Inhibition from semantically related primes: Evidence of a category-specific inhibition

The phenomenon of inhibition from generating successive items within a category, reported by A. S. Brown (1981), was examined in two experiments. Subjects responded on target trials by either generating targets (e.g., generating BASS to B when it followed the category name FISH, Experiment 1) or reading them (reading BASS when it followed the category name FISH, Experiment 2). Prior to target trials, all subjects received priming trials consisting of either one or four exemplars from a single semantic category, which could be either the same category as the target’s category (related priming condition) or an unrelated category (unrelated priming condition). In both experiments, different groups of subjects either read or generated primes. When primes were read, target response times (RTs) were always facilitated in the related priming condition compared with in the unrelated priming condition. However, when primes were generated, this facilitation from related primes was eliminated, except in the one-prime condition, when targets were also generated. When primes and targets were both generated, RTs in the related priming condition were slower following four primes than following one prime. Thus, category-specific inhibition from multiple related primes is greatest when both primes and targets must be actively retrieved.     

Painfulness decreases the discriminability of electric shock

Two experiments were designed to investigate the relation between the reported painfulness and the discriminability of pairs of electric shocks for which the ratio between the higher and the lower intensity was held constant. In both experiments, subjects first gave category ratings of the painfulness of single shocks in the range 40 to 4.8 mA. Then, in a discrimination experiment, they were required to identify the stronger of a pair of intensities presented in succession. The proportion of correct responses (Experiment 1) or the proportion of area under the receiver operating characteristic (Experiment 2) increased between a low-intensity pairing and a medium-intensity pairing and decreased between a medium-intensity pairing and a high-intensity pairing for subjects who rated the highest intensities as strongly painful. Subjects who gave moderate- or weak-pain ratings for the high-intensity shocks showed no significant increase or decrease in accuracy between the medium- and high-intensity pairings. Time-order errors were observed in Experiment 1. The proportion of trials on which the second stimulus of the pair was identified as the stronger increased monotonically as a function of stimulus magnitude. The results are discussed in the context of psychological assessment of analgesic procedures.     

Formation of food aversions in cancer patients receiving repeated infusions of chemotherapy

Patients receiving emetogenic chemotherapy for cancer have been found to develop aversions to normal dietary items consumed in close temporal relation to treatment administrations. These aversions are presumed to develop via conditioning processes as demonstrated in experimental studies of food aversion learning. The present study used a prospective, longitudinal design to evaluate the possible role of conditioning in the formation of aversions to normal dietary items in women receiving adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer. Patients were monitored for the development of aversions to foods and beverages consumed in the 24 hr periods before and after each of eight consecutive chemotherapy infusions beginning with the initial infusion. Data on the prevalence, course, and prediction of aversions to normal dietary items are reported. These results pointed to similarities and differences between aversions formed to normal dietary items during chemotherapy treatment and aversions formed to taste stimuli during experimental conditioning studies. In addition to their theoretical significance, results also suggest possible strategies for preventing the clinical problem of aversions to normal dietary items in chemotherapy patients.     

Parental Influences on Career Development Perceived by African American and Mexican American College Students

This study examined parental factors that influence career development among African American and Mexican American college students. Analysis of student interviews revealed that parents are influential in the following career domains: encouragement, educational expectations, critical life events, vicarious learning, and work identity. Career development issues that counselors need to address are provided.     

The Development of Memory for Serial Order: A Temporal-contextual Distinctiveness Model

A model of adult human memory, OSCAR, is applied to the development of memory for serial order. In the model, development of serial order memory is assumed to result from age-related changes in a dynamic learning-context signal that underpins memory for serial order. Developmental improvement in this dynamic learning-context signal leads to more temporally distinctive representations in memory, and this leads in turn to a reduction in order errors. It is shown that the model correctly predicts developmental changes in the movement error gradients in children's serially ordered recall, as well as developmental changes in the number of movement errors obtained. The model is also applied to repetition errors across development.     

Test difficulty and judgment bias

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that overconfidence in performance judgments is due to test- and person-driven errors. In Experiment 1, test difficulty accounted for the vast majority of variation in overconfidence when individuals judged items of varying difficulty within a homogeneous test. In Experiment 2, the severity of overconfidence did not differ between three unrelated tests once test difficulty was controlled. Both experiments supported the view that over-confidence is due largely to test difficulty. Some degree of overconfidence also occurred because individuals adopted a normatively high success criterion for judging their own test performance.     

THE IMPACT OF AUDITION ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF VISUAL ATTENTION

Interactions between audition and vision were investigated in two experiments In the first experiment, school-age hearing children, deaf children with cochlear implants, and deaf children without implants participated in a task in which they were to respond to some visual signals and not others This task did not involve sound at all Deaf children without implants performed much more poorly than hearing children Deaf children with cochlear implants performed considerably better than deaf children without implants The second experiment employed a longitudinal design and showed that the rate of development in visual selective attention was faster for deaf children with cochlear implants than deaf children without implants Moreover, the gams were rapid–occurring within 2 years post-implant surgery The results suggest that a history of experience with sounds matters in the development of visual attention The results are discussed in terms of multimodal developmental processes     

The Act Frequency Approach to the study of impulsivity

Though widely used in research on personality, the impulsivity construct is far from being well defined. Different ways of measuring and operationalizing this construct have led to contradictory empirical results. Nor is it clear where impulsivity belongs in multidimensional personality models. For instance, in Eysenck's original scheme it is treated as a component of extroversion, whereas in Costa and McCrae's (1992) NEO model it is a facet of the neuroticism dimension. In this study, we used Buss and Craik's Act Frequency Approach to investigate the components of impulsivity and its relationships (at both internal and manifested structure levels) with extroversion and neuroticism. A set of acts was identified, the frequency of commission of which correlated with other measures of impulsivity (especially its motor and cognitive aspects), and correlated better with neuroticism than with extroversion.     

Predictors of Sentencing Decisions: The Beliefs, Personality Variables, and Demographic Factors of Juvenile Justice

The role of beliefs, personality variables, and demographic factors in the sentencing of juvenile offenders was investigated. The subjects (1,030 members of the juvenile justice system) judged hypothetical juvenile perpetrators. Various personality, belief, and demographic variables were found to be related to sentencing severity; these relationships differed based on the type of crime judged. Further, relations among these variables and sentencing behavior indicated three coherent patterns or resonances. A liberal group of individuals, believing in rehabilitation, external causality of crime, a positive prognosis for the perpetrator, and nontraditional views of women, sentenced moderately. Two types of conservative individuals were defined. Both groups were punitive, and believed in internal causality of crime; however, they differed on attitudes toward women, needs for cognition, and beliefs about seriousness and harm. One group sentenced the most severely and the other the most leniently. Implications for the sentencing of juvenile offenders are discussed.     

Applying the M-92, A Self-Knowledge Technique for Determining Job Aspirations and Expectations

The M-92 technique is aimed at helping teenagers become aware of: (a) the relationships between certain classic determinants such as prestige, income, and job opportunities and their system of job aspirations and/or expectations; (b) the strong and weak points in their system of information about jobs; (c) the internal structure of their system of occupational representations; and (d) possible conflicts in values or discordancies between aspirations and expectations. From a theoretical standpoint the M-92 draws directly on Coombs (1975) and Gottfredson (1981). Methodologically, it is an extension of the Hammond et al. (1988) Social Judgement Theory to the case of pair comparisons. Several concrete examples of the M-92 in use are described.