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.     

Quantification of the hierarchy of tonal functions within a diatonic context

Listeners rated test tones falling in the octave range from middle to high C according to how well each completed a diatonic C major scale played in an adjacent octave just before the final test tone. Ratings were well explained in terms of three factors. The factors were distance in pitch height from the context tones, octave equivalence, and the following hierarchy of tonal functions: tonic tone, other tones of the major triad chord, other tones of a diatonic scale, and the nondiatonic tones. In these ratings, pitch height was more prominent for less musical listeners or with less musical (sinusoidal) tones, whereas octave equivalence and the tonal hierarchy prevailed for musical listeners, especially with harmonically richer tones. Ratings for quarter tones interpolated halfway between the halftone steps of the standard chromatic scale were approximately the averages of ratings for adjacent chromatic tones, suggesting failure to discriminate tones at this fine level of division.     

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.     

Semantic congruity effects in judgments of loudness

This research uses comparative judgments of the relative loudness of sounds to make a critical test of one theory of the mental representation of continuous physical attributes. The first two experiments find a semantic congruity effect, which is an interaction such that subjects can pick the louder of two loud sounds faster than the softer, and the softer of two quiet sounds faster than the louder. According to the theory under test, physical quantities are stored as points on a representational continuum, with a variance as well as a mean placement on it. The theory predicts the semantic congruity effect by assuming that the variance of placement of intensities on the representational continuum is a function of the direction of judgment: a soft sound will have less variance than a loud one when judged for softness and more when judged for loudness. Since the speed of making a judgment increases as variance decreases, the theory predicts a semantic congruity effect. However, for loudness, it can be shown that variance does not change in the manner assumed. The finding of a semantic congruity effect therefore disconfirms the theory. Alternative models are discussed. This research was supported by NSF Grant BNS 78-17442.