‘Preparedness’ and ‘arousability’ as determinants of electrodermal conditioning

‘Arousability’, as defined through spontaneous electrodermal responses, has been empirically linked to anxiety, phobic symptoms and outcome of systematic desensitization. Previous data from our laboratory indicate that ‘preparedness’, as defined through potentially phobic vs. fear-irrelevant or ‘neutral’ conditioned stimuh, is an important determinant of electrodermal conditioning. The present experiment compared groups selected to be high or low in spontaneous responding during differential conditioning to potentially phobic or neutral stimuh. It was found that the effects of these two factors were essentially additive, i.e. conditioning and resistance to extinction were better for phobic stimuli and for high-arousal groups. The high-aroused group with phobic stimuh showed diffuse responding during acquisition, not differentiating between reinforced and unreinforced cues. However, it was the only group that failed to extinguish during 20 trials, which indicates that high arousal gives superior resistance to extinction particularly for phobic stimuli.     

Bogus physiological feedback and response thresholds of Repressers and Sensitizers

Repressers and Sensitizers viewed tachistoscopically presented TAT transparencies under conditions of high and low bogus physiological feedback. As predicted, during high bogus physiological feedback, Repressers showed a significant increase and Sensitizers showed a significant decrease in response thresholds. These results serve to extend the validity of bogus physiological feedback procedures in the analog investigation of emotion and offer theoretical implications relevant to the areas of personality, emotion, psychophysiology, and psychopathology.     

Effects of viewing real versus fantasy violence upon interpersonal aggression

Of 96 male undergraduates, one-third saw a violent film which they were told represented a real event, one-third saw the same film presented as a fictional event, and the remaining subjects saw no film. One-half of the subjects in each group had been attacked previously by a confederate while the others had not. Each subject was then given an opportunity to aggress against the confederate by administering shocks to him as punishment in a learning task. Results indicate that subjects who observed real violence delivered stronger shocks to the confederate than subjects who viewed fantasy violence or saw no film. Subjects who were angered and saw the real film were the most punitive toward the confederate.     

The role of distinctive features in the dichotic perception of vowels

A dichotic listening experiment was conducted to determine if vowel perception is based on phonetic feature extraction as is consonant perception. Twenty normal right-handed subjects were given dichotic CV syllables contrasting in final vowels. It was found that, unlike consonants, the perception of dichotic vowels was not significantly lateralized, that the dichotic perception of vowels was not significantly enhanced by the number of phonetic features shared, and that the occurrence of double-blend errors was not greater than chance. However, there was strong evidence for the use of phonetic features at the level of response organization. It is suggested that the differences between vowel and consonant perception reflect the differential availability of the underlying acoustic information from auditory store, rather than differences in processing mechanisms.     

Control of selective echolalia via the instatement of a general alternative response

Treatment for echolalic responding has been limited to the training of a small number of correct responses and limited stimulus verbalizations by the experimenter, leaving the possibility that the introduction of novel stimuli could result in the reoccurrence of echolalia. In the present study an 11-year-old severely retarded male's echolalic responding to questions that he could not answer correctly was controlled by instating a general alternative response, “I don't know.” The subject continued to respond correctly to questions that he could answer. indicating that the general alternative response had been appropriately discriminated. A Baseline. Treatment. DRO. Treatment design indicated that the subject's echolalic responding, as well as the appropriate use of the general alternative response, was under experimental control. Generalization of the experimental results to the subject's regular day-care setting was accomplished by having the staff verbally punish all echolalic responses and then restate the question to the subject until a non-echolalic answer had been emitted. Implications of these findings and suggestions for combining previous treatment procedures for echolalia with the general alternative response procedure were offered.     

Distraction,amnesia, and the next-in-line effect

Two studies use a free recall task to track, moment by moment, cognitive repercussions of an upcoming performance. As in earlier research, subjects display impaired recall for events which immediately precede an anticipated public performance. This “next-in-line effect” occurs even if the “performance” consists of reading a word to oneself. However, subjects show no memory deficit if their performance is not anticipated, and they have generally poor recall if they know they will be performing—but not when. Distraction and amnesia accounts of these recall deficits are discussed. Ancillary findings illuminate the organization of memory in social settings.     

Physiological arousal,exposure to a relatively lengthy aggressive film,and aggressive behavior

Male college students viewed either a 15-minute aggressive television program excerpt or a neutral one. Half of the students in each group were then angered or treated in a neutral fashion by a confederate. Each subject was allowed to retaliate by delivering electric shocks to the confederate as an evaluation of a problem solution he supposedly had completed. Heart rate was measured (a) before exposure to the television program, (b) after exposure to the program, (c) immediately before delivering the shock, and (d) immediately after shock delivery. Angered men who had seen the aggressive film were most aggressive toward the confederate and exhibited the lowest average pulse rates both before and after shock delivery. The findings are discussed in terms of their implication for arousal vs disinhibition conceptualizations of aggressive behaviors following exposure to television violence.     

Spelling dyslexia: A form of cross-cuing

A patient with spelling dyslexia maintained the ability to write, spell, and pronounce spelled nonsense words and words that require knowledge of orthographic rules of language. He was unable to perform grapheme-phoneme conversions except after naming the letter involved. We propose that he uses a letter-naming strategy to circumvent the disconnection of visual areas from the area of visual word images and that his letter-naming strategy represents a compensatory cross-cuing strategy.     

A comparison of LRT and VOT values between stutterers and nonstutterers

The experiment reported here found no significant group differences in laryngeal reaction time (LRT) and voice onset time (VOT) values. Rank-order correlations between the stutterers' LRT and VOT values were also nonsignificant. A model of the LRT paradigm is presented that (1) allows for systematic assessment of factors possibly contributing to the failure to replicate the often reported LRT group difference, and (2) is useful in examining the relationship between the LRT experimental condition and normal speaking conditions. We argue that two factors were particularly critical to our results. First, simple reaction time procedures included (1) a warning signal that preceded a response signal by a variable 1–3-sec foreperiod, and (2) a single response. We argue that foreperiod durations exceeded the stutterers' speech posture time for a known response. Second, the stuttering severity rating of our experimental group was less severe than ratings in other experiments.     

Event-related potential studies of cerebral specialization during reading: I. Studies of normal adults

A number of methodological features were incorporated in a paradigm designed to maximize the likelihood of finding reliable event-related potential (ERP) signs of functional specializations between and within the cerebral hemispheres. Every subject was more accurate in identifying words presented to the right than to the left visual field. The morphology of the ERPs elicited by these words varied considerably as a function of electrode position both within and between the hemispheres. Amplitude asymmetries of ERP components recorded from occipital regions of the two hemispheres varied systematically with the position of the word in the visual field. On the other hand, ERPs from more anterior (temporal and frontal) regions displayed large asymmetries which were in the same direction regardless of the visual field of word presentation. The most prominent such asymmetry was in the negativity in the region 300–500 msec (N410) which was larger in the left than the right hemisphere in every subject. These results demonstrate that in this paradigm which demands specialized language processing ERPs are sensitive to aspects of cerebral organization both within and between the two hemispheres.