Local Opposition to the Construction of a Nuclear Power Station: Differential Salience of Impacts1

This study examined attitudes among 290 residents of three villages in South-West England toward proposals to build a nuclear power station nearby. Respondents were split into four groups according to whether they were neutral or in favor of a new power station either locally or elsewhere in the UK (Group PN), against one locally but neutral or pro elsewhere (LO), or moderately (MO) or extremely (XO) against a new power station both locally and elsewhere. The perceived impact of a nuclear power station on local life was assessed by 30 items. The PN group expected most benefit or least damage on all 30 items. On a majority of items the mean ratings of the LO group resembled those of the XO's more than did those of the MO's. A stepwise discriminant analysis yielded two interpretable functions. The first reflected a trend over the groups in the order PN-LO-MO-XO and was marked particularly by concern with impact on personal peace of mind. The second fuction discriminated the LO's from the other groups, suggesting that they were relatively less concerned with specifically nuclear risks, but more concerned with environmental conservation.     

The effects of contextual information and gender on the prediction of hypnotic susceptibility

Council, Kirsch, and Hafner (1986) obtained empirical support for the hypothesis that significant correlations between questionnaire measures of absorption and hypnotic susceptibility are an artifact of subjects' beliefs about their own hypnotizability. We tested this hypothesis in a two-session experiment. During Session 1, subjects completed questionnaire measures of absorption, mystical experience, daydreaming frequency, and paranormal beliefs. During Session 2, subjects were tested for hypnotic susceptibility. Subjects were also exposed to one of three information manipulations: They were told about hypnotic testing either before or after filling out the questionnaires or were not told about hypnotic testing. The information manipulation moderated the prediction of susceptibility by the questionnaire measures for women, but not for men. For women, scores on the absorption questionnaire predicted susceptibility only when subjects were informed about hypnotic testing. In the told-after condition, this effect generalized to all of the remaining questionnaire measures. For men, none of the questionnaires was a reliable predictor of susceptibility.     

Processing resources and age differences in working memory

This study investigated the performance of young and old subjects on a modified version of the working memory task developed by Baddeley and Hitch (1974). Subjects were required to verify a set of sentences of varying complexity while they repeated aloud zero, two, or four words. The older subjects took longer to verify the sentences, especially when the sentences were grammatically complex, but the effect of concurrent memory load on verification latency was the same in both groups. These results cast doubt on the notion that there is an age-related decline in one general pool of processing resources. They also suggest that older people have greater difficulty with the active processing aspects, rather than with the passive holding aspects, of working memory tasks.     

Reduced intergroup differentiation as a result of self-categorization in overlapping categories. A quasi-experiment

A quasi-experiment was conducted to examine the effects of self-categorization in overlapping categories on intergroup differentiation. ‘Old aged women’ was used as the first, ‘sports’ as the additional category. It could be shown that intergroup differentiation was significantly reduced under crossed categorization conditions. Implications for social compensation strategies are discussed.     

Does nondirectional signalization of target distance contribute to navigation in the Morris water maze?

The possibility that rats can navigate in the Morris water maze by reducing the difference between the memorized platform scene and the current sensory input was tested in nine blind rats. A computerized videosystem monitored the rats' movements in the pool and converted the rat-target distance into tones the frequency of which increased in 64 equal steps from 120 Hz at 128 cm to 7680 Hz at 0 cm. During 15 days of training to find a fixed platform position from different starting points (12 trials per day) average escape latencies decreased from 39.0 to 25.4 s. The performance significantly deteriorated when the acoustic distance signalization was omitted and/or when the target position was changed form trial to trial. It is concluded that blind rats solved the task by simultaneously employing search strategy based on position responses, mapping using acoustic background beacons, and distance reduction navigation. It is argued that the various strategies are additive and that their relative significance depends of the conditions of the experiment.     

A linguistic deficit resulting from right-hemisphere damage

The ability of right-brain-damaged (RBD) subjects to correctly insert a word into a well-formed stimulus sentence was tested. Subjects also performed three evaluative tasks designed to establish their degree of general cognitive impairment. The performance of RBD subjects on these tasks was compared to that of left-brain-damaged (LBD) and non-brain-damaged (NBD) subjects. Although RBD subjects outperformed LBD subjects on the language-related evaluative tasks, the RBD group was significantly more impaired on a subset of the insertion task. This subset included items which required reassignment of the syntactic status of elements in the stimulus sentence in order for the insertion to be carried out. The results of this study permit refinement of the common characterization of RBD individuals as rigid in their interpretation of meaning and indicate right-hemisphere involvement in aspects of the grammar previously thought to be inaccessible to it.     

Subject knowledge of the Experimenter''s interest in handedness and familial sinistrality variables and laterality test outcomes

We investigated the possible influence of common "demand characteristics" on the results on behavioral language laterality tasks. The demand characteristics were (1) whether Ss were or were not recruited for study according to their handedness, and (2) whether a detailed familial sinistrality inquiry was conducted before or after the tasks. Tasks were the Dichotic Consonant Vowel Task (DCVT) and the Bilateral Object Naming Latency Task (BONLT). Results showed no effect of demand characteristics on the BONLT. On the DCVT, however, prior inquiry regarding familial sinistrality was associated with significantly reduced right ear advantages (REAs). Interactions showed that the greatest reduction in REAs occurred in Ss with left-handedness in their families, who were asked about familial sinistrality prior to the tasks, who took the DCVT after the BONLT, and who were also recruited by handedness. Results, though generally reassuring regarding the robustness of the tasks against these sources of bias, raise some cautions for the DCVT.     

Personality and relaxation therapy: changes among clinical and normal subjects

There are increasing numbers of self-referral stress-management programs, a few of which use group-relaxation techniques, but few data are available on the personalities of the symptomatic and asymptomatic clients who attend or on any changes in personality after the program. Scores on the Eysenck Personality Inventory, Multiple Health Locus of Control, and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory as well as demographic information were obtained from 255 adults who attended a 10-session, university-based, group-relaxation program. The symptomatic clients reported significantly less anxiety, less neuroticism, were more extraverted and ascribed less of their behavior to chance at a 1 month post-treatment follow-up than at intake. The small group of asymptomatic clients also reported less anxiety and neuroticism at the follow-up. There were no sex differences on the Eysenck inventory or the anxiety scales but there were for the Multiple Health internal and control scales. It was concluded that group relaxation appeared to improve mental health scores effectively for both stressed and nonstressed adults and that age was significantly related to some personality scores.     

Intentional and incidental visual memory as a function of cognitive level and color of the stimulus

Performance of two groups of youngsters, educable mentally retarded (CA 15-5; MA 11-4; IQ 74.3) and those of average ability (CA 10-5; MA 11-3; IQ 109.1) was compared for intentional and incidental visual memory as a function of cognitive level and color of the stimulus. Nonretarded subjects performed significantly better than the retarded ones of equal MA. Both groups performed better with a color than black-white card, and both groups did better on the tasks involving intentional rather than incidental memory.