A thematic coding system for the intimacy motive

A new thematic (TAT) measure of intimacy motivation was developed and cross-validated in four separate arousal studies using three different college populations. A brief sketch of the derived thematic scoring system for intimacy motivation was presented. The goal state of the intimacy motive was defined as experiencing a warm, close, and communicative exchange with another person. In a college sample, subjects scoring high on the intimacy motive were rated by friends and acquaintances as significantly more “warm,” “natural,” “sincere,” “loving,” and “appreciative” and less “dominant,” “outspoken,” and “self-centered” than subjects scoring lower. The results were discussed in terms of the theories of Sullivan on the need for interpersonal intimacy, Maslow on growth motivation and “B-love,” Bakan on communion, and Buber on the I-Thou relation. Differences between the new coding system and the need for Affiliation (n Aff) system for scoring imaginative productions were also suggested.     

The identification and transfer of timesharing skills

Performance on two different task combinations was examined for evidence that timesharing skills are learned with practice and can transfer between task combinations. One combination consisted of two discrete informaion processing tasks, a short-term memory task and a classification task; the other consisted of two identical one-dimensional compensatory tracking tasks. Three groups of 16 subjects were employed in the experiment. The first received dual-task training on both combinations; the second received single-task training on the discrete-task combination and dual-task training on the tracking combination; the third received dual-task training on the tracking combination only. Evidence for distinct timesharing skills was found in both combinations using a new technique designed to separate improvements in timesharing skills from improvements in single-task performance. Transfer of timesharing skills also was found. Several fine-grained analyses performed on the data from the discrete task combination and a Control Theory Analysis of the tracking data indicated that skills in parallel processing were learned in each combination and transferred between them.     

Children's memory for line orientation: A reexamination of the “oblique effect”

A theory of orientation memory is advanced to explain why 5- and 6-year olds fail to discriminate between mirror-image obliques. It is argued that children can code the left-right orientation of an oblique line in relation to an adjacent reference feature, but are limited in their ability to recognize this stimulus-referent relationship when it is altered by changes in frame location. According to this view simultaneous presentation of the correct and incorrect comparison, typical of traditional testing paradigms, leads to failure because of trial by trial shifts in the frame location of the target orientation. The findings of the two experiments reported are consistent with this hypothesis. In Experiment 1 kindergarteners who performed poorly under the simultaneous condition discriminated oblique orientations with ease when stimuli were successively presented. Moreover, performance was not significantly affected by variations in the plane of presentation. In Experiment 2 children who discriminated successively presented obliques when stimuli were shown in a constant frame location had great difficulty when the left-right frame location of the stimuli was varied over trials.     

On being imitated: Effects on models and observers

Forty first- and second-grade children were imitated by an adult confederate and not imitated by a second adult confederate. For each child exposed to the above treatment, another child observed the imitation and nonimitation. It was found that children tended to be attracted to the confederate who imitated them. More importantly, although the observers were not imitated, they also were attracted to the imitating confederate. The two groups did not differ significantly in subsequent imitation of the two confederates. The results, which were conceptualized within the framework of vicarious reinforcement, have methodological implications for research on the effects of being imitated.     

Children's use of sequence information in partially predictable reaction-time sequences

Second-, fourth-, and sixth-grade children and adults performed a four-choice reaction time task with partially predictable sequences and 250-, 500-, and 750-msec response-to-stimulus intervals. The relative advantage for in-sequence as opposed to out-of-sequence events was independent of the response-to-stimulus interval for all ages. Children, but not adults, were slower for nonrepeated than repeated out-of sequence events and this advantage for repeated signals decreased as age increased. A second experiment extended the range of intervals tested to zero. Second graders and adults responded to four-choice partially predictable sequences with 0-, 250-, and 500-msec response-to-stimulus intervals. As in the first experiment, the difference between in-sequence and out-of-sequence events did not vary with the response-to-stimulus interval. The results suggest that both children and adults are able to process advance sequence probability information about a subsequent event in parallel with an ongoing response.     

Quality of text recall as a function of children's classroom competence

This study demonstrated that the manner in which children, as students, chose to devise their recall was a function of the type of response register they maintained with their teachers. Students (mean C.A. = 10.4 years) who used an Imitative Response Register recalled significantly more referential propositions than students using either a Contingent or Noncontingent Response Register. In this sense, students employing an Imitative Response Register were more likely to reproduce text than the other Register Groups. Students (mean C.A. = 10.3 years) who used a Noncontingent Response Register recalled significantly more pragmatic inference propositions, i.e., either elaboration or distortion inference propositions, than students using either Imitative or Contingent Response Registers. In this sense, students employing a Noncontingent Response Register were more likely to embellish text than the other two groups. Finally, students (mean C.A. = 10.6 years) who used a Contingent Response Register recalled significantly more text-structured propositions, i.e., propositional and enabling inference propositions, than students using either Imitative or Noncontingent Response Registers. In this sense, students employing a Contingent Response Register were more likely to reconstruct text than the other two groups. These findings are discussed in terms of a classroom competence model of student behaviors.     

The relevance of DAF-induced speech disruption to the understanding of stuttering

The literature on delayed auditory feedback (DAF) repeatedly makes reference to the occurence of disfluencies under DAF in nonstutterers. However, no attempt has been made to determine the relative frequency of occurence of various types of disfluencies in nonstutterers under DAF. The present study investigated the frequency of occurence of various types of disfluencies in normal-speaking subjects in five successive oral readings under DAF. Twenty-four young adults read aloud a prose passage five times successively under 200 msec of bilateral DAF. Measures of the frequency of different types of disfluencies, locus of occurence of disfluencies in the speech sample, adaptation and consistency indicate that DAF-induced disfluencies are remarkably similar to those found in stuttering. It is suggested that DAF and stuttering disrupt speech at approximately the same “level” along the speech production process, possibly at the prosodic level.     

Shock preexposure and the reduced effectiveness of shock

In three experiments experience with shock was shown to reduce the effectiveness of shock as a reinforcer or motivator. In Experiment 1 rats were given signaled shock in a box separate from the runway where they were subsequently punished. These rats were less suppressed by shock punishment than rats that had no previous shock experience. In Experiment 2 preshocked rats were less suppressed by punishment and were slower to learn an escape-avoidance response than nonpreshocked rats, whether the preshock was signaled or unsignaled. In Experiment 3 as number of CS-shock pairings increased, fear of the CS decreased as did fear of the context. These results suggest that some central adaptation process produced by experience with shock reduces the effectiveness of shock as a reinforcer whenever shock is used repeatedly. This is independent of other effects, such as context blocking, that can affect responding after shock preexposure.