The effect of reinforcement for global or analytic strategies on the performance of reflective and impulsive children

Second and sixth grade impulsive and reflective children were administered a conceptual style task with a modification that children were reinforced specifically for either global or analytic processing. Results indicated that both reflectives and impulsives were capable of offering either a global or analytic hypothesis under appropriate reinforcement. Results were interpreted as indicating the relevance of motivational factors to reflection/impulsivity and cognitive style.     

Anticipation of reward omission as a cue for choice behavior

A within-subject partial reinforcement extinction effect was obtained in a conditional discriminative choice task. In choice acquisition, one group had learned a task in which one choice alternative was continuously reinforced (CRF) and the other alternative was partially reinforced (PRF). Most errors in the acquisition phase were the choosing of the CRF lever when the conditional stimulus signaled the PRF lever; in extinction this pattern of choice errors reversed. In extinction, most errors were choosing of the PRF lever when the conditional stimulus signaled the CRF lever. The predictions of frustration theory and sequential theory were compared with the choice data. The results were interpreted as consistent with the anticipatory frustration construct within an associative mediational theory.     

Schema induction and analogical transfer

An analysis of the process of analogical thinking predicts that analogies will be noticed on the basis of semantic retrieval cues and that the induction of a general schema from concrete analogs will facilitate analogical transfer. These predictions were tested in experiments in which subjects first read one or more stories illustrating problems and their solutions and then attempted to solve a disparate but analogous transfer problem. The studies in Part I attempted to foster the abstraction of a problem schema from a single story analog by means of summarization instructions, a verbal statement of the underlying principle, or a diagrammatic representation of it. None of these devices achieved a notable degree of sucess. In contrast, the experiments in Part II demonstrated that if two prior analogs were given, subjects often derived a problem schema as an incidental product of describing the similarities of the analogs. The quality of the induced schema was highly predictive of subsequent transfer performance. Furthermore, the verbal statements and diagrams that had failed to facilitate transfer from one analog proved highly beneficial when paired with two. The function of examples in learning was discussed in light of the present study.     

Conflict and integration in career decision schemes

This study investigates three aspects of the way high school seniors (166 males, 187 females) construe occupational alternatives: intensity (how strongly are career considerations related), conflict (how much conflict is involved in these relations), and evaluative accord (to what extent are one's stated preferences in agreement with the positivity with which occupations are rated on considerations). Using a variant of G. Kelly's (New York: Norton, 1955) grid methodology, students rated 10 career alternatives on 10 career considerations. The results indicate that the three variables are significantly interrelated.     

A comparison of deaf, normal, and brain damaged adults on a tachistoscopic task

Printed words and letters, pictures of signed words, and pictures of finger-spelled letters were presented tachistoscopically to deaf, normal, and brain-damaged adults. The findings suggest that (1) the deaf show no cerebral asymmetry for any of the material but found identification of the stimuli very difficult unless a forced-choice recognition procedure was used or the exposure time was very long; (2) both the normal and the brain-damaged groups show left hemisphere superiority for printed material but no cerebral specialization for signed material; (3) the left-right hemisphere difference is more marked in the brain-damaged group regardless of which hemisphere showed most damage. This may be explained, at least in some cases, by impaired transfer across the corpus callosum.     

Central auditory processing : II. Effects of anterior temporal lobectomy

Ear dominance for the pitch of dichotically presented tonal stimuli was measured in nine patients before and after a unilateral anterior temporal lobectomy. Four subjects had a left and five had a right lobectomy. Every patient exhibited a change of ear dominance consistent with the hypothesis that a unilateral lobectomy decreases the perceptual salience of the tone presented to the ear contralateral to the lesion. Depending on the direction and magnitude of the subject's preoperative ear dominance and the side of the lobectomy, the postoperative results either increased or decreased the strength of ear dominance in a predictable fashion. The results support the idea that within each temporal lobe lie physiological mechanisms which can enhance the perceptual salience of the acoustic signal emitted by one sound source when other, concurrent, spatially separated sound sources are present. It is also argued that the same mechanism operates on speech, melodic, and tonal signals.     

Deliberate self-harm,clinical history and extreme scoring on the EPQ

Two hundred consecutive admissions to an inpatient psychiatric unit were assessed on the EPQ following recovery from the disturbance for which they were hospitalized. Case-history data was also checked for these patients and extended by using a clinical-history structured interview, also administered within 1 week of discharge. Results showed that for males, high P and high N was associated with a history of deliberate self-harm (DSH) by mutilation. High N was also associated with parental violence. In females, both low E and high N were associated with a history of self-mutilation. High N scores were also more likely to have appeared in court, and high P females were more likely to have a history of bedwetting and of parental violence.None of the associations between extreme scoring on the EPQ and self-mutilation were found for DSH by overdose.     

The perception of emotionally toned sentences by right hemisphere-damaged and aphasic subjects

The perception of 60 emotionally toned sentences, divided into meaningful and meaningless utterances, by high- and low-verbal aphasics and right hemisphere-damaged subjects who were not aphasic was investigated. The intended moods were happiness, sadness, and anger. Results indicated (a) significant differences between the aphasic groups in identifying the intended emotion but none between groups in identifying the intended emotion but none between either of these groups and the right hemispheric dysfunction subjects; (b) sentence meaningfulness only affected the responses of high-verbal aphasics; and (c) while the happy mood seemed to be the least frequently selected among the three moods, closer inspection indicated that the subjects in absence of response bias were distinguishing among the three moods with equal success.