Effect of forget instructions with and without the conditions for selective search*

A PA probe experiment was conducted to determine whether a mechanism other than selective search is involved in the Only effect of directed forgetting. To accomplish this, a small number of trials which tested all pairs in the list successively (“all” trials) were intermixed with the standard single-probe trials. On “single” trials, both pretest mechanisms and selective search may operate, but on “all” trials, selective search was eliminated. The analysis compared the Only effect and intrusion data under these two conditions and examined the fate of to-be-forgotten (TBF) recall on “all” trials. The evidence confirmed the major role of selective search in producing the Only effect. It was concluded that if a pretest mechanism was operative, it did not have the properties of a voluntary forgetting mechanism and it had only a small effect on the first half of the list.     

The ethics of poverty

Conclusions The conclusions set forth in this paper are of a highly tentative and even exploratory nature. I am willing to be demonstrated to be wrong at any point and excited by the realization that some of my hunches have been sufficiently far out to prompt confirmatory or invalidating research of a more precise variety. Yet I am willing to stand by my observations as to the relationship between the ethical perspective of the poor to the following seemingly unrelated events: (1) the implosion of these ethical perspectives into the middle classes, (2) through contemporary political uses of the poor by the upper classes, (3) professional interaction with the poverty community, (4) the unconscious moral identification of the middle classes with the ethics of the poor, (5) the transformation of thekinds of emotional disorder from one level of affluence to another by reason of the criterion of work as an indication of mental health, and (6) the ethical issue involved in economic determination of the use of medical and ministerial time in the care of the emotionally disturbed.     

Strength theories of disjunctive visual detection

Zero, 1, 2, or 3 black dots are tachistoscopically presented on a white field. There are two alternative tasks: (a) to decide on the presence of each of the left, middle, and right dots (multiple detection) or (b) to decide whether any of the dots was present (disjunctive detection), The results indicate that in disjunctive detection, Ss do not add together thestrengths of the three dot positions and compare this sum to a criterion. Rather they combine theirdecisions about each dot, responding “yes” to the array, if and only if they decide “yes” to any one dot. Strength distributions appear to be invariant with respect to irrelevant stimuli. Invariance with respect to report order holds approximately. However, dots reported on first are slightly more detectable. This suggests a successive scanning process, whose rate is independent of whether a stimulus is present or absent at the position scanned.     

Factorial effects in the categorization of externally distributed stimulus samples

On each trial a sample point randomly drawn from one of two normal probability distributions was exhibited to S, who had to guess whether the sample was a “1” or a “2.” He was then given feedback, which was determined by which of the two distributions the sample point derived from. Two continua were employed: dot position on a file card, and groyness of square in. patches. Three levels of d’ were employed. The function giving the probability of a response “1” for different sample values was sharper for the higher d’ conditions, and for the dot position continuum. Cessation of feedback resulted in improved performance for the low d’ condition. Incentive payoff, confidence ratings, and experimenter had virtually no effects on task performance.     

Affect and memory in young children

The state-dependent theory of the relationship between affective states and memory holds that recall will be best when the affective state at recall matches that during learning. Sequential happy, neutral, and sad affective states that were either consistent (e.g., Happy-Happy) or inconsistent (e.g., Sad-Neutral) were experimentally induced in preschool children prior to encoding and then again prior to retrieval (free and cued recall, recognition memory). Facial ratings indicated that the inductions were effective in inducing affect. Nevertheless, emotional states did not influence children's ability to recall items under free or cued conditions, and recognition memory was essentially perfect for all subjects. Thus, there was no evidence for state-dependent learning or for a positive loop between subjects' positive affect at retrieval and memory for positively rated information. Results are discussed in terms of the generally inconsistent findings in the literature on the role of affect in children's memory and factors that may limit affective state-dependent learning in children.This research was supported by Research Grant No. 11776 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to Marion Perlmutter, by Grant BNS 78-01108 from the National Science Foundation to John C. Masters, and by Program Project Grant No. 0527 to the Institute of Child Development. Wayne Duncan is now at the University of Denver, and Christine Todd is now at the University of Illinois, Urbana. Marion Perlmutter is now at the University of Michigan. We would like to thank Keith Elliott and LuAnne Tczap for their work as experimenters; Jule Kogan, Carol Revermann, and Sonya Hernandez for their help in coding data; and Jayne Grady-Reitan for her administrative assistance throughout the study.