Selective preparation and time uncertainty.

Discrete two-choice reaction time experiments were performed under two time-uncertainty conditions provided by constant foreperiods of either 5.0 or 0.5 sec. The problem was how to know whether selective preparation may be maintained over time or whether it is a short-term process. Selective preparation of one of the two stimuli was induced through monetary incentive in Experiment 1 and through frequency unbalance in Experiment 4, it was assessed through prediction in Experiments 3 and 4. With all three manipulations the effects of selective preparation and of time uncertainty were found to combine additively. Those results support the idea that selective preparation can be maintained over time. On the other hand, the improvement in reaction time due to a reduction of time uncertainty is achieved by a short-term preparatory adjustment which is not stimulus-specific.     

The effects of ventriloquism on the right-side advantage for verbal material

Subjects were asked to recall one of two simultaneous messages coming from hidden loudspeakers situated either at 90° or at 45° from the median plane to the left and to the right. They were told that the messages were coming from two visible dummy loudspeakers which were also situated either at 90° or at 45°. Pre-stimulus cueing of the side to be recalled was given. Significant right-side advantage was obtained in the 90° real-fictitious condition, not in the other conditions. These results show that right-side advantage can be obtained with presentation over loudspeakers and unilateral recall, and dismiss a purely structural or purely cognitive view of lateral asymmetries in audition. Role of structural and cognitive factors is discussed.     

On putting apples into bottles — A problem of polysemy

An experiment was designed in such a manner that a sentence could be recalled given a certain cue only if the subject's encoding of the sentence included details and involved distinctions in the senses of words which could not have been part of the correct dictionary readings for these words. The most plausible interpretation of the results is that comprehension of a sentence entails constructing a particularized and elaborated mental representation, and that this process depends more heavily on knowledge of the world and analysis of context than is generally appreciated. It is claimed that existing associative or semantic network theories would be strained to accommodate the data.     

Effects of relative nurturance and social power on observational learning and imitation

Preschool children observed two models, one of whom (controller of resources) controlled rewards dispensed to the child and to the other model (rival consumer of resources). The nurturance of the controller was varied in terms of his relative generosity towards the subject and rival consumer. Controllers were imitated to a greater extent than consumers only when the controller had been more nurturant to the child than to the rival consumer. Imitation of the controller and consumer were affected differently by the various conditions of nurturance, but children's learning of each model's behaviors were affected similarly by the conditions. The learning and imitative performance of each model's behaviors were uncorrelated, and imitation of one model did not correlate with imitation of the other. However, the learning of the two models' behaviors was highly correlated.     

Vocational interest orientations: A comparison of rural university and junior college freshmen

The increase in junior colleges imposed new demands on counselors. Some areas to be investigated are the differences in counseling programs between junior colleges and universities; the differences in student bodies; and the importance of vocational guidance. This study addresses itself to elements of those areas.Male and female samples were drawn from two rural educational institutions: a four year university and a junior college. Differences in vocational interest orientations were explored through the nonoccupational scales of the Strong Vocational Interest Blank (SVIB). For males significant differences were found on the academic achievement, diversity of interest, managerial orientation, and occupational level scales. Females differed on the diversity of interest scales.     

Transferability of a role-oriented interest Inventory from men to women in church-related occupations

This study considers the feasibility of using the Inventory of Religious Activities of Interests and the extensive data for men associated therewith in the counseling of women who may be interested in entering occupations related to the Protestant Church. Mean scores on the ten scales of the Inventory for men and women in nine categories of church-related occupations and for the total sex groups were compared in respect to similarity of shape of mean score profile and in respect to the level of mean scores. In addition, the ability of the Inventory to differentiate among groups (11 for women; 10 for men) for the sexes separately was considered. The results suggest that while men and women as total groups appear to differ in their interests as measured by the IRAI, the data for men and women in the respective specialties are sufficiently similar in respect to profile shape and mean score level to justify the use of the Inventory and the normative data for men in the counseling of women. The results suggest the Inventory differentiates among subgroups of men more effectively than it does among subgroups of women. But there are data to suggest that this difference may be more apparent than real.     

