Genetic mediation of sex differences in horizontality: A rejoinder

Neither M. G. McGee (Developmental Review, 1981, 1, 289–295) nor M. J. Allen, M. A. Wittig, and K. Butler (Developmental Review, 1981, 1, 284–288) suggest any alternative explanation for our finding that water-level performance appears to have an X-linked genetic basis. The power calculations of Allen et al. are found to be faulty, and McGee confuses the hypothesis we tested with a weaker hypothesis. Although the X-linked genetic model is not an adequate model of water-level performance the water-level data fit the X-linked model far better than color blindness and HCN data McGee presents as exemplars of X-linked characteristics.     

Causal patterns related to post high school employment satisfaction

A linear recursive path model was developed and evaluated using a combined male and female sample, and separate male and female samples in an attempt to identify causal relationships of in-school student characteristics to satisfaction in post high school employment. The statistical methodology used was Path Analysis. A total of ten student characteristic variables were used in the model. The findings indicate that overall job satisfaction is related to variables which are associated with the affective domain. These variables are: Occupational Values-Interest and Satisfaction and Salary, and Vocational Maturity. Overall, employment satisfaction was twice as predictable for the female sample as it was for the combined sample and it was not at all predictable for the male sample.     

Fear decrement to anxiety hierarchy items—Effects of stimulus intensity

The effects of hierarchy item intensity and duration of presentation on intra-item fear decrement were assessed with regard to systematic desensitization. Forty-eight color slides of snakes were scaled and ranked for anxiety value with the psychophysical technique of magnitude estimation by 30 female snake phobics using two response methods: verbal report and a non-verbal report instrument, the hand dynamometer. Seven test slides, spanning the scale range, were shown for 257 sec to 42 additional subjects who rated their fear level on 10 separate occasions using the hand dynamometer and verbal report. For all slides significant fear decrement occurred as a function of duration and the fear decrement across time was greater for slides of higher intensity. Negative exponential functions with similar slopes were found to fit the data for each of the slides, indicating that for each slide the same percentage of the total amount of fear decrement was lost per unit of time. The implications of these results and techniques are discussed for desensitization theory, research and therapeutic procedure.     

Incentive shift in the rat following training to resist punishment

An incentive shift paradigm was used to test for the similarity of fear and frustration. In Experiment 1, rats trained to resist electric shock punishment showed neither a negative contrast effect nor any performance decrement when reward was shifted from 10 to one pellet. Experiment 2 replicated the basic findings of Experiment 1, but also showed that punishment training did not influence the magnitude of performance shift for animals receiving increases in reward magnitude. Finally, Experiment 3 additionally found that rats sensitized to punishment showed an increase in negative contrast effect. These results support the hypothesized functional similarity between conditioned fear and conditioned frustration with learned persistence or sensitivity to one generalizing to the other as suggested by Amsel's (1972) theory of persistence.     

Students' perceptions of personality needs and environmental press as a function of program separation

A sample of 1,877 high school seniors completed the Activities Index and High School Characteristics Index. The student responses were used to identify personality needs and environmental press differences across program and degree of program separation variables.It was concluded that: (1) College preparatory students perceived high personality needs for intellectual endeavors, while vocational students had needs for the tangible and concrete. (2) The personality differences across degrees of program separation suggested the physical proximity of the two program groups affected students' interpersonal relationships. (3) Several of the environmental press were exactly opposite the students' perceived personality needs. (4) The nonsignificant needs-press relationships suggested that high school environments were not facilitating the personality needs of students. (5) Comprehensive high schools seemed the most viable administrative configuration for servicing the diverse needs of today's high school students.     

Ambiguity of acceptance,social desirability,and dating choice

Male subjects differing in social desirability (likableness, physical attractiveness) chose a date from an array of females of three levels of physical attractiveness. Choices were made under two conditions: one where acceptance was assured regardless of whom subject chose; the other where acceptance was left ambiguous. The findings were as follows: (a) subjects selected a more physically attractive female when assured of acceptance than when acceptance was left ambiguous; (b) subjects estimated that highly physically attractive females were less likely to accept them as a date than were either moderately physically attractive or physically unattractive females; (c) subjects' self-ratings of their likableness were not related to the physical attractiveness of their choices under either choice condition nor to their estimates of their chances that the females would accept them as a date; and (d) subjects' self-evaluated physical attractiveness, although unrelated to the physical attractiveness of the subjects' choices, did relate to subjects' estimates of their chances of acceptance. Highly physically attractive subjects estimated their chances of acceptance as better than did subjects who considered themselves low in physical attractiveness. The implications of the findings for the “matching hypothesis” are discussed.     

Finite automata and S−R models

Suppes (1969, Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 6) apparently proved that any finite automaton could be mimicked by the asymptotic behavior of a stimulussampling S?R model, broadly implying that cognitive theory could be reduced to S?R theory. Here it is shown that the finite automata used by Suppes are more restricted and less powerful than finite automata in general. Furthermore, the S?R models proposed by Suppes are limited to producing the behavior of only these restricted automata, and cannot mimic all finite automata. Hence, the formal claim that S?R models are adequate to produce all behaviors obtainable from finite automata, and the informal claim that cognitive theory reduces to S?R theory, do not follow from Suppes's (1969) result. Some alternative S?R models and their problems are also briefly discussed.     

Reconstruction from the mental image

In three experiments young children were asked to reconstruct an array of objects after they had imagined its appearance following either a rotation of the array or a change in their own position (Huttenlocher & Presson, 1973). In reconstructing arrays, subjects first positioned that object which would be most prominent to an observer following the imagined transformation. Surprisingly, this occurred even when subjects made an egocentric error by reconstructing a copy of the original array. Hence young children, although apparently egocentric, can imagine themselves in a new position with a new perspective. The mental operations which underlie imagined spatial transformations are discussed in light of the results.     

Learned helplessness,depression and the perception of reinforcement

Depressed and nondepressed subjects were given escapable, inescapable, or no noise. Then, their perceptions of reinforcement contingencies in skill and chance tasks were assessed. Depressed-no noise and nondepressed-inescapable noise subjects exhibited smaller decreases in expectancy following failure in skill, but not in chance, than nondepressed-no noise subjects. So, depression and inescapable noise both produced perception of failure in skill as response-independent. Contrary to predictions, neither depression nor inescapable noise had a significant effect on increases in expectancy after success. These results partially support the learned helplessness model of depression which claims that a belief in independence between responding and reinforcement is central to the etiology and symptoms of depression in man.