Anxiety, learning, and memory: A reconceptualization

A new theoretical framework for work on anxiety and memory is proposed. Anxious subjects engage in task-irrelevant processing which preempts processing resources and some of the available capacity of working memory. They typically attempt to compensate for the adverse effects of this task-irrelevent processing on task performance by increased effort. It follows from these theoretical assumptions that anxiety will have differential effects on performance efficiency (i.e., the quality of performance) and on processing effectiveness (i.e., performance efficiency/effort). Anxiety will always reduce processing effectiveness, but will not impair performance efficiency if there is sufficient effort expenditure. Consequently, reliance on measures of performance efficiency will often obscure the detrimental effects of anxiety on processing effectiveness.     

Derogation of an innocent victim as a function of authoritarianism and involvement

Two studies are reported in which observers witnessed a peer (learner) receiving electric shock and where they did or did not play a role in her suffering (Involved vs Noninvolved conditions). It was found in both studies that while High authoritarians were more likely than Low authoritarians to derogate the learner in Involved conditions, the reverse was true in Noninvolved conditions. These significant interactions (p < .03, p < .01) were interpreted in terms of Low authoritarians derogating in order to preserve their belief in a “just world” and High authoritarians derogating in order to avoid self-blame.     

Psychoticism and response to treatment in neurotic patients

A study is reported of neurotic patients at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, who were given the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and who were rated by their doctors for prognosis and final assessment after treatment. The results indicated that those patients who had elevated psychoticism scores took longer to improve and that doctors rated them harder to treat at final assessment. It is suggested that early knowledge of patients with a poor prognosis, in the form of their Psychoticism score, might prove helpful to psychiatrists and psychologists, both for diagnosis and (primarily) for choice of appropriate treatment.     

Self-instructions as discriminative cues for rule-breaking or rule-following

This experiment examined the relationship between self-instructions and subsequent instruction-following performance, as a function of the history of the consequences for correspondence or noncorrespondence. Subjects were two groups of elementary school children (ages 7 and 8 years). In training, the two groups were exposed to different histories of congruence or noncongruence between self-instructions and consequences for performance. In the Congruent group, subjects were exposed to a series of stimuli to which they were trained to give self-instructions to make, or not to make, a key-pressing response. Reinforcement was given for self-instructing, and responding in accord with the self-instruction. Subjects in the Noncongruent group were trained to give the same self-instructions for the same stimuli, but reinforcement was given for counter-compliance. Subsequently, in a temptation situation, the experimenter gave an instruction not to press for a test stimulus; and subjects were trained to give the inhibitory self-instruction for this stimulus. Subjects in the Noncongruent group showed a high rate of rule-breaking. The effects on behavior of self-delivered instructions depend on the past relations between these events and the consequences for instruction-following. Implications are discussed for moral behavior and cognitively oriented therapy.     

Phonological processing in Broca's aphasics

Phonological processing was investigated in nine Broca's aphasics. A receptive phonological task examined knowledge of phonotactic rules. Three lists of “word” pairs, phoneme sequences, were constructed such that one member was possible in English and the other was not. The lists varied in distance from English or phonemic structure (CCVC vs. CCVCC). Following auditory presentation, the aphasic was required to indicate which of the two “words” was possible in English. The productive task was an articulation test for monosyllabic and polysyllabic words. The high positive correlation between receptive and productive scores suggested that, rather than motor speech sequencing problems being exclusively involved, more general phonological-articulatory processes were disrupted. Several hypotheses were advanced to describe the nature of this disruption.     

When children write nonwords to dictation

Skill in written spelling of simple, monosyllabic nonwords was investigated in 9- to 11-year-old English children. Two aspects of their spellings were of interest: first, could they spell these nonwords so that they sounded correct (nonword spelling accuracy), and second, did their spellings show evidence of biasing from words heard earlier in the test sequence? Nonword spelling was poorer for children of this age than for tested adults. Nevertheless, significant biasing occurred in these children's spellings, though not to the same extent as in adults' nonword spellings, and significant correlations emerged between reading age, nonword spelling skill, susceptibility to biasing, and real word spelling skill. Children with a reading age greater than 11 years showed biasing from word spellings that was within range of that reported for adults, and, for these more skilled readers, word spelling accuracy correlated significantly with both susceptibility to biasing and with nonword spelling accuracy. These children were not as accurate as tested adults at spelling nonwords. Children with a reading age below 11 years were poorer at nonword spelling and showed no overall biasing, yet they also showed a significant correlation between word spelling skill and nonword biasing. Together with evidence from the same task from adults with specific spelling disorders, these results suggest that word knowledge had a direct (biasing) and an indirect (general word spelling knowledge) effect on the performance of the nonword spelling task. But although skill in word spelling may be a necessary prerequisite for nonword spelling, it need not always be sufficient.     

Development of speech and language following bilateral frontal lesions

Language and speech were studied in a young child with perinatally acquired bifrontal lesions. Bilateral frontal pathology seriously interfered with the development of intelligible speech and resulted in a persistent expressive aphasia. Analysis of the neuropsychological profile indicated impairments in intelligence and language comprehension. These deficits, however, were considered secondary to the profound speech programming disorder. The findings indicate that, despite the plasticity of the immature central nervous system, bilateral frontal injury sustained at an early age precludes the development of intelligible speech. Furthermore, structurally intact cortical regions outside the territories of the speech zones fail to mediate normal speech and language development.     

The roles of private speech and inner speech in planning during middle childhood: Evidence from a dual task paradigm

Children often talk themselves through their activities, producing private speech that is internalized to form inner speech. This study assessed the effect of articulatory suppression (which suppresses private and inner speech) on Tower of London performance in 7- to 10-year-olds, relative to performance in a control condition with a nonverbal secondary task. Experiment 1 showed no effect of articulatory suppression on performance with the standard Tower of London procedure; we interpret this in terms of a lack of planning in our sample. Experiment 2 used a modified procedure in which participants were forced to plan ahead. Performance in the articulatory suppression condition was lower than that in the control condition, consistent with a role for self-directed (private and inner) speech in planning. On problems of intermediate difficulty, participants producing more private speech in the control condition showed greater susceptibility to interference from articulatory suppression than their peers, suggesting that articulatory suppression interfered with performance by blocking self-directed (private and inner) speech.     

Working memory, inhibition, and fluid intelligence as predictors of performance on Tower of Hanoi and London tasks

The contributions of working memory, inhibition, and fluid intelligence to performance on the Tower of Hanoi (TOH) and Tower of London (TOL) were examined in 85 undergraduate participants. All three factors accounted for significant variance on the TOH, but only fluid intelligence accounted for significant variance on the TOL. When the contribution of fluid intelligence was accounted for, working memory and inhibition continued to account for significant variance on the TOH. These findings support argument that fluid intelligence contributes to executive functioning, but also show that the executive processes elicited by tasks vary according to task structure.