The effect of anxiety,reinforcement, and intelligence on the learning of a difficult task

The effects of anxiety, reinforcement, and intelligence were studied on the learning of a difficult task (paired associates with 1% association values) in 252 subjects studying in class IX in Chandigarh schools (mean age, 14.7 years). A 2 × 3 × 3 factorial design was used with two anxiety groups (high and low), three reinforcement conditions (praise, reproof, and praise + reproof), and three levels of intelligence (high, middle, and low). In general, the results were in line with the Sarasonian theoretical framework that anxiety shows its debilitating effects under certain conditions, but not all. At upper levels of intelligence, neither anxiety nor reinforcement was found significant. At lower levels of intelligence, anxiety was found to interfere with learning under all the reinforcement conditions. It was found further that the most affected group was the middle intelligencehigh anxiety group. This group performed better under praise than under praise + reproof and reproof alone.     

Bilateral tachistoscopic word perception of stutterers and normal subjects

Bilateral tachistoscopic procedures were utilized to investigate the visual half-field preferences of 15 stutterers and a group of 15 normal controls. Statistical analyses indicated a right visual half-field preference for the control group. In contrast, a significant visual half-field preference was not revealed for the stuttering group. However, further analysis revealed that a significantly larger proportion of stutterers, compared to controls, demonstrated a left visual half-field preference. Results indicated reversed cerebral processing for the stuttering group as compared with the control group.     

Extinction of the context and latent inhibition

The hypothesis that latent inhibition could be reduced by extinguishing the experimental context, that is, exposing the rats to the context between exposure to the conditional stimulus (CS) and conditioning, was tested. All experiments used the conditioned emotional response procedure. In Experiment 1, extinction was not effective when the animals were exposed to the clicker 40 times off the baseline of responding for food and when the clicker CS was partially reinforced with shocks during the test phase. In Experiments 2 and 3, latent inhibition could be reduced by extinction if the animals were exposed to the CS 24 or 16 times on-baseline, and if continuous reinforcement was used during the test. In Experiments 4, 5, and 6, we attempted to determine which variable was responsible for the discrepant results. In Experiment 4, extinction was effective with 20 or 40 on-baseline exposures to the CS, using continuous reinforcement during the test. In Experiment 5, extinction was not effective with exposure on- or off-baseline, using 24 exposures and partial reinforcement. Finally, in Experiment 6, extinction reduced latent inhibition using continuous, but not partial, reinforcement with 40 exposures off-baseline. From these results, we concluded that Wagner's model of habituation was not sufficient to account for latent inhibition and that a hybrid model, using both associative and cognitive representational processes, was necessary.     

A conditional logit model of collegiate major selection

The choice of a major by a college student is viewed as depending upon the quantity of various outputs (such as income and status) each major provides and the taste structure of the student for these outputs. Tradeoffs in outputs occur so that high status may overcome low-income potential in the occupation into which the major provides entry. Different taste structures among students mean tradeoffs occur at different rates, so that taste structues are best associated with student major selection in a probability sense. Changes in the probability of selecting a collegiate major are associated with changes in student taste structures via a conditional logit model. The taste structure of a student is hypothesized to depend upon the environment in which the student was raised and the environment in which the student now lives. The relationship between environment and taste is also best stated in a probability sense and a second logit model is used to describe this relationship. Estimation of the two logit models, using survey data, attempts to quantify the hypothesized route from environment to taste structure to major selection for entry into an occupation. An example of this route is the finding that women students place more importance on obtaining high income than do men students and the greater the importance of high income, the lower the probability of selecting an education major, the greater the probability of selecting a humanities or social science major. Other results of estimation are presented and discussed.     

