DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MOTHERS AND FATHERS IN PREDICTION OF SON'S PERFORMANCE IN EASY THROUGH DIFFICULT EXAMS*

Twenty-four Indian couples predicted in confidentiality to the school principal, the performance, in very easy, ok, and very difficult exams, of several 12-year-old boys, presented as their only son. As hypothesized, pattern in the Motivation X Ability effect depended upon the experience of subjects with the task and the difficulty of the exams. Prediction by mothers conformed to the patterns of parallelism and linear fan; those by fathers conformed to the patterns of parallelism and convergence. The findings of the present research and those of past research lead to the conclusion that the egalitarian (i.e., pattern of parallelism), elitist (i.e., pattern of linear fan), and Horatio Alger (i.e., pattern of convergence) beliefs are present in Indian, as well as in North-American adults, but that Indians manifest the elitist and Horatio Alger beliefs very selectively. The implications of these results for cross-cultural research on cognitive processes and for the understanding of differences between mothers and fathers in the cognition of their son are discussed.     

Implicit and explicit memory in young and older adults

In three experiments, young and older adults were compared on both implicit and explicit memory tasks. The size of repetition priming effects in word completion and in perceptual identification tasks did not differ reliably across ages. However, age-related decrements in performance were obtained in free recall, cued recall, and recognition. These results, similar to those observed in amnesics, suggest that older adults are impaired on tasks which require conscious recollection but that memory which depends on automatic activation processes in relatively unaffected by age.     

AN EVALUATION OF GENTLE TEACHING AND VISUAL SCREENING IN THE REDUCTION OF STEREOTYPY

Gentle teaching and visual screening techniques have been used to control severe behavior problems in persons with mental retardation. An alternating treatments design was used to compare gentle teaching, visual screening, and a task-training condition in the reduction of the high-level stereotypy of 3 persons with mental retardation. Following a baseline phase, a task-training condition using standard behavioral techniques was implemented to establish the effects of training the subjects on the tasks. Results showed a modest decrease in stereotypy. This phase was followed by an alternating treatments phase in which visual screening, gentle teaching, and baseline conditions were compared. Both procedures were superior to the control condition in reducing stereotypic behavior, with visual screening being more effective than gentle teaching. When compared with data from the prior phase, gentle teaching was found to be more effective than task training for 2 subjects but less effective for the 3rd, whose stereotypy increased during gentle teaching. Two succeeding phases in which visual screening was implemented across two and then all three daily conditions reduced stereotypy further to near-zero levels. An additional phase with 1 subject demonstrated that the treatment effects of visual screening were easily replicated across therapists. Mixed and idiosyncratic changes in collateral behaviors occurred. For example, “bonding,” the goal of gentle teaching, occurred at the same low levels under both treatments, contrary to the predictions of gentle teaching's proponents. The results indicate that gentle teaching may not be the universal treatment of choice for stereotypy its proponents suggest, and that it requires further empirical evaluation.     

EFFECTS OF AN ORAL HYGIENE PUNISHMENT PROCEDURE ON CHRONIC RUMINATION AND COLLATERAL BEHAVIORS IN MONOZYGOUS TWINS

This study investigated the suppressive effects of an oral hygiene punishment procedure on the ruminative behavior of profoundly retarded monozygous twins. Rumination, fingers in mouth/tongue out, appropriate behavior, and stereotyped behavior were measured before and during treatment with oral hygiene. Treatment was introduced for each meal in succession across the twins in a multiple-baseline design. Results showed that the rate of rumination of both twins was dramatically reduced to very low levels and stereotyped behavior increased spontaneously with the introduction of oral hygiene. Maintenance data showed that response reduction was maintained over a six-month period and, when compared to baseline levels, increased rates of socially appropriate behavior were evident in both children.     

Ritual Participation,Sense of Community,and Social Well-Being: A Study of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Seva</Emphasis> in the Sikh Community

The study examined the impact of frequency of ritual participation on sense of community and social well-being of a minority community in India, the Sikhs. We looked at a unique ritualistic practice of the Sikhs, seva. Rituals are known to contribute toward social solidarity and cohesion as well as physical and mental well-being. In particular for a minority community, rituals help group members establish and maintain strong community networks and a unique group identity. A total of 156 members of the Sikh community (85 males; 71 females) participated in the study. Frequency of ritual participation was positively related with social well-being and sense of community. Furthermore, sense of community was found to mediate the effect of frequency of ritual participation on social well-being. Results are discussed in the light of the importance of studying rituals in minority groups, the frequency of participation in a ritual activity and the importance of addressing social well-being in ritual research.     

May I have your attention please: Binding of attended but response-irrelevant features

The feature codes of stimuli and responses can be integrated, and if a stimulus is repeated it can retrieve the previously integrated response. Furthermore, even irrelevant features can be integrated and, upon repetition, retrieve the response. Yet the role of attention in feature integration and retrieval is not clearly understood. Some theories assume a central role of attention (e.g., Logan, 1988; Treisman & Gelade, 1980), but other studies have shown no influence of attention on feature binding (e.g., Hommel, 2005). In the present experiments the effect of attention on the integration of two different response-irrelevant features of the same stimulus was examined. In two experiments, participants responded to the color (response feature) of word stimuli, while two irrelevant features of the words (word type and valence) were systematically varied. Participants’ attention was directed to either one or the other of the response-irrelevant features by asking participants to report that feature at the end of the trial. Feature–response binding effects in the color task were observed to be stronger for the attended response-irrelevant feature. These results indicate that feature binding is not only very flexible but also sensitive to the distribution of attention. It is also automatic, in the sense that as long as attention is available, feature binding occurs irrespective of the task-specific demands.