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.     

A probe trial procedure for the study of children's discrimination learning and transfer

A discrimination reversal problem was presented to 192 children varying in age from 3 to 5 years. At the end of both the initial learning and transfer trials, probe trials were introduced to ascertain the response rule describing children's choices. Results were analyzed in terms of a binary division of the children according to their responses to the probe stimuli; children who responded errorlessly (concept responders) were contrasted with children who made errors on the probes (instance responders). Using this criterion, it was found that many children transferred in a way different from the way they learned the initial problem. There was no difference in the proportion of younger and older children responding conceptually to the original problem, but older children were more likely to transfer conceptually when standard geometric blocks were used as stimuli. Future studies must consider the possiblity that learning and transfer may be accomplished by different processes whose application differs with age, the nature of the stimuli, and the stage of training.     

Component processes of an overt rehearsal strategy in young children

The locus of facilitation due to rehearsal was investigated in three experiments with first-grade children. Several different overt acquisition strategies in a four-item sequential memory task were compared, including ordered repetition, item repetition, item labeling, and free strategy conditions. Experiment 1 showed that ordered repetition yields most of the facilitation due to rehearsal, and Experiment 2 demonstrated that the facilitation cannot be attributed to spaced practice. Experiment 3 showed that retrieval practice during study may improve memory performance but that the facilitation due to ordered repetition and retrieval practice is relatively short term. Mere repetition and labeling were not found to be significant component processes of rehearsal in any of the experiments. These results were discussed in terms of their relevance to rehearsal training studies and a differentiation between maintenance and elaborative rehearsal.     

Language acquisition following hemidecortication: Linguistic superiority of the left over the right hemisphere

The language development of three 9- and 10-year-old children possessing only a right or a left hemisphere was studied. Surgical removal of one brain half antedated the beginning of speech, so each child has acquired speech and language with only one hemisphere. Different configurations of language skill have developed in the two isolated hemispheres: phonemic and semantic abilities are similarly developed but syntactic competence has been asymmetrically acquired. In relation to the left, the right brain half is deficient in understanding auditory language, especially when meaning is conveyed by syntactic diversity; detecting and correcting errors of surface syntactic structure; repeating stylistically permuted sentences; producing tag questions which match the grammatical features of a heard statement; determining sentence implication; integrating semantic and syntactic information to replace missing pronouns; and performing judgments of word interrelationships in sentences. Language development in an isolated right hemisphere, even under seizure-free conditions, results in incomplete language acquisition.     

Hemispheric differences in the voluntary inhibition of movement

Twenty normal, twenty left-, and fifteen right-brain injured subjects, all right-handed, were assigned a sequence of voluntary inhibition of 23 movements. The inhibition lapse was recorded. Statistical analyses indicated a high performance in the normal and a deficient performance in left-brain injured subjects, no influence of the neurological symptoms on groups' achievement, a handicap in the subjects affected by a frontal lesion in the right brain, a hierarchical clustering of items varying according to the groups, and an organ-group interaction.     

Evidence for differentiation of right hemisphere visual-perceptual functions

Performance on tasks sensitive to right hemisphere dysfunction (facial discrimination and perceptual closure) are reported in eight patients with right hemisphere lesions. Patients demonstrated an apparent double dissociation of performance on the two measures. Site-by-task specificity for the closure task was strongly suggested. Implications for right hemisphere organization and underlying psychological processes are considered.     

The relationship between expressed social fears and assertiveness and its treatment implications

Behavior therapists have speculated about the relationship between social fears or social anxieties and lack of assertive behavior. Wolpe (1958) perhaps most clearly suggested such a relationship. “If he [the patient] has been ineffectual in such situations—unable, for instance, to return a faulty garment—I explain how unadaptive fears are at the bottom of this ineffectualness. … p. 116.” Wolpe further assumed that engaging in assertive behavior reciprocally inhibited fear in these same social situations and that assertive responses can be programmed for use in overcoming these fears.In later writings (Wolpe. 1969; Wolpe and Lazarus, 1966) Wolpe seems to have broadened his position concerning the cause of non-assertive behavior. Specifically, he now allows that an individual also may be non-assertive, “… not because of anxiety but because they have never had the opportunity of acquiring the necessary habits. p. 40” (Wolpe and Lazarus, 1966). For these individuals direct efforts in assertive training such as behavior rehearsal, operant conditioning or direct instruction are in order. For these individuals whose lack of assertiveness is due to a ‘phobic reaction’ or strong extrinsic fears, systematic desensitization is recommended in addition to assertive training.Despite this apparent change in position, the intuitively appealing notion that the more socially fearful an individual is the more non-assertive he is likely to be has not received the empirical attention it deserves. Rathus (1973) seems to have provided some indirect evidence pertaining to the relationship between social fears and assertiveness. In the context of evaluating the efficacy of an assertive training method he administered both the 100-item Temple Fear Survey Inventory (TFSI) (Braun and Reynolds, 1969) and the Rathus Assertiveness Schedule (RAS) (Rathus, 1973) to groups of female students receiving either assertive training, a placebo treatment or no treatment. He found that at post-test the assertive training group scored significantly higher than either the placebo or no treatment groups on the RAS and that there were no significant differences in post-test Full Scale TSFI Scores. Fear of Social Criticism Factor Scores or Fear of Social Incompetence Factor Scores although in each case the mean changes toward less fear were greater for the group receiving assertive training. This finding gives little support to the reciprocal relationship between social fears and assertiveness. What is needed is a direct determination of the degree to which social fears and assertiveness are related in a sizeable sample of subjects.