Acoustic memory and the perception of speech

The nature of acoustic memory and its relationship to the categorizing process in speech perception is investigated in three experiments on the serial recall of lists of syllables. The first study confirms previous reports that sequences comprising the syllables, bah, dah, and gah show neither enhanced retention when presented auditorily rather than visually, nor a recency effect—both occurred with sequences in which vowel sounds differed (bee, bih, boo). This was found not to be a simple vowel-consonant difference since acoustic memory effects did occur with consonant sequences that were acoustically more discriminable (sha, ma, ga and ash, am, ag). Further experiments used the stimulus suffix effect to provide evidence of acoustic memory, and showed (1), increasing the acoustic similarity of the set grossly impairs acoustic memory effects for vowels as well as consonants, and (2) such memory effects are no greater for steady-state vowels than for continuously changing diphthongs. It is concluded that the usefulness of the information that can be retrieved from acoustic memory depends on the acoustic similarity of the items in the list rather than on their phonetic class or whether or not they have “encoded” acoustic cues. These results question whether there is any psychological evidence for “encoded” speech sounds being categorized in ways different from other speech sounds.     

Visual placing by human infants

Prior research has not agreed that extension of the arms by the human infant on approach to a surface is a visual response. In this research, human infants 8 to 11-months-old extended their arms on approach to a patterned surface covered with glass. The arms did not extend to a patterned surface 14 in. below the glass. Thus, the response is a visual, not a vestibular, proprioceptive one. Ambiguity of the visual stimulus that elicits the response is shown by the finding that the infants also extended their arms almost as much to a gray surface just beneath the glass as they did to the patterned one.     

Helplessness,stress level,and the coronary-prone behavior pattern

Two experiments were conducted to examine the relationship between stress level and learned helplessness in human subjects. Experiment I subjected subjects to loud or moderate noise in order to induce differential stress. Half of the subjects within each stress group were unable to escape from a series of noise bursts, whereas the other half could terminate each burst by manipulating appropriate switches. After the pretreatment series, the same noise was again delivered to subjects, all of whom could now escape or avoid noise by making an appropriate response on a shuttle box. Inescapable (helplessness) pretreatment interfered with escape learning in the second (test) phase of the study under both levels of stress. Experiment II was a partial replication of the first study using only loud noise. The interference effect during test trials was greater than in the first study. In addition to these findings, measures of a coronary-prone behavior pattern were related to differential susceptibility to the interference effect under both high stress and moderate stress conditions. These results were interpreted in terms of differing perceptions of threat imposed by lack of environmental control.     

Difference measurement and simple scalability with restricted solvability

Let A, B be two sets, with B ? A × A, and ≤ a binary relation on B. The problem analyzed here is that of the existence of a mapping u: A → R, satisfying:

$\text{(a,b) ? (}\text{a}\text{?}\text{,}\text{b}\text{?}\text{)}\text{iff}\text{∨∧ μ(b) ? μ(a) ? μ(}\text{b}\text{?}\text{) ? μ(}\text{a}\text{?}\text{)}$

whenever (a, b), (a′, b′) ∈ B. In earlier discussions of this problem, it is usually assumed that B is connected on A. Here, we only assume that B satisfies a certain convexity property. The resulting system provides an appropriate axiomatization of Fechner's scaling procedures. The independence of axioms is discussed. A more general representation is also analyzed:

$\text{(a,b) ? (}\text{a}\text{?}\text{,}\text{b}\text{?}\text{)}\text{iff}\text{∨∧ F[μ(b), μ(a)] ? F[μ}\text{b}\text{?}\text{]}$

, where F is strictly increasing in the first argument, and strictly decreasing in the second. Sufficient conditions are presented, and a proof of the representation theorem is given.