The relation of esteem and vocational counseling to range of incorporation scores

Range of incorporation scores is a potential outcome measure of vocational counseling. Post-test analysis was used to examine the relation of vocational counseling and esteem to 69 Vietnam veterans' ranges of incorporation scores. Measures of esteem and incorporation for eight professions were obtained from 36 veterans who had just completed 10 hr of group counseling and 33 who were just beginning counseling. ANOVA of the ranges of the incorporation scores indicated that high-esteem veterans had higher ranges than low-esteem veterans (p <.05), and suggested that counseled veterans had higher ranges than noncounseled veterans (p ? .10).     

Criteria in lay self-judgment of anger control

The basis of judgment by laypersons in the self-evaluation of difficulties with anger control is examined. Responses to a set of 10 specific criteria of anger control problems and a self-rating of degree of problem were obtained on 190 subjects. The criteria and problem ratings were found to have satisfactory testretest reliability. Stepwise multiple regression analysis showed that certain criteria entered more than others into the self-judgments of anger control problems. Exploratory factor analysis produced three factors, interpreted as Personal Difficulties with Anger, Aggression, and Hostility, which replicated some of the previous research. Implications of the findings for a social constructivist view of self-judgment of anger and aggression and the development of self-report instruments are discussed. Additional studies with other samples are suggested.     

A theory of catharsis

This paper first discusses the history of the idea of catharsis, suggesting that the differences between the advocates of catharsis and its critics may be reconcilable. A definition of emotion is proposed which involves interactions between biological, psychological, and social systems. This definition gives rise to a theory of catharsis which seems to reconcile the claims of the advocates of catharsis with the criticisms that have been made of their claims. The discussion of the theory also suggests methods of testing it. As a preliminary example of one such test, the results of a pilot study of the effects of laughter on tension levels are presented.     

Regional brain activity in dyslexic and control children during reading tasks: Visual probe event-related potentials

Event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by task-irrelevant visual stimuli were recorded from 34 control and 32 dyslexic 10- to 12-year-old boys while they performed silent and oral reading at two levels of difficulty. All subjects were extensively screened for neurological problems, IQ, and sensory acuity. Specific features of the ERPs were affected in amplitude and latency by the experimental variables: group membership, oral vs. silent reading, difficulty level, and recording site (within and between hemispheres). A specific effect of difficulty on the central and parietal ERP was seen in the dyslexics but not the controls. Different patterns of asymmetry were found for the two groups in silent vs. oral reading at midtemporal placements. A marked asymmetry (R > L) was found at the midtemporal region for both groups.     

Motivation and learning: Neurophysiological mechanisms in a “model” system

The neurophysiological mechanisms underlying behavioral motivation and associative learning are described in an invertebrate “model” system, the carnivorous marine mollusc Pleurobranchaea. Feeding motivation can be controlled via nutritional history and is represented centrally in the feeding motor network as a change in the balance of synaptic excitation and inhibition at the level of interneurons that initiate feeding behavior, i.e., feeding “command” interneurons. Associative learning, induced by avoidance conditioning of feeding behavior, manifests identically at the level of the command interneurons, but is distinguished from non-associative motivational changes by processes that occur in identified neurons and pathways presynaptic to the command interneurons. Motivation and learning are therefore linked mechanistically by convergent neurophysiological mechanisms at the level of central neurons that initiate behavior.     

The influence of task variation and maintenance tasks on the learning and affect of autistic children

Analyses of autistic children's learning and affect have begun to consider the role of antecedent variables, including the manner with which tasks are sequenced within instructional sessions. Within the context of a simultaneous-treatments design, this experiment evaluated autistic children's affect and rate of task acquisition under three experimental conditions. The conditions were (1) a constant task condition in which only one acquisition task was presented per session; (2) a varied-acquisition-task condition, in which 10 acquisition tasks were randomly interspersed throughout each session; and (3) a varied-with-maintenance-task condition, which randomly interspersed 5 acquisition tasks and 5 which had been previously acquired. The results showed significantly more efficient learning under the varied-maintenance condition, with no consistent differences separating the other two conditions. In addition, observers' ratings of the children's affect showed that the most positive judgments were produced by the varied-maintenance condition. The varied-acquisition condition was next while the constant task condition always produced the least favorable ratings. These findings are discussed in relation to the literature on massed versus distributed practice, stimulus variation, and success-induced motivation. The implications for upgrading the treatment and education of handicapped children are also reviewed.     

Linguistic meaning related differences in evoked potential topography: English, Swiss-German, and imagined

Functionally different neural populations for processing different categories of word meaníng are suggested by the topography of event-related EEG scale-field distributions. Noun and verb meanings of English and Swiss-German homophones produced differences in anterior-posterior topography during the first 300 to 350 msec of the response. Similar results were found for a degraded-speech stimulus when subjects imagined noun and verb meanings. Anterior—posterior scalp-field differences appeared both in an analysis of the positions of field maximal and minimal values; and in principal component analysis of ERPs.     

Polite responses to polite requests

Indirect requests vary in politeness; for example, Can you tell me where Jordan Hall is? is more polite than Shouldn't you tell me where Jordan Hall is? By one theory, the more the literal meaning of a request implies personal benefits for the listener, within reason, the more polite is the request. This prediction was confirmed in Experiment 1. Responses to indirect requests also vary in politeness. For Can you tell me where Jordan Hall is?, the response Yes, I can — it's up the street is more polite than It's up the street. By an extension of that theory, the more attentive the responder is to all of the requester's meaning, the more polite is the response. This prediction was confirmed in Experiments 2, 3 and 4. From this evidence, we argued that people ordinarily compute both the literal and the indirect meanings of indirect requests. They must if they are to recognize when the speaker is and isn't being polite, and if they are to respond politely, impolitely, or even neutrally.     

Individual differences in procedures for knowledge acquisition from maps

This study investigated the procedures subjects use to acquire knowledge from maps. In Experiment 1, three experienced and five novice map users provided verbal protocols while attempting to learn a map. The protocols suggested four categories of processes that subjects invoked during learning: attention, encoding, evaluation, and control. Good learners differed from poor learners primarily in their techniques for and success at encoding spatial information, their ability to accurately evaluate their learning progress, and their ability to focus attention on unlearned information. An analysis of the performance of experienced map users suggested that learning depended on particular procedures and not on familiarity with the task. In Experiment 2, subjects were instructed to use (a) six of the effective learning procedures from Experiment 1, (b) six procedures unrelated to learning success, or (c) their own techniques. The effective procedures set comprised three techniques for learning spatial information, two techniques for using self-generated feedback to guide subsequent study behaviors, and a procedure for partitioning the map into sections. Subjects using these procedures performed better than subjects in the other groups. In addition, subjects' visual memory ability predicted the magnitude of the performance differential.     

Interest as a predeterminer of the GSR index of the orienting reflex

Participants in the experiment were selected from among the membership of three university recreational clubs, surfing, fishing, and chess. Participants were further restricted to those having an exclusive recreational interest. Sixteen students selected in this manner were shown slides depicting scenes related to each of the three interests as well as unrelated filler slides. Students displayed significantly larger GSRs to slides depicting their recreational interest as compared to the other recreations and the filler slides. Results were interpreted as reflecting the expression of an OR induced by a significant stimulus.