STUDIES IN THE PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF A NEW DRUG (DIETHYLPROPION): Subjective effects in the natural environment

Two doses diethylpropion, one dose pipradrol, one dose amobarbital and placebo were administered to 116 subjects, who rated their state on twenty variables. The variables were intercorrelated under pipradrol and pentymal. The correlation matrices were subjected to factor analysis. Four factors were found in both studies: Happiness, Alertness, Relaxation, and Flight of thoughts. There is some agreement between the two factor analyses. There were few significant effects of the drugs on factor scores, but the structure is quite unambiguous: pipradrol and diethylpropion are stimulating, and amobarbital tranquilizing.     

Vocalization-at-presentation and immediate recall, with varying presentation-rates

An experiment is reported in which the subject read visually presented lists with four different degrees of vocalization; immediately after reading each list he was required to reproduce it either aloud or in writing. Each list consisted of eight consonants and presentation rates were varied between I and 4 letters per sec. For any given series of lists, the subject was asked either to read the letters silently, or to mouth them silently, or to whisper them, or to say them aloud while reading.

At the fastest presentation-rate immediate recall improved monotonically with the degree of vocalization during reading of the lists; at slower rates this generalization held less well, especially for the lower degrees of vocalization. Vocalization was most helpful at the highest presentation-rate.

The overall amount correctly recalled was better for more slowly presented lists and for written as opposed to spoken recall. Analysis of the errors suggested that acoustic confusions were affected by the conditions of presentation; and that serial order intrusions were independent of presentation-or recall-conditions. An apparent variation of transpositions with voicing-and-recall-method failed to reach statistical significance. Theoretical implications of the experiment are discussed, including reference to Broadbent's theory of short-term memory (1958).     

Adult age comparisons in the processing of event frequency information

The usual superiority in frequency-of-occurrence judgments of younger vs. older subjects was hypothesized to result from greater strategic encoding of the materials conveying frequency information. A subject-paced, visual search task was designed to control nontarget word encoding. Relative frequency judgments for the nontarget word pairs were equally accurate for younger and older subjects, and performance of both groups was above chance. Results suggest that strategic cover-task encoding can induce age differences in incidental frequency processing. Consistent with a nonoptimal as opposed to an optimal view, automatic processes require only minimal capacity for above-chance performance, but additional strategic resources can increase performance. When such additional resources are used more by younger than by older subjects, the former are better in frequency performance.     

Preserved organization of semantic attributes in Alzheimer's disease

This study investigated whether Alzheimer's disease (AD) disrupts the basic organization of the semantic attributes of concepts. Young and normal older subjects and AD patients were presented with a target concept followed by a stimulus word and were to decide whether the stimulus was related to the target. On those trials where it was, the stimulus was either a high-, medium-, or low-dominance attribute of the target. The higher the normative dominance, the more important the attribute to concept meaning. In all 3 subject groups, decision time varied as a function of dominance. The higher the dominance, the faster the decision. Attribute dominance affected the performance of AD patients more than that of normal subjects. These results suggest that AD patients retain their knowledge of the relative importance that the different attributes of a concept have for concept meaning.     

Retrospective assessment of marital adjustment and depression during the first 2 years of spousal bereavement

Two hundred twelve bereaved elders rated marital adjustment using items drawn from the Locke and Wallace (1959) Marital Adjustment Test and completed the Beck Depression Inventory 2 months, 12 months, and 30 months after the loss of their spouses. Their responses were compared with those of 162 nonbereaved individuals of comparable age who were tested at the same times. More positive ratings of marital adjustment were made by bereaved subjects than by nonbereaved subjects. Among nonbereaved elders, more severe ratings of depression were associated with lower ratings of marital adjustment. In the bereaved sample, however, the opposite was found: More severe ratings of depression were associated with higher ratings of marital adjustment. This pattern of results changed only slightly over the 2.5-year course of bereavement and was not influenced by gender. These results are discussed in terms of cognitive processes (e.g., idealization) that influence retrospective assessments of marital adjustment during bereavement.