Emotional mood and memory in young children

Two experiments examined affect-dependent memory with preschool/kindergarten and third-grade children. A two-list intentional learning procedure was used to assess the effects of the congruent versus incongruent relationship between affect (happy vs sad) during initial list learning and affect (happy vs sad) during a delayed recall test. When induction of emotional mood was preceded by relaxation exercises in Experiment 1, no evidence of affect dependence was observed. When the relaxation procedure was omitted in Experiment 2, the affect-dependent pattern was obtained in both free recall and cued recall for both age groups. The results of Experiment 2 show that affect-dependent memory is a reasonably robust phenomenon in children and that hypnosis is not necessary for its appearance. However, the phenomenon is apparently absent under conditions of relaxation, a result consistent with two-factor theories of emotion.     

Biological vs experiential factors in phobic conditioning

The present study was performed as a test of phobic conditioning being a case of prepared learning (Seligman, 1971). Skin conductance responses were conditioned in three groups of subjects to either slides of snakes and spiders; electric outlets; or geometric shapes, as conditioned stimuli (CSs) with shock to the forearm as the unconditioned stimulus (UCS). The purpose of the experiment was to compare electrodermal conditioning to potentially phobic CSs, i.e. snakes and spiders, with conditioning to fear-relevant, but non-phobic, CSs, i.e. electric outlets.Each subject saw two pictures, either a snake or a spider; or two different slides of electric outlets; or two different geometric shapes. Only one of the two cues (the CS + ) was immediately followed by the shock-UCS during the acquisition phase. Thus, a differential paradigm was used. There were 4 habituation, 12 acquisition, and 16 extinction trials. The duration of the pictures was 8 sec with an intertrial interval of between 35–45 sec.The results showed reliable effects of conditioning in all three groups during the acquisition phase. Furthermore, a significant interaction during extinction is reported, indicating responses to potentially phobic CSs to be more resistant to extinction than responses to the other two classes of stimuli. It is concluded that the present results favor an interpretation of phobic conditioning in terms of biologically prepared learning.     

Cerebral lateralization, preferred cognitive mode, and reading ability in normal children

In a sample of 105 children (aged 6 to 12), a stylistic preference for a verbal approach to problem-solving correlated positively with reading ability (independently of age) and degree of right-ear advantage in the report of dichotic stop consonant-vowel syllables (but not with verbal intelligence or hand preference). Verbal strategic preference may: (1) foster the acquisition of reading skill, and (2) bias attention toward input from the right by generating differential left-hemisphere activation.     

Word fragmentations and repetitions in the spontaneous speech of 2–6-yr-old children

Samples of spontaneous speech of 110 nursery school children, aged 2 yr, 1 mo to 6 yr, were written down. Two of the children were regarded as stutterers by the parents and the nursery school personnel. Instances of word and phrase repetitions and word fragmentations were marked. Fragmentation of a word before the whole word is pronounced was used as criterion of stuttering. The nonstutterers had an average frequency of word repetitions of 6.3%, while word fragmentations were virtually nonoccurrent. The frequency of word repetitions decreased with increasing age. Relating word repetitions to grammatical complexity of speech, it was found that the decrease was particularly large at a certain point of the grammatical development. The two stutterers had, in addition to normal frequencies of word repetitions, marked occurences of word fragmentations (2.8 and 4.1%).     

Need for social approval: Impression management or self-deception?

A bogus pipeline technique was employed to separate the self- and other-deceptive components in social desirability responding and need for social approval. The self- and the other-deceptive components of social desirability responding were found to be independent of each other but to be positively and independently related to individual differences in need for approval score. Self-deceptive persons demonstrated diminished recall while other-deceptive persons exhibited enhanced recall of negatively evaluative characteristics. Such differential association with repressive and sensitizing defensive styles is discussed within the context of defensive denial and impression management conception of approval motivation.     

IQ and social class

A brief overview is given of the nature-nurture debate elicited on the basis of Arthur Jensen's article concerning group differences in IQ test results published in 1969.Sandra Scarr-Salapatek found that the contribution of genetic variance in IQ test results tended to be larger in a more stimulating environment and proportionately smaller in a disadvantaged environment. This finding has been tested on data from a Swedish twin study. A comparison of within-pair similarity for MZ and DZ twins with varying social background has been made. Genetic variance seems to account for a greater proportion of the variance in IQ test scores in social group I and II compared to social group III. This is in accordance with the conclusions drawn by Scarr-Salapatek and thus tend to support the above-mentioned hypothesis. It therefore seems as though the potentially restricting effects of working class conditions for the development of the kind of abilities measured by conventional IQ tests would tend to reduce the degree to which genetic differences are expressed. More stimulating environmental opportunities, on the other hand, tend to allow a greater range of such differences in the middle and higher social classes.     

Validation of the sensation scale,a measure of subjective physiological responses to alcohol

The Sensation Scale was originally constructed to measure the subjective experience of physiological changes following alcohol consumption. Reduction of the original scale of 31 variables on the basis of face validity resulted in six ‘factors’ comprising 26 variables and one ‘other’ factor. These sortings are shown to have good interrater reliability. Furthermore, evidence is presented from two experiments that five of the six factors discriminated between nonalcoholic male subjects who drank either a beverage containing a moderate dose of alcohol or a nonalcoholic beverage.     

Some types of stability in the study of students' work values

It is suggested the concept of “stability” in the study of work values has at least three facets: (1) hierarchical stability, (2) response pattern stability, and (3) factor stability. These three facets are investigated using a sample of 165 Australian students, assessed using a work values list initially in Grade 12 and then $\text{2}\text{1}\text{2}$ years later during which time all had engaged in full-time tertiary study. Of the 13 work values assessed only independence and intellectual stimulation increased in importance and surroundings decreased. Canonical correlation analysis revealed four significant response patterns which indicated that the same work value may sometimes be stable or changeable in combination with other work values. It was also found using factor analysis that two rotated principal components appeared stable over time. They were identified as an Intellectual Concern factor and People Concern factor. An Extrinsic Concern factor for subjects as high school students was found to differentiate into a Status/Power Concern factor and a Co-workers Concern factor by the time of the second assessment. A Freedom Concern factor found in the Grade 12 assessment was not discovered until $\text{2}\text{1}\text{2}$ years later. The results confirm the need for further theoretical and methodological refinement of the notion of stability in the study of work values.     

A typology of mid-life career changers

This study examines the motivations for and the outcomes of mid-life career change among a sample of 73 men who had left professional and managerial careers between the ages of 34 and 54. Measures of personal desire for change and external pressure to leave were dichotomized to produce a typology of career changers: Drift-outs, Opt-outs, Force-outs, and Bow-outs. The four types of changers were found to differ on a number of variables, including: amount of education completed, additional schooling undertaken to change careers, time taken to make the change, radicalness of change, and the importance of personal values in deciding to leave their former careers. Overall, respondents were found to be highly satisfied with their career redirection.