An unobtrusive measure of personality?

The use of unobtrusive measures has been advocated for some time by methodologists and research workers. (Webb et al., 1966). Recently Wing and Baddeley (1978) used simple measures of handwriting as indices of stress. They found that the height of the letter and the length of ticks (check marks), indicating answers to questions, increased significantly after alcohol intake.It has been shown in the past that measures based on the dimensions of letters or digits provide a sensitive index of stress (Baddeley et al., 1969; Legge et al., 1964). However, it has not yet been shown whether there is any relationship between the size of circles around ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers to a personality questionnaire, and the scale scores it is measuring.This paper reports an investigation whose aim it was to relate circle size to the scale scores of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Psychoticism, and the Lie-scale of the EPQ (Eysenck and Eysenck, 1978).     

快速眼动相(REM)睡眠剥夺对大鼠记忆巩固的影响

本实验应用小站台水环境技术剥夺大鼠快速眼动相(REM)睡眠,比较了在学习后不同时间剥夺REM睡眠对记忆巩固的影响异同,结果证明:大鼠在学习后,立即剥夺REM睡眠24小时对记忆巩固明显不利;如在立即剥夺REM睡眠24小时后再让其恢复自由睡眠24小时,记忆成绩无明显改善;学习后允许自由睡眠24小时对记忆巩固明显有利;如在自由睡眠24小时后再行REM睡眠剥夺24小时,记忆成绩仍保持良好。说明学习后一段时间自由睡眠对于记忆的巩固是重要的,剥夺REM睡眠对于记忆的巩固明显不利。     

The lateral coding of rotations: a study of the simon effect with wheel-rotation responses

A number of experimental studies have consistently shown the locus of spatial S-R compatibility effects to be the selection of the response within an abstract memory code. The purpose of the present study was to test, in the particular case of wheel rotations, the general proposition that any response that a subject internally codes in terms of left and right may be interfered with by the lateral location of the stimuli in a Simon paradigm. Experiment 1 showed that the auditory Simon effect occurred in a task where the subjects had to rotate a steering wheel bimanually either clockwise or counterclockwise according to sound pitch, despite the fact that responses of this kind are undefined with respect to laterality. Experiment 2 confirmed this result in a unimanual rotation condition and suggested that the ear-rotation compatibility effect may be added to the effect of a biomechanical factor, pronation versus supination, supporting the idea of an abstraction motor code. In Experiment 3, subjects rotated the steering wheel with their hands on the lowest part of the wheel. When the response movement made the spot of a C.R.T. move laterally in accordance with the performed rotation, the subjects coded their response directly in terms of its effect on the visual display. For subjects not receiving visual feedback, no compatibility effect occurred. however, the individual data were compatible with the notion that some subjects in this group coded their responses in terms of wheel rotations, and others in terms of hand movements.     

The dimensionality of attributions of causality and responsibility for an accident

Effects of the dimensionality of responsibility and causality attributions were investigated. An accident was described. Subjects cued to respond with causality attributions increased their attributions with event severity. Subjects cued to respond with moral responsibility attributions decreased attributional levels with increasing severity. Assignments of guilt varied specifically with the cued attributional concept.     

5—13岁儿童空间认知发展的研究——判别相等面积的再探

本实验是《5—11岁儿童两种空间关系认知发展的实验研究》的继续,但将内部被占面积改为圆形。结果表明:儿童判别面积从直觉判断发展到推理判断之间经历一种过渡形态。表现为,在同一判别中直觉和推理活动交错;能将被占面积各部分整合成整体,但对剩余面积部分的判别受直觉因素束缚;理解等量减等量所余相等原理,但不能用来解决面临的课题等四种形式。完成这种过渡需要解决三个相互联系的问题。也再次证明儿童判别面积这种空间认知发展,在一定年龄范围存在着阶段性特点,同时儿童这种认知能力的显露程度又以课题条件难易为转移。     

Mouse killing in rats induced by lesions of the medial hypothalamus or medial accumbens: short-term preoperative exposure to a mouse does not suppress the killing

Rats were either exposed or not exposed to a mouse in their living cage for a 48-hr period. At the end of this time a bilateral lesion was made in the medial accumbens region or in the medial hypothalamus. When tested 2 days postoperatively, the killing frequency among rats that had been exposed to mice preoperatively was not significantly lower than that of rats that were not preoperatively exposed. The ineffectiveness of preoperative experience in suppressing the mouse killing induced by medial accumbens and medial hypothalamic lesions is similar to that found previously with dorsal-median raphe lesions and olfactory bulb lesions and is in contrast to the ease with which preoperative experience prevents mouse killing induced by septal lesions and serotonergic lesions induced by 5,7-dihydroxytryptamine.     

Strategy changes in human contingency judgments as a function of contingency tables.

Judgment strategies of 169 undergraduate students on problems to judge the contingency between two binary events were identified by the method of rule-based analysis to clarify whether or not the strategies the subjects used would be affected by the concrete nature of the contingency table. Problems were constructed along two factors: total cell frequency and width of range of objective contingencies. Although the factor of total cell frequency had no effect on subjects' strategies, the number of subjects who changed strategies corresponding with problem instances increased when the objective contingencies were set closer to zero or when problems became more difficult. These results are discussed in the context of previous studies of this issue in the literature.