Lateral word recognition: Effects of unilateral and bilateral presentation, asynchrony of bilateral presentation, and forced order of report

This experiment enquired: (1) whether right visual field (RVF) recognition superiority was greater in bilateral than in unilateral word presentation; (2) whether left field-favouring attentional or recall sets could be induced by presenting left visual field (LVF) words 20 msec prior to RVF words or by instructions to report LVF words prior to RVF words. Results showed: (1) all conditions studied yielded significant RVF superiority; (2) RVF superiority magnitude was significantly greater in bilateral than in unilateral presentation, suggesting the tenability of hypotheses that different mechanisms operate in these conditions; (3) neither earlier delivery nor earlier report of LVF words altered the pattern of RVF superiority in bilateral presentation, the later result demonstrating that differential receptive organization rather than differential recall of the two stimuli is responsible for RVF superiority in bilateral presentation.     

Self-esteem as a moderator of performance-satisfaction relationships

Korman's (Journal of Applied Psychology, 1968, 52, 484–490) prediction that performance and satisfaction should be positively related for high self-esteem individuals and unrelated for low self-esteem individuals was tested with samples of scientists, engineers, homemakers, firefighters, and clerical workers. Although there was a slight tendency for this prediction to be supported with the male scientist, engineer, and firefighter samples, Korman's theory was unsupported in the homemaker and clerical worker samples. Since the correlations found for low and high self-esteem persons significantly differed in only one of eight comparisons, self-esteem did not appear to be a reliable moderator of the performance-satisfaction relationship. Problems with previous studies purporting to test Korman's prediction are discussed, and the possibility of a confound between self-esteem and sex role and/or status is introduced.     

Reading rate and retention as a function of the number of propositions in the base structure of sentences

English texts were constructed from propositional bases. One set of 16-word sentences was obtained from semantic bases containing from 4 to 9 propositions. For another set of sentences and paragraphs, number of words and number of propositions covaried. Subjects read the texts at their own rate and recalled them immediately. For the 16-word sentences, subjects needed 1.5 sec additional reading time to process each proposition. For longer texts, this value increased. In another experimental condition reading time was controlled by the experimenter. The analysis of both the text and the recall protocols in terms of number of propositions lent support to the notion that propositions are a basic unit of memory for text. However, evidence was also obtained that while the total number of propositions upon which a text was based proved to be an effective psychological variable, all propositions were not equally difficult to remember: superordinate propositions were recalled better than propositions which were stucturally subordinate.     

Behavior therapy for obesity: Booster sessions and long-term maintenance of weight loss

Following 8 weekly sessions of group behavioral self-control treatment, 75 obese women were assigned to one of five different maintenance conditions: (a) structured behavioral booster sessions held every two weeks; (b) structured behavioral booster sessions held every month; (c) unstructured nonspecific booster sessions held every two weeks; (d) unstructured nonspecific booster sessions held every month; and (e) a control group that received no booster sessions. Follow-ups were conducted at 3, 6, 9 and 12 month intervals. The study was completed in two replications. Results failed to show a significant effect of either booster session content or frequency. All groups continued to lose weight during the first three months of follow-up. Thereafter subjects in Replication 1 showed significant increases in weight over the next 9 months, whereas subjects in Replication 2 maintained their treatment-produced weight loss. The data do not support the view that booster sessions facilitate maintenance.     

When discounting fails: An unexpected finding

Two studies were designed to investigate the effects of prior information about plausible causes on subsequent attributions. In the Experiment 1, prior information was given about an internal and an external cause. It was predicted and found that the stronger an expectancy for a behavior, the more the behavior would be attributed to the cause that formed the basis of the expectancy. It was also predicted that (1) for facilitative causes, the stronger the expectancy based on a given cause, the less the behavior would be attributed to other causes (discounting), and (2)for inhibitory causes, the stronger the expectancy, the more the behavior would be attributed to other causes (augmenting). These predictions were not supported. It was suggested that discounting and augmenting did not occur because subjects had been given information about both causes which "locked in" their attributions to each cause. To test this explanation, a second study was undertaken in which observers were given information about only one cause. The results of Experiment 2 indicated that discounting and augmenting may only occur for attributions to causes about which no prior information is available.     

Individual pitch functions and pitch-duration cross-dimensional matching

Eight young adult subjects scaled the auditory dimensions of duration and pitch using a modified method of numerical magnitude balance and adjustment of the stimuli for individual equal-loudness differences. Individual duration and pitch functions for magnitude estimation and for magnitude production fit the power law well. When compared with the revised reel scale and the pitch function obtained by S. S. Stevens and Galanter (Journal of Experimental psychology, 1957,54, 377–411), the group magnitude estimation and magnitude production pitch functions plotted in log-log coordinates showed high degrees of linearity. This was due mostly to the absence of a rollover in the high-frequency range of the continuum. It was hypothesized that pitch may be viewed as a linear function. This hypothesis was further supported when the exponents of the pitch and duration functions were used to predict closely the group exponent of cross-dimension matches.     

An indirect method of measuring perceived distance from familiar size

Two methods of measuring perceived distance as a function of familiar size were compared in five experiments. The method which uses the perception of motion concomitant with a motion of the head, unlike the method of verbal report, is considered to provide a measure of perceived distance that is unaffected by factors of cognitive distance. The results of the experiments indicate that although the perceived egocentric distance of an object can vary somewhat as a function of the cue of familiar size, the larger variation often found with verbal reports of distance is based upon cognitive, not perceptual, information. The cognitive information is interpreted as resulting from the perception of the object as off-sized and the observer’s assumption that the perceived size of an object will vary inversely with its physical distance.     

Two visual stores and two processing operations in tachistoscopic partial report

A two-stage interpretation of the processes underlying tachistoscopic partial report performance is suggested. It is assumed that partial report is mediated by two kinds of visual store (a sensory store and a short-term store) and by two processing operations (selection and naming). In Experiment I, the accuracy and latency of two types of partial report (report by location and report by colour) were compared for cue stimulus-test stimulus intervals ranging from --500 ms to + 500 ms. It was concluded that selection by colour takes longer than selection by location; an explanation in terms of differential decay of attributes in the sensory store was rejected. In Experiment II, cue stimulus delays of 0, 150 and 300 ms were employed, and a backward masking stimulus followed the cue stimulus with a delay of 200, 300, 400 or 600 ms. The amount of masking depended on the cue stimulus-masking stimulus interval, rather than on the test stimulus-masking stimulus interval. It was concluded that selection operates on the sensory store and that backward masking can affect the naming of a stimulus representation which is residing in the visual short-term store.     

Estimation of reliability and true score variance from a split of a test into three arbitrary parts

This paper gives a method of estimating the reliability of a test which has been divided into three parts. The parts do not have to satisfy any statistical criteria like parallelism or-equivalence. If the parts are homogeneous in content (congeneric),i.e., if their true scores are linearly related and if sample size is large then the method described in this paper will give the precise value of the reliability parameter. If the homogeneity condition is violated then underestimation will typically result. However, the estimate will always be at least as accurate as coefficient and Guttman's lower bound ₃ when the same data are used. An application to real data is presented by way of illustration. Seven different splits of the same test are analyzed. The new method yields remarkably stable reliability estimates across splits as predicted by the theory. One deviating value can be accounted for by a certain unsuspected peculiarity of the test composition. Both coefficient and ₃ would not have led to the same discovery.Expanded version of a paper given at the Psychometric Society Meeting in Stanford, California, March 1974.