Components of geometric analogy solution

Geometric analogy solution was investigated as a function of systematic variations in the information structure of individual items. Latency data from the verification of true and false items indicated that individuals decompose figural patterns in a way that represents a sequential determination of the various elements that need to be isolated. They also appear to identify and evaluate the transformations applied to elements in a way that represents a sequential determination of the separate or successive transformations that fully specify an item rule. Analysis and evaluation of transformations took more time than element analysis and was the primary source of errors. The combined effects of element and transformation processing violated a simple additive model and the best fitting functions suggested that nonadditive increases in solution latency and error rates were due to working memory limitations associated with the representation and manipulation of item features at high levels of rule complexity. Correlational data also indicated that these factors partially account for individual differences in performance on psychometric tests. The latency and error data for true and false items are used to develop a general theoretical system that incorporates assumptions about the form of item representation, working memory factors, and processing components and strategies in analogical reasoning tasks.     

What makes triangles point: Local and global effects in configurations of ambiguous triangles

Perceived pointing of ambiguous triangles was investigated in three experiments. The results show that the probability of seeing an equilateral triangle point in a given direction is strongly influenced by (a) the direction of the ambiguous alternatives, (b) the orientational characteristics of the configuration of elements surrounding the triangle, and (c) the shape of the surrounding elements. These findings are interpreted as supporting the hypothesis that perceived pointing is determined by perceptual reference frames induced at multiple levels of globality: one for the general visual field, one for the entire configuration, and one for the local elements of the configuration.     

Predicting Personality Stability Across the Life Span: The Role of Competence and Work and Family Commitments

Longitudinal studies suggest modest continuity in personality from adolescence to early adulthood and greater continuity over successive periods during the adult years. However, individual differences in personality stability do exist. We discuss potential sources of personality change, especially as they relate to development, role assumption and commitment, and loss of roles and commitments. Then, using data from the Intergenerational Studies, we employ measures of competence and of work and family commitments, assessed both in high school and adulthood, to predict personality stability from high school to early and late adulthood. Results indicate that personality stability can be successfully predicted with such measures. Greater personality stability is found for those determined to be more planfully competent, but additional family and work role variables also increase predictive power, in some instances. Using two alternate measures of competence—one from the California Q-sort and the other from the California Psychological Inventory—we replicated the finding that men with more disorderly careers show less personality stability, and that women who have experienced more divorces show less personality stability.     

The California Verbal Learning Test: Psychometric characteristics and clinical application

The California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT) is a popular clinical and research test that claims to measure key constructs in cogntive psychology such as repetition learning, serial position effects, semantic organization, intrusion, and proactive inteference. The psychometric characteristics of the CVLT are reviewed and related to the test's clinical utility. The utility of the CVLT is shown to be limited by its poor standardization and inlated norms. Further, the validity is limited because the CVLT uses multiple trials whereas the constructs it purports to the CVLT and guidelines for its clinical use. It concludes that if the limitations of the CVLT are recognized, it can still make a usefull contribution to the clinical assessment of verbal learning and memory.     

Attention to eye contact opportunity and facial motion by three-month-old infants

Thirty-two 3-month-old infants participated in two experiments showing color videotapes of facial stimuli in a paired comparison format. In Experiment 1, the experimenter, serving as the stimulus, looked either directly at the infant or averted his gaze to the side; the face was presented either still or in motion. Eye contact opportunity had no effect while motion of the head was an effective attractor of visual fixation. In Experiment 2, the amount of available eye contact opportunity was parametrically varied by occluding the eyes with different patterns of blinking, each at the same rate. The no-motion 100% eye contact available condition received less attention than the three blinking stimuli, which were all equally attended to, though they varied with respect to the amount of eye contact opportunity they afforded. The contrast in effect of eye contact availability and rather subtle stimulus motion would imply that 3-month-old infants are comparatively insensitive to being the object of another's visual regard.     

The discourse of thought-disordered schizophrenic children

The conversations of two thought-disordered schizophrenic children and two age- and sex-matched normal children were studied in three different contexts. Cohesive relations and retrieval categories were analyzed. The thought-disordered schizophrenic and normal children demonstrated divergent patterns of discourse. These patterns closely paralleled those previously reported for adults by S. Rochester and J. R. Martin (1979, Crazy talk: A study of the discourse of schizophrenic speakers, New York: Plenum) for schizophrenic and normal adults, although some discrepancies were also observed. Recommendations for future research are offered.     

Identification of language-impaired children on the basis of rapid perception and production skills

Discriminant function analysis was used to determine whether performance on temporal perception and production tasks alone could correctly classify children as language-impaired or normal. The analysis identified six variables, all of which assessed temporal perceptual and production abilities, which taken in combination correctly classified 98% of participating subjects. None of these variables assess the higher-level linguistic abilities (semantic, syntactic, pragmatic) that have classically been considered to be deficient in language-impaired children, or have been used to diagnose them clinically.     

The patterning of agonistic behaviors among friends and acquaintances in programs for emotionally disturbed children

Peer conflicts in two age groups (toddler and preschool) of emotionally disturbed children were examined for developmental trends and for changes over time in an intervention program. Children were observed in their peer groups six times over the course of a year. Prosocial and agonistic social behaviors were coded in a continuous coding observational procedure. Friendship pairs were identified from the observational records and validated by teacher reports. It was hypothesized that agonistic responses to both prosocial and agonistic bids would decrease over time and that friendships would facilitate conflict resolution and conflict avoidance in the emotionally disturbed children. Agonistic responses to agonistic bids decreased over time for all children. Older acquaintances responded to prosocial bids with agonistic responses. Friendship relationships facilitated conflict resolution and avoidance skills in preschool-age but not toddler-age friends. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for intervention.     

Processes of verbal memory failure in Alzheimer-type dementia

Multiple aspects of verbal learning and memory performance in mild as compared to moderate Alzheimer-type dementia (ATD) were studied with the Buschke selective reminding paradigm. Results show that (1) both groups of ATD subjects depend less on long-term memory (LTM) and more on short-term memory (STM) relative to elderly control subjects, (2) mild ATD subjects show less LTM encoding than moderate ATD subjects, (3) moderate ATD subjects retrieve a smaller portion of the items presumed to be encoded into LTM than do mild ATD subjects, and (4) high-imagery words increase LTM encoding and retrieval as compared to low-imagery words for moderate ATD subjects only. These results are explained by the inability of ATD subjects to attend to more than one component of the list-learning task, in conjunction with differences in the deployment of attention between mild and moderate ATD subjects.