The effects of verbal and behavioral noncompliance on third party instigation of aggression

Females, assigned to one of four conditions defined in terms of a confederate's behavior, suggested which shock intensity the confederate ought to set for an opponent during a reaction time competition, should the opponent lose the trial (had slower reaction time). Confederates either verbally complied or disagreed with suggestions to set high shock, while either actually setting the intensity suggested or setting a lower intensity. Over trials, the opponent became increasingly provocative. Results revealed the main effects and interaction of confederate's verbal and actual behaviors, as well as provocativeness of the opponent, significantly influenced the level of shock subjects suggested. Subjects with verbally and behaviorally compliant confederates suggested more intense shock than subjects who encountered any noncompliance.     

Modification of the externality effect in young infants.

When presented with two-element geometric stimuli, with one element enclosed within the other, infants under 2 months of age do not appear to detect the internal element and fail to respond to a change in that element. Infants over 2 months of age experience no difficulty in this respect. However, it is established that this “externality effect” does break down under certain circumstances, for example, where there is independent modulation of the internal element. Evidence is presented which appears to run counter to explanations of this effect in terms of information processing limitations, capture of attention by dominant salience, or level of arousal. An alternative explanation based on figure-ground organization is given partial support.     

The “magic” paradigm revisited

The “magic” paradigm was devised to assess conservation of number in young children. Previous results with the paradigm have suggested that children acquire the ability to conserve number by 3 years of age. Because these results indicate a very precocious development of number conservation relative to performance on the classic conservation task, a comparison of these two procedures was made. Several differences which might account for the superior performance with the magic paradigm were noted: The arrays are presented successively rather than simultaneously, the arrays are presented side by side rather than parallel to one another, and the displacement is performed surreptitiously rather than openly. In the present research the magic paradigm was modified in several steps so that these differences between procedures were removed. None of the changes had an impact on the performance of 3-year-olds. It was concluded that insofar as small numbers are concerned, young children treat displacement as irrelevant to number. In regard to the question of whether young children are capable of conserving small numbers, it was concluded that no answer can be given. Basically, the problem is that we lack sufficient information on how young children solve the magic paradigm.     

Facilitating cognitive performance in children: A comparison of strategy modeling and strategy modeling with overt self-verbalization

Children, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, and 10 years old, were randomly divided into three training conditions—a strategy modeling condition, a strategy modeling with overt self-verbalization condition, and a control condition. The subjects in the two modeling conditions were given training on four cognitive tasks, a signal task, a match-to-standard task, a paired-associates task, and a twenty-questions task. A 6 (age) × 2 (sex) × 3 (treatment) × 2 (trial) analysis of variance was performed on each of the dependent variables associated with each of the four tasks. The results of these analyses indicate that both modeling conditions facilitated performance on the signal and match-to-standard tasks for all six age groups. However, the two modeling procedures facilitated performance on the paired-associates and twenty-questions tasks only in the three older age groups. Since the two modeling procedures did not differ in effectiveness, it was suggested that strategy modeling without overt self-verbalization is the more practical and efficient procedure for facilitating cognitive performance in normal children.     

A comparison of 'flooding' and 'successive approximation' in the treatment of agoraphobia

Flooding (in the imagination and in vivo) and successive approximation were compared in a cross-over design with 14 agoraphobic patients. Assessments were made at the beginning of the treatment, at the cross-over, at the end of the treatment and at the follow-up 3 months later.The assessments were made by the therapist (in vivo measurement) and by the client (phobic anxiety scale; phobic avoidance scale; FSS; MAS; I-E scale and a depression inventory). At the time of the pre-test and the posttest, an independent external judge scored the clients on the following items : anxious mood, specific phobias, obsessive compulsive symptoms, depersonalization and depressed mood.Both methods of treatment resulted in a significant improvement on the in vivo measurements, phobic anxiety scale, phobic avoidance scale and FSS.Successive approximation also led to a significant decrease on the MAS and the I-E scale. The only significant difference between the two methods was shown by the phobic anxiety scale, the mean of the flooding group being significantly higher.     

Cognitive tuning and receptivity to novel information

An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that cognitive tuning would cause receivers to be more receptive to novel than to familiar information, compared to transmitters. The information receptivity of transmitters and receivers was contrasted against a control group. The influence of the source and audience, possible limits on the influence of the tuning set, was also explored. Finally, amount of variance controlled by cognitive tuning, personality variables and information utility were examined.While the results strongly support the prediction that transmitters prefer familiar information, receivers and control group subjects did not significantly differ in preferences for novel information. The anticipated expertise of source or audience had no influence on information receptivity. Among the three sets of variables used, the greatest amount of variance was explained by information utility, followed by cognitive tuning and personality measures, though all three variables controlled a significant amount of variance.     

Combined stimulus control over time allocation in response-independent schedules

Rats were exposed to concurrent schedules in which reinforcers occurred independently of behavior. In Experiment 1, rats could control time spent in the following conditions: (1) a light, (2) white noise, and (3) the absence of both light and noise. Response-independent reinforcers occurred at the same rate during the light and the noise and at either a higher rate or not at all in the absence of both stimuli. In subsequent tests, the rats spent more time in a light and noise compound than in either light or noise alone after the absence of both stimuli had signaled no reinforcers. When the absence of both stimuli had signaled a higher rate of reinforcement, however, the rats typically spent less time in the compound than in light or noise alone. In Experiment 2, rats could control time spent in the presence of a light and of a buzzer. The reinforcement rate in the light was twice that in the buzzer. In a later test, the rats spent more time in a light and buzzer compound than in the buzzer, but less time in the compound than in the light. The results show that additive summation, suppressive summation, and stimulus averaging of time allocation occur and that response rate differences between training stimuli are not necessary for these phenomena.     

Task parameters affecting the efficacy of a visual imagery learning strategy in younger and older children

Second- and sixth-grade children were presented a list of paired associates (concrete nouns) either at a faster (6-second) or a slower (12-second) presentation rate, under either an instruction to generate an interactive image for the pairs or a no strategy, control instruction. The list was composed of two pair types: easy-to-imaginally relate and difficult-to-imaginally relate pairs, as determined from a prior norming study. At the faster presentation rate, 2nd graders were able to benefit from the imagery strategy with easy pairs, but not with difficult pairs. At the slower rate, however, they applied the imagery strategy equally well to both pair types. Older children benefited from the imagery strategy with both pair types at both rates.     

Cross-modal matching and association under sodium amytal

Anatomical and theoretical considerations, as well as experimental findings, have yielded conflicting points of view regarding the abilities of the right hemisphere in man to accomplish cross-modal transfer of information. Auditory—visual cross-modal matching (CMM) and association (CMA) abilities of the left and right hemisphere (LH and RH) were tested, using the Wada intracarotid sodium amytal technique. It was found that the RH performed slightly better on these tasks than the LH. These findings contrast with results of other techniques which indicate that the RH cannot perform CMM and CMA.