Speech and bimanual hand organization in adult stutterers and nonstutterers

A multivariate approach was used to investigate the relationship between speech fluency and bimanual handwriting in right-handed male stutterers and nonstutterers. Handedness was determined by the Harris Test of Lateral Dominance. Subjects were required to write the numbers 1 through 12 simultaneously, as quickly as possible. Speech measures were derived from the Stuttering Severity Instrument and from a reading passage. Stutterers performed more poorly than nonstutterers on all speech measures. There were no differences in bimanual handwriting performance for the dominant hand. However, stutterers performed more poorly than nonstutterers in nondominant handwriting. There were no relationships between speech measures and bimanual handwriting for stutterers or nonstutterers. Some stutterers performed better on the handwriting task than did some nonstutterers. It is suggested that disorganization in interhemispheric integration functions may be a more fundamental problem in stuttering than is incomplete cerebral dominance.     

Effects of subgrouping in stuttering research

The most frequently utilized research design in stuttering research compares stutterers to nonstutterers, with the assumption that stutterers represent a homogeneous group. The present study examines the effects of subgrouping stuttering subjects. Sample populations were randomly selected from a pool of stuttering children, successively increasing the stringency of selection criteria for group membership. The groups were contrasted across five dependent variables. The results indicated that the performance differences between the groups increased as the selection criteria became more stringent. The findings were interpreted as supporting the need to more closely examine the individual differences of stutterers, deviating from the traditional research paradigm.     

Schema induction and analogical transfer

An analysis of the process of analogical thinking predicts that analogies will be noticed on the basis of semantic retrieval cues and that the induction of a general schema from concrete analogs will facilitate analogical transfer. These predictions were tested in experiments in which subjects first read one or more stories illustrating problems and their solutions and then attempted to solve a disparate but analogous transfer problem. The studies in Part I attempted to foster the abstraction of a problem schema from a single story analog by means of summarization instructions, a verbal statement of the underlying principle, or a diagrammatic representation of it. None of these devices achieved a notable degree of sucess. In contrast, the experiments in Part II demonstrated that if two prior analogs were given, subjects often derived a problem schema as an incidental product of describing the similarities of the analogs. The quality of the induced schema was highly predictive of subsequent transfer performance. Furthermore, the verbal statements and diagrams that had failed to facilitate transfer from one analog proved highly beneficial when paired with two. The function of examples in learning was discussed in light of the present study.     

Social problem solving and mother-child interactions of educable mentally retarded children

Mothers of retarded children and nonretarded children were observed and videotaped as they interacted with their own child in a seminaturalistic situation, requiring teaching, cooperation, and free play. The child's social problem-solving abilities were assessed independently. The Vineland scale was employed to provide some convergent evidence of social problem-solving as a component of social competence. Twelve educable mentally retarded and 19 nonretarded 10-year-old children and their mothers comprised the sample. For the mentally retarded group, it was found that the higher maternal directiveness, the lower the child's social problem-solving skills. Mothers who often gave the child opportunity for decision-making and social influence had children with higher problem-solving skills. The retarded children produced significantly fewer different strategies for solving social problems, but gave a wider range of strategies than has been found in previous research. There was some support that social problem-solving skills are related to social maturity.     

Evaluative and taxonomic encoding in children's memory

The experiments were conducted to investigate the development of evaluative and taxonomic encoding in children's memory. The task used was a modification of the Wickens short-term memory task in which subjects' recall of words is tested following a distraction task. The first experiment found that 11-year-old children, but not 8-year-old children, encoded words using the evaluative dimension of the semantic differential. In the second experiment, both 7- and 11-year-olds demonstrated the ability to encode words according to taxonomic categories. These findings were related to other recent work on the development of encoding in memory.     

Storage and later recognition of exemplars of concepts

This paper concerns the problem of abstraction: whether when we encounter several exemplars of a concept, we retain only the abstracted concept, only the exemplars, or both. Although many studies concur that both are stored, a recent article argued strongly that only the abstracted concept is stored. The present study, aimed at replication of this recent finding, follows the earlier procedural details but adds appropriate controls and uses simpler material. A set of 24 exemplars of four concepts, in the form of four-tuples of letters and numbers, was presented to Ss who, after presentation, rated a larger set of exemplars for recognition. One group of Ss experienced the conceptual exemplars; control group Ss experienced items that were similar in composition but not exemplars of a concept. Two major results appeared: Unlike the study on which this was based, all Ss were able to distinguish those items that were originally experienced from those that were not. And, the more completely an exemplar fit the concept (the longer the item), the more confident the S was that it had been presented. In contrast, in the control condition, the longer the item, the more confident the S was that it had not been presented earlier. Two models are described to account for these results. One is based on the S's initial storage of the exemplars in a concept-plus-correction format; the other is based on a procedure whereby the S can make recognition judgments without having previously abstracted and retained the concepts.     

Effects of wage inequities on work attitudes and performance

A replication and extension of the Adams and Jacobsen (1964) investigation of inequity theory was carried out using a 3 × 2 experimental design with three levels of compensation and two levels of qualifiedness. This design included an overcompensated condition in which the overpayment was not confounded with unqualifiedness, thereby allowing a comparison of differential predictions from inequity and expectancy theory. Comparisons of over and underpayment conditions were also made to test the differential threshold hypothesis of inequity theory. Attitudinal as well as performance data were collected to investigate the possibility of differing modes of inequity reduction.The major finding in the present study was that variations in manipulated perceptions of qualifiedness produced significant effects upon both quality and quantity measures of work behavior while induced variations in the amount of anticipated compensation only affected quality of work. The qualified conditions produced fewer pieces of higher quality. This finding was discussed from the point of view of inequity theory as well as an alternative “self-esteem” explanation.Differences in work performance across pay levels were nonsignificant with the exception of a work quality measure in which the overpaid qualified group produced significantly more errors than the standard pay-qualified group. Possible interpretations of these findings were discussed and a range of conditions which may affect perceptions of inequity were considered.