A different form of agraphia: Syntactic writing errors in patients with motor speech and movement disorders

Three patients are described who displayed syntactic writing errors in combination with a motor speech disturbance and impaired motor limb function. Two of the patients had bulbar amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Agraphia appeared when verbal communication was no longer possible. Autopsy in one patient disclosed only lesions consistent with ALS. The third patient had palilalia and chorea and, although not aphasic, his written language showed persistent syntactic errors. We hypothesize that the agraphia in these patients occurred because of the combination of disordered feedback from the motor speech apparatus and limbs.     

Infants' discrimination of internal and external pattern elements

Human infants' discrimination of changes in internal and external elements of compound visual patterns was investigated in four experiments employing a familiarization-novelty paradigm in which visual reinforcing patterns were presented contingent upon rate of high-amplitude nonnutritive sucking. In Experiment 1, 4-month infants discriminated changes in the shape of internal, external and both internal and external figures. One-month infants discriminated external changes in both internal and external figures, but failed to show reliable response recovery when only internal figures were changed. Experiments 2 and 3 failed to explain the 1-month results on the basis of poor resolution of internal figures by showing comparable discrimination of small and large singly-presented figures and by failing to find improved internal discrimination with large separation between internal and external figures. In Experiment 4, 1-month infants showed response recovery to figure additions made adjacent to the initial figure, but not to internal additions. The results are interpreted in terms of attentiveness by young infants to external pattern elements and may indicate early processing of figure-ground information. The developmental differences observed suggest an increased breadth of attention to pattern elements.     

Effect of sample presentation time on long-delay matching in the pigeon

The effect of sample stimulus presentation time on long-delay matching in highly practiced pigeons was investigated. The birds were found capable of above chance matching performance at a delay of 60 sec provided the sample stimulus was presented for 4 sec or longer. Matching accuracy increased as a negatively accelerated function of sample stimulus presentation time and decreased as a negatively accelerated function of time since the termination of the sample. The rate of forgetting was found to be independent of sample stimulus presentation time. The data were inconsistent with a temporal discrimination interpretation of the effect of presentation time on delayed matching. The data were interpreted as supporting a simple trace strength and decay model of pigeon delayed matching.     

Group caution at the race track

McCauley, Stitt, Woods and Lipton's finding that groups were more conservative than individuals when betting at a race track has been criticized on statistical and methodological grounds. The present study which does not suffer the shortcomings for which McCauley et al. were legitimately criticized does, nonetheless, sustain their general results and conclusions. Groups were significantly more cautious than individuals when wagering $2.00 on a horse race.     

Role and justice considerations in the attribution of responsibility to a rape victim

This study was designed to assess the extent to which social role and “just world” considerations would affect perceptions and attributions of responsibility to a rape victim. The rape victim was either a topless-bottomless dancer, a social worker, or a Catholic nun, and she was either acquainted or unacquainted with her assailant. In the acquainted condition, the dancer was attributed the greatest and the nun the least amount of responsibility, indicating that social role factors can govern the range of attributional judgments which might be made in any given instance. However, unacquainted victims were ascribed more responsibility for the rape than were acquainted victims, a difference which was significant when the victim was the nun. The latter findings are discussed in terms of Lerner's just world hypothesis. Significant sex differences were found in subjects' perceptions of and responses to the rape incident and, contrary to earlier findings, no relationship was found between victim attractiveness and punitiveness toward the wrongdoer.     

Maintenance of Relationship and Individual Functioning Gains Following Online Relationship Programs for Low‐Income Couples

Initial evidence suggests that gains in relationship functioning from brief, web‐based programs are maintained through one year following the intervention; however, whether these results generalize to a low‐income sample is unclear. Furthermore, previous research from in‐person couple therapy suggests there may be different shapes of maintenance slopes for behavioral versus acceptance‐based techniques. This study contacted 668 individuals who enrolled in online behavioral (ePREP) or acceptance‐based (OurRelationship) programs one year following completion of the program. Multilevel modeling was used to examine linear and quadratic rates of change in the year following the online intervention as well as total amount of change from pretreatment to 12‐month follow‐up for both relationship and individual functioning. The majority of couples who responded continued to be in a relationship with the same partner (68.3%). Examinations of relationship functioning indicated couples in both programs maintained their gains over follow‐up (i.e., no significant linear or quadratic changes), with medium‐to‐large within‐group effect sizes from pre‐ to one‐year follow‐up. There were no significant differences in relationship outcomes between OurRelationship and ePREP. Similarly, examinations of individual functioning outcomes indicated couples maintained their gains over follow‐up or continued to improve. In total, couples experienced small‐to‐medium within‐group effect sizes from pretreatment to one‐year follow‐up, with larger effects for individuals who were initially distressed. These results suggest that online programs create lasting change for low‐income couples in relationship and individual functioning, with minimal differences between behavioral and acceptance‐based orientations.     

Choosing what to choose from: Preference for inclusion over exclusion when constructing consideration sets from large choice sets

Decision making is a two‐stage process, consisting of, first, consideration set construction and then final choice. Decision makers can form a consideration set from a choice set using one of two strategies: including the options they wish to further consider or excluding those they do not wish to further consider. The authors propose that decision makers have a relative preference for an inclusion (vs. exclusion) strategy when choosing from large choice sets and that this preference is driven primarily by a lay belief that inclusion requires less effort than exclusion, particularly in large choice sets. Study 1 demonstrates that decision makers prefer using an inclusion (vs. exclusion) strategy when faced with large choice sets. Study 2 replicates the effect of choice set size on preference for consideration set construction strategy and demonstrates that the belief that exclusion is more effortful mediates the relative preference for inclusion in large choice sets. Studies 3 and 4 further support the importance of perceived effort, demonstrating a greater preference for inclusion in large choice sets when decision makers are primed to think about effort (vs. accuracy; Study 3) and when the choice set is perceived as requiring more effort because of more information being presented about each alternative (vs. more alternatives in the choice set; Study 4). Finally, Study 5 manipulates consideration set construction strategy, showing that using inclusion (vs. exclusion) in large choice sets leads to smaller consideration sets, greater confidence in the decision process, and a higher quality consideration set.