Preference for decision structures in a social dilemma situation

Additional results from Rutte and Wilke's (1984) study are presented. In the context of a social dilemma situation two variables were manipulated: use and variance. Preference for various decision structures is the issue of the present paper. It appeared that a large majority structure and an unanimity structure were mast preferred. A small majority structure and a structure in which each decides for him/herself were intermediately preferred. Whereas a structure in which one person, a leader, decides for all was least preferred. Further analysis of these data suggested that only the latter two decision structures were influenced by the use and variance manipulations.     

Estimating social and nonsocial utility functions from ordinal data

This paper reports an experiment testing two hypotheses. The first is that the value or utility associated with a payment to one's self and a payment to a co-worker can be represented as an additive function of a utility for own payment (nonsocial utility) and a utility for the difference between own and other's payment (social utility). The second hypothesis is that changes in the amount of work accomplished by one's self and/or the other should influence the social, but not the the nonsocial utilities. Support for both hypotheses is reported.     

Symbolic comparisons with and without perceptual referents: Is interval information used?

In an attempt to investigate the range effect obtained by Moyer and Bayer (1976), two groups of subjects were taught to associate colors with circles that differed in size by larger or smaller intervals and then participated in a symbolic comparison task, in which they determined which of two simultaneously presented symbols (the first letters of two colors) represented the larger magnitude. A third group of subjects, who merely learned an arbitrary ordering of the colors along the dimension of size, also participated in the symbolic comparison task. Despite the fact that no practice trials were given, there was no effect of interval size in either early or late blocks, and the circle-learning groups did not differ in performance from the group who only learned an arbitrary ordering of colors, even when pairs containing end terms were removed from the analysis. It is concluded that subjects do not use analogue codes in symbolic comparison tasks involving small, repeated sets of arbitrarily defined symbols.     

Testing visual short-term memory: Simultaneous versus sequential presentations

Two experiments testing immediate ordered recall are presented; in these experiments, subjects engaged in repetitive speech (“articulatory suppression”) during a visual presentation in order to prevent auditory recoding of the stimuli. In both experiments, a simultaneous presentation produced results that suggested the use of visual short-term memory, whereas a sequential presentation did not. In Experiment 1, visual confusion errors occurred more often than would be expected by chance for a simultaneous presentation but not for a sequential presentation. In Experiment 2, recall from visual short-term memory was expected to suffer more when subjects wrote a prefix than when they spoke a prefix; this effect occurred for a simultaneous presentation but not for a sequential presentation. These results suggest that existence of a visual short term store that retains a simultaneous presentation but not a sequential presentation.     

Reading with partial phonology: Developmental phonological dyslexia

Recent psycholinguistic investigations have advanced our understanding of the acquired dyslexias. Developmental analogues have been described to some of these disorders. A new case of developmental phonological dyslexia is described here. A.H. is an intelligent 10-year-old boy with no neurological abnormality. Reading and spelling are below age level. A.H. is poorer at reading words than nonwords. The majority of his errors are paralexias: visual, derivations, or visuosemantic. Spelling-to-sound regularity does not affect the ability to read aloud. A.H.'s reading performance is significantly impaired when words are presented typed in reverse order, thereby prohibiting global strategies. Spelling of nonwords is no better than reading of nonwords. Only one-fifth of spelling errors are phonologically valid. A.H. has imperfect development of both the phonological route to reading and the phonological route to spelling.A shortened version of this paper was presented at the European meeting of the International Neuropsychological Society, Lisbon, Portugal, June 1983.     

Nonprofessional counselors: Revisiting selection and impact issues

This study examined two issues related to the use of nonprofessional counselors (n = 159) within the context of a diversion program for juvenile offenders. First, the relationship of the nonprofessionals' personality traits and general attitudes to client outcome was examined. No statistically significant correlations were observed. Second, the differential impact of various training and supervision factors was examined in terms of nonprofessional satisfaction, attitudes, and locus of control. Results suggested that training intensity, training content, and supervision setting may influence nonprofessionals' attitudes towards various social groups and their satisfaction with the nonprofessional experience.     

Effects of preexposure flavor concentration on conditioned aversion and neophobia

In Experiment 1, 128 experimentally naive, water-deprived rats (Rattus norvegicus) received pretraining access to either 0.25 or 1.5% saccharin, distilled water, or 2.0% saline, followed either by a pairing of 0.25 or 1.5% saccharin with an intraperitoneal injection of 0.15 M lithium chloride (LiCl) or by a pairing of distilled water with LiCl. Preexposure to either saccharin concentration reliably reduced conditioned aversion effects to 0.25% saccharin, relative to that for preexposure to distilled water or saline. But only preexposure to 1.5% saccharin reduced aversion effects to that concentration. In Experiment 2, 48 naive, water-deprived rats received preexposure procedures as in Experiment 1. Afterwards, the rats were tested for neophobia to 0.25 or 1.5% saccharin. Neophobia was reliably greater to the 1.5% concentration. However, preexposure to either saccharin concentration obliterated evidence for neophobia to saccharin, relative to that following preexposure to distilled water or saline.     

Physical self-efficacy and actualization

In his theorizing about self-actualization, Maslow speculated that physical ability and physical self-confidence were two aspects of cooperative dominance which were associated positively with actualization. These aspects of dominance bear close resemblance to the Perceived Physical Ability (PPA) and the Physical Self-Presentation Confidence (PSPC) dimensions of the Physical Self-Efficacy (PSE) Inventory. Accordingly, the PPA and PSPC scores of undergraduate men and women were correlated with their scores on the Personal Orientation Inventory (POI), a popular measure of actualization, to test Maslow's hypotheses. The results showed that, contrary to Maslow's claims, PPA is not a positive correlate of self-actualization. However, strong support was found for Maslow's contention that high-PSPC individuals are more likely to be actualizing than low-PSPC people. Also, Maslow's hypothesis that actualizers are high in global sensation seeking (SS) was tested. The data indicated that only male actualizers were high in various aspects of SS, but female actualizers were not. Multiple regression analyses revealed further that both SS and PSPC are primary contributors to POI for men, but only PSPC contributes significantly to POI for women. Discussion focused on the reasons why research findings showing that increases in physical fitness lead to increases in self-esteem cannot be used to support the view that physical fitness and actualization are linked positively.