The influence of demand characteristics and expectancies in the measurement of salivary response

The sensitivity of salivary response measures to demand and expectancies was studied. One hundred thirty-one college students were tested for increases or decreases in salivation under one of three conditions: (a) when told to imagine the taste of another food more or less palatable than a target food; (b) when given a placebo pill that, they were told, would alter their salivation; and (c) when given direct instructions to alter their salivation. The type of instructions subjects received altered their salivation response. Specifically, subjects told to increase salivation had higher levels than those told to decrease salivation. These results suggest that salivation measures, which have been viewed by some as refractory to demand and related effects, can be controlled. Additional results of the study call for further validation of salivation as a measure of hunger and perceived food palatability.     

The simultaneous and independent measurement of penile circumference and length

It has been recently shown that in the early stages of erection, the human penis undergoes a substantial length change that is not detected using circumferential measurement devices. The present report introduces a relatively simple device that can assess changes in both length and circumference. The device promises to provide a low-cost alternative to the precision and sensitivity associated with plethysmography.     

Response competition effects insame-different judgments

An account ofsame-different discriminations that is based upon a continuous-flow model of visual information processing (C. W. Eriksen & Schultz, 1979) and response competition and inhibition between the responses by which the subject signifies his judgment is presented. We show that a response signifyingsame will on the average be executed faster due to less priming or incipient activation of the competing response,different. In the experiment, the subjects matched letters on the basis of physical identity. The degree of priming ofdifferent responses on same trials and ofsame responses ondifferent trials was manipulated by an extraneous noise letter placed in the display. Latency for judgments onsame trials increased as the feature overlap of noise and target letters decreased. Latencies were shorter ondifferent trials when the noise letter was dissimilar to either target letter than when the noise letter was the same as one of the targets. These results were consistent with the response-competition interpretation.     

Effects of household sex composition on the salience of one's gender in the spontaneous self-concept

It was hypothesized that being a boy or a girl becomes more salient in a child's self-concept to the extent the other sex numerically predominates in the child's household. This prediction was based upon an information-processing, distinctiveness postulate that a person contemplating a complex stimulus (such as the self) selectively notices and encodes its more distinctive, information-rich aspects. The spontaneous self-concept elicited by nondirective “Tell us about yourself” interviews of 560 school children were scored for spontaneous mention of one's gender. As predicted, boys spontaneously mentioned their maleness more often when they came from households where females were in the majority; girls mentioned their femaleness more often when from households with male majorities; boys mentioned their maleness more often when from father-absent than from father-present homes. Incidental findings are that gender is more salient in the negation self-concept (“Tell us what you are not”) than in the affirmation self-concept (“Tell us about yourself”) especially for girls and that gender becomes increasingly salient as the child grows older.     

Sensitivity of a linear composite of predictor items to differential item weighting

Many authors have demonstrated for idealized item configurations that equal item weights are often virtually as good for a particular predictive purpose as the item weights that are theoretically optimal. What has not been heretofore clear, however, is what happens to the similarity between weighted and unweighted composites of the same items when the item configuration's variance structure is complex.     

The Mexican American in Higher Education: Implications for Educators

From a review of literature and an examination of data from the Counseling Services at the University of Texas - El Paso, the authors conclude that Mexican-American students place more emphasis on cooperation and group achievement than on individual achievement, and that the education of Mexican Americans may be enhanced when teachers properly reinforce “successful behavior.” In addition, it seems that problems may arise in using U.S.-based theories of “democratic” leadership styles because the Mexican-American culture places more emphasis on traditional leadership roles.     

SCOPE: A Comprehensive-Sequential Approach to Career Counseling

SCOPE is a comprehensive career-counseling program presently in operation at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, New Jersey. It consists of a basic program plus a cluster of supplemental, optional exercises. The basic program has a sequence of four career-planning phases, one of which applies to each undergraduate year. Efforts are made to process students systematically through the entire basic program. An individual checklist kept for each participating student provides an internal mechanism for program evaluation and modification. Early results suggest effectiveness and positive student reactions.     

Classical conditioning of blood pressure inMacaca mulatta with cardiac rate controlled

The interaction of heart rate and blood pressure responses was studied in four male rhesus monkeys (M. mulatta) during classical delay conditioning and extinction. During initial conditioning sessions, heart rate was held constant by means of an external cardiac pacemaker; in follow-up conditioning sessions, the heart was free of constraint. Observations were made after these conditioning sessions, (a) during several sessions given over to continued training while different pacing rates were in effect; (b) during a series of extinction sessions in which the heart was paced and unpaced; and, (c) when a heart rate CR was simulated by manipulation of the pacer with no conditioned or unconditioned stimuli present. Throughout all sessions, systolic and diastolic pressures were measured at each heart beat. It was found that blood pressure conditioning was largely unaffected when heart rate changes were prevented during acquisition. Extinction of blood pressure responses was also seen to proceed relatively unimpeded when the heart was paced at a fixed frequency. During the postacquisition conditioning sessions, the several different pacing rates that were tested did not produce any significant differential effects in the blood pressure CRs. Simulated heart rate CRs were accompanied by small changes in pressures, sometimes opposite in direction from the pressure CRs observed during unpaced conditioning trials.