Children's discrimination of oblique lines.

In three experiments using delayed-matching tasks with 5-year-old children (one of which also included 7-year-olds) no support was found for the hypothesis that children code for line orientation using a match-mismatch strategy. The hypothesis that errors in discrimination of obliques can be attributed mainly to confusion over the left-right direction of tilt was rejected in a fourth experiment. It was concluded that young children do not spontaneously encode orientation in relation to a matching environmental cue and that there is no evidence that memory for the direction of obliquity is inferior to memory for the degree of obliquity.     

Interpreting inclusion: A contribution to the study of the child's cognitive and linguistic development

Six experiments are reported which examine the young child's ability to compare included and nonincluded sets. Results indicate that with certain forms of task presentation most 3- to 5-year-old children can compare part with whole. Further, errors which occur in inclusion tasks are similar to errors which occur in tasks involving comparison of nonincluded sets. Thus young children can solve inclusion problems, and their customary failure to do so does not arise because the problem requires comparison of a whole with an included part. Employing a distinction between intended tasks (those which the adult wishes the child to complete) and received tasks (those which the child, in fact, completes) the studies indicate how linguistic and perceptual aspects of the presented information may interact with the child's assumptions about the nature of the task to be completed.     

Individual differences in cognition: Relationship between verbal ability and memory for order

The crucial role of order information in language has led to the suggestion that psychometrically measured verbal ability may be related to memory for order. The literature pertaining to this hypothesis is briefly reviewed and various methodological difficulties discussed. The results of three experiments indicated that (a) order and item information may be retained separately; (b) verbal ability is related to the short-term recall of order; (c) verbal ability is unrelated to memory for order when testing involves recognition rather than recall; and (d) the relationship between verbal ability and memory for order is most pronounced when the originally presented order must be transformed at output (as in the “digits backward” task). An output process in which material is decoded and held in an output buffer until decoding is complete is viewed as the most likely locus of the verbal ability-memory for order relationship.     

Stimulus- or response-induced excitation. A comparison of the behavior of introverts and extraverts

The tendency to inspect visual material (slides) rather than to respond by pressing a key in an attempt to move on to the next slide, was compared among introverts and extraverts. As predicted from Brebner and Cooper (1974): (1) extraverts inspected the stimuli for a shorter time before making their first response, (2) extraverts made more responses at a faster rate than introverts did, and (3) extraverts produced a significantly higher proportion of runs of accelerating responses.     

Differential effects of personality on access to various long-term memory codes

Arousal, as indexed by personality measures, has been related to memory encoding, organization, and retrieval. In an attempt to investigate one of the component information-processing mechanisms underlying both encoding and retrieval, the effects of introversion-extraversion on performance in a simultaneous matching task was investigated. As predicted from earlier research, personality did not influence performance on a physical identity matching task but extraverts were faster than introverts in making taxonomic category matches (a semantic task). Somewhat unexpectedly, extraverts were also faster at making “homophone” identity matches. Arousal, then, appears to influence access to long-term memory codes of any type—a characteristic that may be reflected in tests of both encoding and retrieval.     

Age,and midcareer crisis: An empirical study of academics

This study develops an empirical basis for examining the midcareer crisis/ transition period of academic staff surveyed by questionnaire in four Australian Universities and Colleges. A total of 672 usable returns were obtained, representing a response rate of 52% of the academic staff. Principal components and factor analysis were used to establish latent social-role variables. Analysis of variance and covariance was applied using the latent social-role variables as dependent variables and occupational attributes such as age, sex, etc., as independent variables. The variable age was isolated from the larger study in this paper to illustrate empirically a midcareer crisis period for the population studied which is consistent with the general literature on midcareer crisis/transition.     

Effects of question type and experimenter position on bilateral differences in electrodermal activity and conjugate lateral eye movements

28 dextral males participated in a within-subjects experiment which tasted for the effects of question type (verbal versus spatial) and experimenter-position (in front of or behind the subject) on direction of conjugate lateral eye movements (LEMs) and bilateral differences in skin conductance responses (SCRs). Question dependent asymmetries were observed for LEM direction but not for SCR magnitude. Experimenter-position had no significant effect. The results for LEM direction are consistent with the hypothesis linking eye movements to the left or right with activation of the cerebral hemisphere contralateral to the direction of gaze. The results for SCR magnitude, given certain assumptions, can be reconciled with a hemispheric model of contralateral excitatory control of that system.     

Reactions to receiving expected and unexpected help from a person who violates or does not violate a norm

Different factors may affect reciprocity and attraction to an aid-giver. Sixty white South African high school students participated in a “record contest”. Hints provided by the quizmaster enabled them to win a prize. His help was expected or unexpected and, in providing this help, the quizmaster either did or did not violate a specific norm against doing so. It was predicted that recipients of unexpected help would display more reciprocity than recipients of expected help, but that the aid-giver would be derogated only when he behaved in both an unexpected and counternormative way and that, in general, attraction and reciprocity would be unrelated. These hypotheses were supported. They suggest that reciprocity is normally not mediated by attraction and that neither expectancy violation nor counternormative behavior will be itself produce derogation of an aid-giver. They further suggest recipients of unexpected help probably feel more obliged to repay an aid-giver than do recipients of expected help.