Blocking of a taste aversion by prior pairings of exteroceptive stimuli with illness

Although rats preferentially associate gustatory stimuli with illness, this does not imply that other types of stimuli cannot be associated with illness. In Experiment 1, rats consuming tap water in a distinctive environment prior to illness subsequently suppressed ingestion in that environment, whereas rats poisoned or injected with saline 10 hr later did not. It was also found that rats poisoned after drinking saccharin in the environment paired with illness developed weaker saccharin aversions than identically trained rats which drank saccharin in a different location. In Experiment 2, degrading the correlation between injection-related cues and illness by interpolating saline injections between LiCl preexposures attenuated the decremental effects of illness preexposure. The strength of the exteroceptive cue-illness associations observed in these studies suggests that theories based on evolutionary arguments are not the most appropriate frame of reference for analyzing stimulus selection in poison-induced avoidance.     

Hemispheric differences in processing emotions and faces.

Visual field differences for the recognition of emotional expression were investigated using a tachistoscopic procedure. Cartoon line drawings of five adult male characters, each with five emotional expressions ranging from extremely positive to extremely negative, were used as stimuli. Single stimuli were presented unilaterally for 85 msec. Subjects (N = 20) were asked to compare this target face to a subsequent centrally presented face and to decide whether the emotional expressions of the two faces, or the character represented by the two faces, were the same or different. Significant left visual field (LVF) superiorities for both character and emotional expression recognition were found. Subsequent analyses demonstrated the independence of these effects. The LVF superiority for emotional judgments was related to the degree of affective expression, but that for character recognition was not. The results of this experiment are consistent with experimental and clinical literature which has indicated a right hemispheric superiority for face recognition and for processing emotional stimuli. The asymmetry for emotion recognition is interpreted as being an expression of the right hemisphere's synthetic and integrative characteristics, its holistic nature, and its use of imagic associations.     

Hesitation and the production of verbal paraphasias and neologisms in jargon aphasia.

Techniques of hesitation analysis taken from studies of normal speakers were applied to the speech of a jargon aphasic. Neologisms were found to follow pauses indicating a word-finding difficulty. Other language functions—phonology, morphology, and syntax—appeared unimpaired, and further analyses of the linguistic and temporal characteristics indicated a single functional disorder in which there is a failure in the mechanisms which associate word-sounds with word-meanings. The patient strategically adapts to this functional impairment by substituting a neologism when lexical search fails. The source of a large class of neologisms, it is hypothesized, is a device which quasirandomly combines English phonemes in a phonotactically regular way. The implications for recovery patterns in jargon aphasia are discussed; and the implications of this case for models of normal language production are explored.     

The effects of symmetry and contour on recognition memory in children

Children in prekindergarten, kindergarten, and second grade were tested on a delayed match-to-sample task using abstract visual patterns. The patterns varied both in type of visual organization (unstructured, diagonally symmetrical, vertically symmetrical, and horizontally symmetrical) and in amount of contour. Following the initial memory task, we attempted to train half of the children at each grade by directing their attention to axes of symmetry; the other half of the children received a control task. Subsequently, the subjects were given a second delayed match-to-sample test. On both pre- and post-training trials, structure influenced performance, especially in the two younger groups. Vertical and horizontal symmetry generally facilitated performance in the prekindergarteners, while all three types of symmetry facilitated performance in the kindergarteners. In addition, children generally responded more accurately to patterns with lower levels of contour. They also made more like-contour than unlike-contour confusions, indicating that quantitative aspects of patterns were encoded. Group differences suggested that both processing capacity and memory increase during the age range studied. Finally, there was no indication that training improved performance at any age.     

The role of exploration in win-shift and win-stay performance on a radial maze

Win-shift spatial memory tasks in a radial maze reinforce animals for avoiding previously visited rewarded arms; win-stay tasks reinforce them for returning to those arms. Win-shift tasks have generally been found much easier to perform, and this may be explained either in terms of foraging models which postulate avoidance of locations where food has been found, or in terms of the predominance of spontaneous alternation (exploration). Experiment 1 examined spontaneous alternation behavior in the radial maze as a function of whether the first visit to an arm had been rewarded or not, and showed that alternation was more probable after nonreward than after reward in both hungry and thirsty rats (a result which conflicts with the foraging account of the win-shift superiority). Experiment 2 replicated the finding that win-stay discrimination performance was inferior to win-shift. A manipulation (lengthening the delay between initial and test choices) which weakens spontaneous alternation, reduced, but did not reverse, the win-shift superiority. In Experiment 3, in order to eliminate the influence of spontaneous alternation, versions of the win-stay and win-shift tasks were devised in which, unlike the original task, all arms were familiar at the choice trial. Under those conditions win-stay was performed better than win-shift. It is concluded that spontaneous alternation plays a major role in many spatial memory tasks, and that the results can best be accounted for by combining principles of exploration and simple associative learning, without recourse to foraging models.     

Dissonance and self-perception: An integrative view of each theory's proper domain of application

The literature concerning the controversy between dissonance and selfperception theories is reviewed. It is proposed that the two theories be regarded not as “competing” formulations but as complementary ones and, furthermore, that each theory is applicable only to its own specialized domain. Self-perception theory, it is suggested, accurately characterizes attitude change phenomena in the context of attitude-congruent behavior and dissonance theory attitude change in the context of attitude-discrepant behavior. Attitude-congruent is defined as any position within an individual's latitude of acceptance; attitude-discrepant as any position in the latitude of rejection. An experimental test of these notions produced confirming evidence. Subjects who were given an opportunity to misattribute any potential dissonance arousal to an external stimulus did not change their attitudes, relative to low choice subjects, if they were committed to endorsing a position in their latitude of rejection. If the commitment concerned a position in the latitude of acceptance, however, these subjects did exhibit attitude change relative to low choice subjects.     

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.     

The effects of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards in a risk-taking situation

This study varied both the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards associated with performing a task in a risk taking situation. When the task performed to win a prize provided little if any intrinsic reward, subjects liked and tried for prizes that were easy to obtain. In contrast, when the task was intrinsically rewarding, subjects liked and tried for those prizes that were somewhat more difficult to obtain. In addition, subjects were more likely to like and try for prizes easier to obtain when the extrinsic reward was high.     

A stimulus-compounding assay of conditioned inhibition and excitation

Rats were trained in an operant discrimination involving two panel lights, A and B. Group CI (Conditioned Inhibition) was trained to lever press in the presence of A (S+), and not in the presence of the compound AB (S?). The opposite contingencies held in Group CE (Conditioned Excitation). Response rates were higher in Group CE than in Group CI, especially to the positive stimulus. However, the groups acquired the discrimination at comparable rates. In a separate phase of the experiment, a tone (C) was separately trained in the absence of the lights to control responding. All seven possible combinations of A, B, and C were then presented randomly during extinction. The inhibitory effect of B on C in Group CI was comparable in magnitude to the excitatory effect of B on C in Group CE. B's effect on C was not altered by the presence or absence of A, regardless of whether A was inhibitory or excitatory. The symmetry between CI and CE revealed by the stimulus-compounding test may be partly artifactual.