Reactions to success and failure in public and in private conditions

It was shown that the reaction to success and failure differs when it is communicated publicly or privately and when the reaction to success and failure is measured publicly or privately. Participants took an intelligence test and received fictitious results which were positively or negatively discrepant from the average. The dependent variable was the evaluation of the intelligence test. It was found that when the subject's evaluation of the test was private, the test was evaluated more positively under public than under private success. However, it was evaluated more negatively under public than under private failure. Under public success feedback the test was evaluated more positively under private than under public evaluation, whereas under public failure feedback the effect was reversed. The results are interpreted in terms of a self-presentation model and were discussed in the context of earlier research within the field of interpersonal relations.     

Training the disturbed enuretic

Twenty-two disturbed enuretic children were treated for their bedwetting with training procedures. Eighteen of 22 (81.8%) reached the initial success criterion in an average of 57.5 days. Ten of the 18 (55.6%) met the retraining criteria of relapse, and 9 of the relapses were successfully retrained, while I stopped wetting spontaneously. As compared to non-relapsed children, relapsed children had a significantly higher number of initial symptoms checked. The results indicate that a training approach is effective for the treatment of enuresis in disturbed children, but the more disturbed have a greater likelihood of relapse.     

Vocal control therapy for stutterers: A trial program

A problem-solving approach to the treatment of stuttering, called vocal control therapy, has been shaped over a 4-year period. The program includes behavioral desensitization techniques as well as retraining vocal, respiratory, and other speech functions for fluency. Data from pre- and posttherapy video tapes of 12 out of 34 cases are given. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.     

Effects of varied response modes upon dichotic consonant-vowel identification latency

Reaction times for two right-handed subjects who received 6000 trials of dichotic stop-vowels were obtained under response conditions involving the left hand, right hand, and neck muscles. Results indicated latencies were shorter (150+ msec) when targets were presented to the right rather than the left ear. Large and stable differences in latencies remained invariant with the mode of response. Reaction times did not vary as a function of the target's place or manner of articulation. The relationship between obtained measures of latency and percentage correct ruled out speed-accuracy trade-offs as a source of the obtained differences in latencies.     

Disorders of oculomotor scanning and graphic orientation in developmental Gerstmann syndrome

A patient with developmental Gerstmann syndrome who experiences great difficulty in performing tasks requiring visuoconstructive and reading abilities is described. Neuropsychological assessment revealed normal range verbal abilities but severe deficits in directional orientation, finger differentiation, calculational ability, copying, and reading ability. Achievement in reading was measured at the sixth-grade level despite the fact that this patient is a third-year college student. Using infrared photoelectric sensors, we monitored the horizontal saccades of this patient while reading from a standardized reading test. Fixation durations were not abnormal. However, instances of reverse-staircase movement were exhibited. While reading from an inverted test, she showed a normal eye-movement pattern (although in the reverse direction since the task now called for right-to-left saccades). The processing of spatial information in this patient is severely disturbed and this may account for the apparently abnormal oculomotor scanning, an “irrepressible tendency” to move her eyes in a right-to-left direction.     

The game of the name: An examination of linguistic reference after brain damage

Two aspects of naming have generally been examined in aphasics: the appreciation of a single property of a concept and the ability to use the names of fully elaborated concepts. In applying to aphasics a recently proposed model of semantic organization—one which allows the simultaneous examination of these two aspects—two studies were conducted: Anterior and posterior aphasics were asked (1) to name members of superordinate categories, their responses being converted into prototypicality scores (the degree to which a member of a category resembles an ideal member of that category) and (2) to differentiate between more or less prototypical members of a category and their superordinates. The results revealed that, while anterior and posterior aphasics differ in their use of the names representing fully elaborated concepts, these groups show no differences in terms of the appreciation of a single property of a concept. The implications of these findings for reference were discussed.     

A structural determinant of hemispheric processing of pictorial material

A qualitative difference of processing type by the two cerebral hemispheres was demonstrated in a picture arrangement task which involved a concept of temporal sequence. Half the sequences were designed to rely on analytic categorical processes and half on configurational processes. The subjects were patients with unilateral hemispheric damage of vascular etiology. Using two measures of performance, latency and errors, patients with right hemisphere damage were seen to be relatively impaired on those sequences designed to employ hypothesized right hemisphere (configurational) processing and patients with left hemisphere damage were seen to be relatively impaired on those sequences designed to employ hypothesized left hemisphere (categorical) processing.     

Unclogging the bogus pipeline: A critical reanalysis of the Cherry,Byrne, and Mitchell study

The assignment of subjects to conditions on the basis of social desirability scores could not have been done in the manner described by Cherry, Byrne, and Mitchell (Journal of Research in Personality, 1976, 10, 69–75). Even if subject assignment procedures were not challenged the data do not support the authors' conclusions. Additional statistical analyses were carried out to test the hypotheses of the original study. It is concluded that either the demand cue manipulation was not successful or else paper-and-pencil and bogus pipeline measurement procedures are equally reliable measurement devices for the attitude similarity effect.     

Recall and recognition of order and item information in probed running memory, as a function of IQ

Two experiments were designed to test the possibility that correlations between IQ and probed serial running memory depend on IQ-related individual differences in the retention of order information in short-term memory. In Experiment I, correlations were obtained regardless of whether instructions emphasized serial recall or free recall. In Experiment II, a significant correlation between IQ and performance was obtained in a recognition test for very recent item information, but not in a recognition test for very recent order information. These data together with a theoretical analysis of the operations involved in the tasks, led to the conclusion that the correlations reflected individual differences in the capacity to access specified sets of items in very short-term memory.