Reliability and validity of the revised fear survey schedule for children (FSSC-R)

In this study, the validation of a Revised Fear Survey Schedule for Children (FSSC-R) is detailed. Psychometric properties of the scale are reported for two normal samples and one clinical sample of school-phobic children. Initial analyses indicate that the FSSC-R possesses high internal consistency, high test-retest reliability and acceptable stability over time. Further, it adequately discriminates between normal and clinical samples, has acceptable convergent and discriminant validity and possesses a meaningful factor structure. The potential clinical utility of the scale is discussed, and important social and developmental issues affecting the development and expression of fear in children are addressed.     

A preliminary report on the nature of interactions in a mental-handicap institution

A preliminary analysis of the reactions by staff and other residents to the behaviour of mentally-handicapped people living in a medium-sized institution is presented. The subjects' behaviour was categorized as appropriate, inappropriate or neutral according to culturally-normative criteria. It was found that, for the majority of time there was no reaction to the subjects' behaviour by staff or by other residents. The implications of utilizing culturally-normative criteria for categorizing behaviour are discussed. It is proposed that this type of analysis is potentially useful for understanding the nature of interactions in institutions.     

Exposure is a necessary condition for fear-reduction: a reply to de Silva and Rachman

de Silva and Rachman (1981) have recently suggested that although non-reinforced exposure of a fear-evoking stimulus constitutes a sufficient condition for unlearning fears, it does not represent a necessary condition. This conclusion was reached, in part, by examples they provide which appeared to them to suggest that fear-reduction can occur in the absence of exposure to the fear stimulus. They then call for an extended search for non-exposure types of intervention, especially those involving ‘sources of information’ and ‘expectations’. After reviewing in detail the arguments advanced, the present authors adopt the position that de Silva and Rachman's conclusions are premature and unwarranted. To abandon or lose sight of one of the most effective and perhaps most important therapeutic principles, CS exposure, would be myopic and detrimental to the advancement of effective behavior change. At this point in time what is needed is a more careful analysis of the extinction process especially at the stimulus level so the effectiveness of this principle can be maximized.     

The role of marking when reward is delayed

Two-choice spatial discrimination by rats is enhanced if a salient stimulus marker occurs immediately after every choice response and again after a delay interval (Lieberman, McIntosh & Thomas, 1979). Three experiments further explore this effect. Experiment 1 found that the second marker is unnecessary. Experiment 2 found that a marker presented before a response is as effective as one presented after. Both effects could be explained in terms of markers focusing attention on subsequent cues. Experiment 3, however, found that markers after choice enhance learning even when no discriminative cues are present following the marker. Markers thus appear to initiate both a backward search through memory and attention to subsequent events; both processes help to identify events that might be related to the unexpected marking stimulus.     

Response tempo and separable--integral responding: evidence for an integral-to-separable processing sequence in visual perception

Three experiments were conducted to examine the relation between response tempo and separable-integral responding. A restricted classification paradigm, in which similarity-based (integral) and dimensionally based (separable) classifications were pitted against one another, was used with the dimensions of length and density (all experiments) and size and brightness (Experiment 3). The subjects were college students (Experiments 1 and 2) and kindergarten, second-, and fifth-grade children (Experiment 3). In all three experiments, rapid responding was associated with fewer dimensional and more similarity responses than was slow responding. This result held when response tempo was simply measured (Experiments 1 and 3) and when it was manipulated by the experimenter (Experiment 2). The results were interpreted to be consistent with models of dimensional processing in which holistic, integral processing precedes analytic dimensional processing.     

Perception of surface curvature and direction of illumination from patterns of shading

Three experiments examine the perceptual salience of shading information for the visual specification of three-dimensional form. The observers in these experiments were required to estimate the surface curvature and direction of illumination depicted in computer-synthesized images of cylindrical surfaces, both with and without texture. The results indicate that the shininess of a surface enhances the perception of curvature, but has no effect on perceived direction of illumination; and that shading is generally less effective than texture for depicting surfaces in three dimensions. These and other findings are used to evaluate the psychological validity of several mathematical analyses of shading information that have recently been proposed in the literature.     

Are variations among right-handed individuals in perceptual asymmetries caused by characteristic arousal differences between hemispheres?

We propose that much of the variance among right-handed subjects in perceptual asymmetries on standard behavioral measures of laterality arises from individual differences in characteristic patterns of asymmetric hemispheric arousal. Dextrals with large right-visual-field (RVF) advantages on a tachistoscopic syllable-identification task (assumed to reflect characteristically higher left-hemisphere than right-hemisphere arousal) outperformed those having weak or no visual-field asymmetries (assumed to reflect characteristically higher right-hemisphere than left-hemisphere arousal). The two groups were equal, however, in asymmetries of error patterns that are thought to indicate linguistic or nonlinguistic encoding strategies. For both groups, relations between visual fields in the ability to discriminate the accuracy of performance followed the pattern of syllable identification itself, suggesting that linguistic and metalinguistic processes are based on the same laterally specialized functions. Subjects with strong RVF advantages had a pessimistic bias for rating performance, and those with weak or no asymmetries had an optimistic bias, particularly for the left visual field (LVF). This is concordant with evidence that the arousal level of the right hemisphere is closely related to affective mood. Finally, consistent with the arousal model, leftward asymmetries on a free-vision face-processing task became larger as RVF advantages on the syllable task diminished and as optimistic biases for the LVF, relative to the RVF, increased.     

Voice-onset time as a clue to the nature of Broca speech errors

Blumstein, Cooper, Goodglass, Statlender, and Gottleib (Brain and Language, 9, 153–170 (1980)) attempt to determine by an examination of the VOTs of aphasic speakers whether Broca's aphasics make phonemic substitutions in addition to their well-known phonetic errors. There are a number of problems with this study, mostly due to an apparent failure to fully appreciate the fact that VOT is a cover term for several acoustic features. It is suggested that VOT measurement in any given position in a word cannot solve this problem and that future studies should include glottographic observations as well as VOT measurements made in all positions in the word.