Effects of question type and experimenter position on bilateral differences in electrodermal activity and conjugate lateral eye movements

28 dextral males participated in a within-subjects experiment which tasted for the effects of question type (verbal versus spatial) and experimenter-position (in front of or behind the subject) on direction of conjugate lateral eye movements (LEMs) and bilateral differences in skin conductance responses (SCRs). Question dependent asymmetries were observed for LEM direction but not for SCR magnitude. Experimenter-position had no significant effect. The results for LEM direction are consistent with the hypothesis linking eye movements to the left or right with activation of the cerebral hemisphere contralateral to the direction of gaze. The results for SCR magnitude, given certain assumptions, can be reconciled with a hemispheric model of contralateral excitatory control of that system.     

Stimulus factors in children's learning set performance

Three experiments are reported which investigate the effects of attentional factors on learning set performance of children. Number of varying irrelevant dimensions, trials per problem, and age were examined. The first experiment tests with 6- and 8-year-old-children the effects of one as opposed to two varying irrelevant dimensions. An interaction between age and dimensions showed younger children to be differentially affected by the treatment conditions, two varying irrelevant dimensions being more difficult than one. There was no difference between treatments for the older children, nor between older and younger subjects receiving one varying irrelevant dimension. In the second experiment, 6- and 8-year-olds were examined on two varying irrelevant dimension problems, receiving either 4 or 12 trials per problem. Amount of exposure within-problems, affected performance with 12 trials per problem resulting in superior performance at both age levels. A third experiment tested 6-, 8-, and 10-year-old-children using one and two varying irrelevant dimension problems with 4 and 12 trials per problem. Results confirmed the finding that learning set acquisition is influenced by irrelevant dimensions and within-problems exposure, with these effects interacting with age and amount of training. These findings support the utility of applications of an attentional analysis to the learning set performance of normal children.     

Film-facilitated arousal and prosocial behavior

The present investigation sought to test the applicability of the excitation transfer model (P. Tannenbaum & D. Zillmann. In L. Berkowitz, Ed., Advances in experimental social psychology, Vol. 8, New York: Academic Press 1975) to prosocial behavior. This model predicts that for individuals predisposed to act prosocially, arousal transferred from an unrelated source will facilitate such behavior. Two studies were conducted in which male college students, treated in either a positive or neutral manner and shown an arousing erotic or nonarousing control film, ostensibly rewarded and punished a confederate for performance on a memory task. Contrary to predictions, the first experiment found the arousing film increased reward regardless of treatment. In the second experiment, where the neutral treatment was given a more negative tone, the predicted interaction was found. Specifically, subjects treated in a positive manner and shown an arousing film were significantly more rewarding than were similarly treated subjects shown the nonarousing film. While type of film had no effect on neutral subjects' reward behavior, the arousing film did increase their punitive behavior. These results, coupled with physiological and self-report data, strongly support the excitation transfer model.     

Restricted thresholds for interval orders: A case of nonaxiomatizability by a universal sentence

Let $\text{P}$_n be the class of all finite interval orders that can be interval-represented using no more than n interval lengths or threshold levels. Thus $\text{P}$₁ is the class of finite semiorders, and $\text{P}$, the union of the $\text{P}$_n, is the class of finite interval orders. While each of $\text{P}$₁ and $\text{P}$ is axiomatizable by a universal sentence in first-order logic, no $\text{P}$_n for $\text{n ≧ 2}$ is axiomatizable in the same sense.     

Remembrance of places lasts: Proactive inhibition and patterns of choice in rat spatial memory

A series of experiments was carried out to evaluate the notion that rats given a sequence of massed daily trials on the radial maze reset working memory at the end of each trial by deleting its contents. Although curves presented by D. S. Olton [Scientific American, 1977, 236, 82–98; In S. H. Hulse, H. Fowler, & W. K. Honig (Eds.), Cognitive processes in animal behavior, Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1978] show that rats return to errorless performance at the beginning of each trial after the first, the fact that accuracy falls less rapidly over choices on Trial 1 than on subsequent trials suggests a proactive inhibition (PI) effect. In Experiment 1, Olton's findings were replicated, and a PI effect was observed on Days 1–2 of testing. On Days 3–5, overall accuracy improved significantly and was associated with the development of a strong tendency for rats to enter adjacent alleys, which became particularly marked on the final trials of a day's testing. In order to prevent rats from achieving accurate performance by using an adjacent alleys pattern, a procedure was used in Experiment 2 which involved initial forced random choices followed by a retention test consisting of free choices. Repeated daily trials with this procedure yielded a significant PI effect, which was more marked at a 60-sec delay than at a 0-sec delay. Experiments 3 and 4 showed this PI effect to be robust and resistant to manipulations designed to produce release from PI. Both the PI effect and a strong tendency found in Experiment 1 for animals to avoid on the initial choices of Trial n those alleys most recently entered on Trial n?1 argue that rats do not reset working memory between trials.     

Performance of retarded adolescents and nonretarded children on one- and two-bit logical problems

Groups of adolescents of retarded and borderline intelligence, ranging in IQ from 44 to 80 and in mean MA (mental age) from 8 to 12 yr, and groups of nonretarded children ranging in mean MA from 6 to 12 yr, were given logical problem solving tasks. In the nonretarded groups, on a one-bit problem only the kindergarten children (mean MA = 6 yr) failed to perform above chance, and were not tested further. On a two-bit problem, only the first graders (mean MA = 7 yr) failed to perform above chance.Conversely, in the low IQ groups, only the borderline group (mean MA = 12 yr) performed reliably above chance on the one-bit problem, and none performed above chance on the two-bit problem. There is a profound deficiency in low IQ individuals on certain tasks requiring logic and foresight, and MA markedly over-estimates their performance relative to the performance of nonretarded individuals.     

Further evidence for meaning change in impression formation

Hamilton and Zanna (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1974, 29, 649–654) demonstrated that the meaning of an attribute as rated on connotatively related scales changed as a function of context desirability. This finding was viewed as supporting a meaning change interpretation of context effects in impression formation. Kaplan (Memory and Cognition, 1975, 3, 375–380, Exp. 1) found that similar changes also occurred on scales unrelated in meaning to the test attribute and argued that changes on both kinds of scales were due to halo effects produced by the contexts. Controlling for possible scaling artifacts, the first experiment reported here showed that substantially greater changes occurred on related than on unrelated scales. Kaplan (1975, Exp. 2) also found that the magnitude of context-induced differences in judgments of trait likability was not increased by creating contexts denotatively related to the test attributes. Adding measures of connotative meaning, the second experiment in this paper showed that substantially greater context-induced changes did occur on related meaning scales and, in contrast to Kaplan, on trait likability for the denotatively related contexts. The results of each experiment are consistent with a meaning change position but would not be expected on the basis of the halo effects model.     

Operant baseline procedures suppress infant social behavior

Two groups of six 3-month-old infants participated in a study which contained four consecutive 2-min periods. During Periods 2 and 4 both groups received adult social stimulation on the same prearranged schedule. The treatments during Periods 1 and 3 differed between the two groups; no adult was present for the A-S group, while the B-S group received the typical operant baseline (unresponsive adult treatment) for these two periods. Social stimulation caused a significant increase in vocal rate from the preceding control period for both groups. Infants in the A-S group vocalized at the same rate during the two periods in which the adult was absent and at similar rates during the two stimulation periods. For infants in the B-S group, baseline procedures suppressed vocal rates and did not provide a neutral or operant level of responding with which the effects of social conditioning could be compared.