Inhibition of return in location- and identity-based choice decision tasks

Three experiments were conducted to determine whether inhibition of return can be best characterized as an attentional or a motor phenomenon. In the first experiment, subjects made choice key-press responses to the location of a target (left or right) or the identity of the target (X or +) by pressing a left or right response key. In the second experiment, the display was rotated 90° so that there was no direct spatial mapping between the vertically aligned stimulus display and the horizontally aligned response keys. In both experiments, inhibition of return was observed for location-based and identity-based choice responses, although more inhibition was seen in the identity-based responses. The results of the third experiment suggested that this larger inhibitory effect may be specific to the covert orienting of reflexive attention in response to the sudden appearance of a single peripheral stimulus in the identity tasks. Overall, the results are consistent with the attentional, not the motor, explanation of inhibition of return.     

Expressed and inventoried vocational interests as predictors of college graduation and vocational choice

This is a follow-up study of 195 agricultural students originally tested when they entered college in 1970. Students whose Strong Vocational Interest Blank (SVIB) patterns were consistent with their stated choice of major were the congruent sample. Students whose SVIB patterns were inconsistent with their stated choices of major were the discrepant sample. A follow-up was made on graduation rates, eventual major, and job placement. Discrepant subjects changed major more often but graduated at the same rate as congruents. The SVIB did not seem to add anything to the student's expressed interests in predicting college continuation. There was a trend for congruent graduates to more frequently take jobs which matched their majors.     

Illusory visual direction during and after backward head tilts

When the head is returned to upright after prolonged backward tilt, people who are asked to look straight ahead look higher than they did before the backward tilting. One explanation attributes the illusory visual direction to a change in muscle responsiveness which develops after the head is returned to upright. According to this explanation, the illusory shift should be absent, or at least reduced, if the subjects are not returned to upright before testing. In the present study, the illusion was the same whether subjects remained tilted for testing or were returned to upright.     

Producing either positive or negative tendencies to a stimulus associated with shock

A technique is described in which rats are pretrained with reinforcement to bar press. Each bar press was associated with a tone. This tone was later paired with one of two aspects of an electric shock, either at the onset or at the end of the shock, in a situation in which the shock is inescapable. These animals were retested in the operant situation under conditions of extinction, but with tone present as a conditioned reinforcer. The finding was that animals for which the tone was associated with shock onset extinguished quickly, whereas animals for which the tone was paired with shock termination extinguished more slowly.     

A revised orthogonal rotational solution for Thurstone's original primary mental abilities test battery

By extension of the rotational process, meaningful orthogonally related positions were found for all of the thirteen centroid factors which Thurstone extracted from his original PMA intercorrelations. Most of the original primary ability factors were more sharply delineated and corresponded more closely to the Army Air Force factors that bear similar names (demonstrating greater invariance from analysis to analysis). While such different results obtained by two investigators applying the same methods on the same data may initiate some concern, the results strengthen rather than weaken the idea that more psychological meaningfulness and greater invariance will result if centroid axes are rotated, using the concepts of a simple structure and positive manifold.Thurstone considered loadings between ±.20 as negligible and considered only loadings of at least .40 in naming factors.