Experiment 11, it was found that native Hebrew-speaking subjects detected more lines above a letter that distinguished between two English words. Experiment III showed that the effect was reduced but did not vanish when spatial uncertainty was introduced. On the whole, the data are interpreted as suggesting that more attention may indeed be directed to informative regions, and that this effect cannot be solely attributed to retinal factors.     

The diffuse thalamocortical system and Pavlovian/Eysenckian theory: A response to criticism

This article is a response to Paisey's (1983, this issue, pp. 527–534) critique of reports which describe how transmission characteristics of the diffuse thalamocortical system relate to personality, intelligence and cognitive style (Robinson, 1982a, Robinson, 1982b). Detailed consideration of Paisey's objections leads to the conclusion that they fall into three major categories. First, there are ‘straw men’ that derive from a misrepresentation of theoretical arguments. Secondly, there are objections which relate to methodological considerations but lack substance. Finally, there are criticisms that arise from Paisey's mistaken application of statistical methods.     

The Use of Progressive Relaxation and Hypnosis in Counselling Secondary-School Pupils

Counselling methods involving progressive relaxation and hypnosis are sometimes regarded as being mysterious and alarmingly innovatory, particularly within the context of the secondary-school system. The implications for counselling practice of the use of such methods are considered. Some ways in which they have been used to help young people of secondary-school age are outlined. A number of illustrative case-studies are given, and a relatively unsuccessful case-study is included.