A microgenetic model of paragrammatisms produced by a schizophrenic speaker

A series of papers appearing in Brain and Language ask whether schizophrenic language irregularities can be understood in linguistic terms. This literature is reviewed and the contrary positions of different authors are highlighted. The clinical presentation of a schizophrenic male is described. In a single interview he produced a set of paragrammatical errors which are noteworthy insofar as they indicate sustained epochs of diminished expressivity. In this sense, they differ from schizophasic deviance, which is described by Lecours and Vanier-Clement (Brain and Language, 3, 516-565, 1976) as an enhanced expressivity cooccurring with intact language competence. They are also partially decodable, which distinguishes them from the schizophrenic segments discussed by Chaika. Analyses of the paragrammatisms indicate disruptions at three discrete representational levels. One involves the formation of abstract speaker intentions, while the second organizes syntagms into some serial form, and the third level takes content words belonging to a particular syntagm and positions them in a syntactic frame. A microgenic model of these representational planes is proposed that is based on the theoretical perspective of Brown, as well as Garrett's investigations of normal speech errors. The model is justified insofar as the paragrammatisms indicate "linguistic regressions" back to more "thought-like" linguistic representations. Moreover, a recapitulation of specific linguistic mappings is demonstrated to occur between processing levels. This microgenetic model represents an extension of previous work in aphasiology insofar as it targets combinatorial rather than selectional processes as primary planes of disruption.     

Fluency and eye contact as factors influencing observers' perceptions of stutterers

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of different levels of eye contact and fluency on observers' perceptions of a speaker. One of four videotapes depicting an actor (playing the part of a supervisor) interviewing another actor (who played a subordinate) were shown to 127 college students. The four videotapes represented four different conditions comprising combinations of fluent vs nonfluent speech and normal vs low eye contact. Results indicated that these combinations of fluency and eye contact differentially influence listeners' perceptions of a speaker. Highest ratings were obtained for the fluent-normal eye-contact speaker, with lower ratings for all other conditions. In addition, it was determined that the frequency of eye contact rather than fluency was more strongly related to listeners' perceptions. The clinical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Components of syllogistic reasoning

The present research sought to understand the components of syllogistic reasoning used in a syllogistic evaluation task. In this task, subjects must indicate whether a conclusion such as “Some Yale professors are humbugs” is definitely true, or never true of a set of premises such as “Some humbugs study syllogistic reasoning; some Yale professors study syllogistic reasoning”. A modified form of componential analysis (Sternberg 1977, 1978) was used to decompose the syllogistic evaluation task with abstract content into encoding and encoding plus combination subtasks. The response-choice data from these subtasks were used to provide (a) direct tests of a proposed theory of syllogistic reasoning, and in particular, of its assumptions about sources of error in syllogistic reasoning; and (b) direct inferences regarding the representation of relations between the subject and predicate of the premises as encoded and combined. The results supported a proposed transitive-chain model of syllogistic reasoning.     

Second-order conditioning with diffuse auditory reinforcers in the pigeon

Pigeon subjects were used in five experiments investigating second-order conditioning with visual second-order and diffuse auditory first-order stimuli. Experiment 1 used a discriminative conditioning procedure to demonstrate reliable and substantial second-order conditioning with these stimuli. In Experiments 2 and 3, extinction of the auditory first-order stimulus after second-order conditioning had little effect upon responding to the second-order stimulus, when compared to a stimulus whose reinforcer was maintained. Experiment 4 compared directly the susceptibility of second-order responding to extinction of the first-order reinforcing stimulus as a function of the modality of that reinforcer. When a visual second-order stimulus was paired with a visual reinforcer, and the response to the latter was extinguished, then second-order responding was greatly reduced relative to control levels. In contrast, when that reinforcer was an auditory stimulus, second-order responding was not affected by the current value of the first-order stimulus after conditioning. Finally, in Experiment 5 the auditory stimulus was established as a reinforcer through discriminative-operant training. Following second-order conditioning, extinction of responding to this stimulus again had little impact upon responding to the second-order stimulus with which it had been paired. These results are discussed in terms of previous work on second-order conditioning with rat and pigeon subjects.     

Intervention and sleeper effects: A reply to Clarke and Clarke

The evolution of the concept of “sleeper effects” is traced from the work of C. I. Hovland, A. A. Lumsdaine, and F. D. Sheffield, Experiments on Mass Communication. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1949, to the present time. The concept originally referred to the delayed emergence of attitude change in persuasibility research. It has also been used in developmental investigations, with attendant theoretical problems that have not been fully addressed. These problems are examined, with the recommendation that the social psychologist's sleeper effect should be modified to meet developmental needs and renamed “delayed treatment effects”. Such effects are highly relevant to recent findings from studies of early childhood intervention programs.     

Extending Holland's theory to adult women

The potential of Holland's theory for use in the vocational guidance of adult women depends in part on more validity data with regard to the conceptual meaningfulness of the constructs. This study reports the findings of a correlative analysis between scores on Holland's Vocational Preference Inventory (VPI), which measures the six “styles”, and selected scales on four criterion tests predicted in advance to be related to the VPI. The findings for this sample of adult women indicate strong evidence for the validity of the Intellectual, Conventional and Enterprising “styles”, but questions are raised with regard to the meaningfulness of the Realistic, Social, and Artistic types.     

Reacting to reactance: An Interpersonal interpretation of the need for freedom

This study was designed to investigate the conditions under which the negative consequences of social influence attempts can be mitigated by freedom-affirming interventions. Eighty-eight high school girls received an influence message, presumably written by a co-worker, containing either a threat or a promise. In addition, subjects were or were not given a choice option as to mode of compliance, if they chose to comply with the message. In half the cases, the Interpersonal condition, subjects received their choice/no choice option from their co-worker; in the other half of the cases, the Noninterpersonal condition, subjects were assigned the choice/no choice option by a random event unknown to the influencing agent. As anticipated, in the Interpersonal as compared to the Noninterpersonal condition, (a) threats produced greater compliance when a choice was offered than when it was not, and (b) promises and threats were more equivalent in gaining compliance when a choice was offered than when it was not. These results, which suggest that in a social setting individuals' concerns about freedom are interpersonally motivated, are discussed in terms of their relation to and implications for reactance theory.     

Metaphoric comprehension: Studies in reminding and resembling

The theoretical problems posed by metaphoric comprehension are discussed in the context of experiments on prompted recall. Listeners heard sentences of the form “Topic is (like) Vehicle.” In most cases, a statement of the implicit resemblance (the “ground”) was very effective in prompting recall of its related metaphor. This result could not be attributed to the activation, transfer, or additive combination of pre-existing properties of the topic and vehicle terms or to pre-existing associations between grounds and sentence terms. It is argued that the vehicle domain guides a novel schematization of the topic domain, that the perceived resemblance is a higher-order relation among entities (both explicit and implicit) in each domain, and that this abstract relation constitutes the “functional memory unit.” Prompted recall may begin with recognition of this previously experienced relation.