Career maturity aspects of the Kuder Occupational Interest Survey

The Kuder Occupational Interest Survey (1979) (KOIS) is used in counseling services as an aid in career counseling, but the KOIS does not have a measure of career maturity. The purpose of this study was to determine if selected scores from the KOIS could be indicative of client career maturity. The data for each subject included three scores from the KOIS and one measure of career maturity. The three scores from the KOIS included the highest Occupation score, the highest College Major score, and either the Father score for male subjects or the Mother score for female subjects. Career maturity was assessed with the Career Maturity Inventory Attitude Scale (1973) (CMI). The three scores from the KOIS were correlated with the score from the CMI to determine the relationship between the KOIS and career maturity. t tests were used to test for significant differences between men and women on the four measures. Significant correlations were found between the KOIS scores and career maturity, supporting the statements in the KOIS manual regarding the relationship between high KOIS scores and maturity. There was no significant difference between females and males on the CMI, Occupation, or College Major scores, but females scored significantly higher on the Mother scale than males did on the Father scale. Implications for career counseling were discussed.     

Attitude accessibility,attitude-behavior consistency,and the strength of the object-evaluation association

Two experiments were conducted in order to examine the accessibility of attitudes from memory as a function of the manner of attitude formation. The findings of the first experiment indicated that subjects could respond more quickly in a response-time task to inquiries about their attitudes when the attitudes were based upon direct behavioral experience with the attitude objects than when they were based upon nonbehavioral experience. It was suggested that, relative to indirect experience, behavioral experience may facilitate the attitude formation process and increase attitude accessibility once the attitude is formed. A second experiment found support for both of these notions. Two additional experiments indicated that repeated association of the attitude object and the attitudinal evaluation enhanced both attitude accessibility and attitude-behavior consistency. It was suggested that the strength of the object-evaluation association is a critical determinant of accessibility, which, in turn, acts as a central factor in the process by which attitudes affect later behavior. It was further suggested that the manner of attitude formation affects attitude-behavior consistency because direct experience produces a stronger object-evaluation association and, hence, a more accessible attitude than does indirect experience.     

The acquisition of prenominal modifier sequences

This paper presents a study of children's interpretations of prenominal modifier sequences like the one in ‘the second green ball’. In such phrases the modifier ‘second’ has scope over the rest of the phrase. It is shown that children misinterpret these phrases in such a way that it appears that they give ‘second’ scope only over the head noun of the phrase. A series of six experiments, all designed to test various hypotheses about the motivating factors behind this misinterpretation is described. Experiments 1 and 2 constitute a replication and extension of the work in this area originally done by Roeper (1972). Experiment 3 tests a set of hypotheses about the influence of certain syntactic variables in conditioning the children's misinterpretations. Experiment 4 is an attempt to check an hypothesis about the semantic complexity of phrases like ‘the second green ball’. Experiments 5 and 6 test the children's sensitivity to ordering constraints in different kinds of prenominal modifier sequences. The results are presented in Section 3 and discussed in Section 4. It is argued that the children's misinterpretations of the phrases come about because of their tendency to be conservative about the amount of hierarchically organized structure they will postulate in the absence of evidence that such structure is needed.     

Automatic access of the meanings of ambiguous words in context: Some limitations of knowledge-based processing

Five experiments are described on the processing of ambiguous words in sentences. Two classes of ambiguous words (noun-noun and noun-verb) and two types of context (priming and nonpriming) were investigated using a variable stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) priming paradigm. Noun-noun ambiguities have two semantically unrelated readings that are nouns (e.g., PEN, ORGAN); noun-verb ambiguities have both noun and verb readings that are unrelated (e.g., TIRE, WATCH). Priming contexts contain a word highly semantically or associatively related to one meaning of the ambiguous word; nonpriming contexts favor one meaning of the word through other types of information (e.g., syntactic or pragmatic). In nonpriming contexts, subjects consistently access multiple meanings of words and select one reading within 200 msec. Lexical priming differentially affects the processing of subsequent noun-noun and noun-verb ambiguities, yielding selective access of meaning only in the former case. The results suggest that meaning access is an automatic process which is unaffected by knowledge-based (“top-down”) processing. Whether selective or multiple access of meaning is observed largely depends on the structure of the ambiguous word, not the nature of the context.