Heart rate conditioning in the newborn infant

In an attempt to condition heart rate in newborns, 21 infants were assigned to Conditioning, Random Control, and Backward Conditioning Groups. During training trials, the Conditioning Group received an eight-second tone (CS), a six-second ISI, and a ten-second presentation of glucose via nipple (UCS) that overlapped the last two seconds of tone. The Random Control Group received tones at the same intertrial intervals as the Conditioning Group, but glucose varied randomly. The Backward Conditioning Group received glucose during the ten seconds immediately preceding tone onset. The response to both CS and UCS during base trials was HR acceleration. The response to tone habituated in all groups, but the acceleration to glucose was maintained throughout conditioning. Although no conditioned response to the tone developed over trials, a large HR deceleration appeared during extinction to the absence of the UCS in the Conditioning Group only. This deceleration was interpreted as an orienting response to the absence of an expected event.     

Children's binary prediction of partially learnable sequences followed by an all-correct procedure

Six groups of 20 subjects each were run individually in a binary prediction situation with each alternative occurring equally often. Two age groups were employed; subjects were either in second or sixth grades. For one-third of the subjects at each age level, the events occurred in runs of either two or six; another third observed events which occurred in runs of either five or six; the other subjects received a random sequence of events. All subjects then received an additional 50 trials in which every prediction was correct. The results indicated some sensitivity to run length characteristics. Fewer errors of all types were made in the prediction of 5–6 sequences. The verbal reports and all-correct trial protocols revealed that at least the sixth graders employed some simple run length structure rules, although many instances of runs other than those presented in training occurred, showing much processing error. The results were discussed in terms of a general limited-capacity model of information-processing.     

The identification of stuttering: Can you look and tell

This investigation focussed on how observers identify stutterers. It was found that stutterers are identified most correctly under visual circumstances as compared to auditory and combined auditory-visual conditions. Therefore, the reduction of stuttering should include removal of noticeable, interfering, and unnecessary nonverbal behaviors, particularly mouth and nostril movements.     

Lexical creativity during instances of word-finding difficulty: Broca's vs. Wernicke's aphasia

Lexical innovation--the creation of a word by combining existing morphemes in a novel way (e.g. "map ball" for "globe")--was evaluated as a method for circumventing word-finding difficulty in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia. Aphasic groups were matched for naming performance and compared to a control group of normal adults matched for age and education. Lexical innovations were collected during the administration of a confrontation naming test, and were then analyzed in terms of the correctness of morpheme combination, semantic accuracy, novelty, and communicative effectiveness. An innovation was considered to be communicatively effective when its intended referent was understood by a naive judge. The lexical innovations of the two aphasic groups were diametrically opposed: as compared to both Broca's aphasics and normal adults, Wernicke's aphasics innovated significantly less often, and their innovations were significantly inferior in terms of: semantic precision, the proper construction of morpheme combination, and communicative effectiveness. This pattern suggests that lack of verbal fluency may be compatible with lexical creativity, while empty logorrheic speech may be an impediment to lexical creativity. Similarly, we conclude that the agrammatism of Broca's asphasia does not interfere with lexical innovation, while the paragrammatism of Wernicke's aphasia does interfere with lexical innovation, thus suggesting that paragrammatism affects morpheme combination at the word level as well as the sentence level.     

Socialization and career orientation among black and white college women

In a study of career orientation among black and white college women, support was found for hypotheses derived from postulates of Rotter's Social Learning Theory. Compared to whites, (1) blacks were less likely to expect the level of work involvement preferred; (2) blacks expected more employment; and (3) blacks were more likely to prefer less employment than they realistically expected. Antecedents of career expectation were categorized as internal, external, or neutral. As hypothesized, variables expressive of external control predicted level of career expectation among blacks, whereas variables expressive of internal control predicted high career expectations among whites.     

Fixed and optional stopping models for two-choice discrimination times

Several current models for choice- or discrimination-time experiments represent the stimulus as a sequence of independent and identically distributed observations. This paper develops and compares models based on two different stopping rules that a subject might use to terminate his sampling process and convert his perceptual evidence into an observable response. The fixed and optional stopping rules yield different predicted forms for the speed/accuracy tradeoff function and for the relation between mean and variance of response times. These predictions are developed in the general case and then specialized for certain conditions of symmetry, so that the expressions are easier to apply and to compare between models. A later section considers how changes in stopping criteria (either between or within experimental trials) affect predictions about mean response times for correct responses and errors, and then uses these ideas to relate the optional stopping rule for the Random Walk models to those of the Accumulator models. A final section considers specialized models for stimulus detection and intensity discrimination that assume Poisson-distributed sensory input, and relates these models to the present fixed stopping model.     

Evidence for a developmental shift in the basis for memory organization

Using a false recognition procedure, either with or without instructions to facilitate Synonym or Antonym encoding, 128 second- and sixth-grade boys and girls were tested. The results indicated that there were no grade or sex differences in generalization errors to synonyms or antonyms under neurtral learning instructions, but that facilitative instructions interacted with grade level. Under instructions to facilitate synonym encoding, second graders showed a marked increase in synonym errors. On the other hand, under instructions to facilitate antonym encoding, sixth graders showed an increase in antonym errors. In addition, association strength was directly related to the magnitude of the generalization errors in both grades. The results are discussed in terms of age-related shifts in the basis underlying the organization of verbal memories.     

Retrieval processes in recall

A reaction time (RT) paradigm was developed to study retrieval processes in paired associate (PA) recall. Prior to the experimental session, subjects learned lists of PAs (varying in length from three to 24 pairs); during the experimental session, subjects' RT to say the response word from the onset of a visually presented stimulus word was measured. The implications of several classes of retrieval models were discussed in the context of this paradigm. The shape of the RT-list length function, practice, and sequential effects were all of interest in distinguishing among models. Four experiments were reported which were designed to (1) establish the baseline effects in this paradigm, (2) determine which of these effects should be attributed to the retrieval stage of processing, and (3) investigate the effect of semantic memory in this task. Results suggest that simple serial scanning models are inadequate to handle the data from this task. Strength, direct-access, or parallel processing models, on the other hand, seem to capture the qualitative effects present in our experiments. When a strength model was formalized and fit to the data from Experiment I, it was found that a two-trace version gave good quantitative fits while a one-trace version did not, suggesting that both short- and long-term memory independently contribute in this task.     

Longitudinal neuropsychological report of aphasia following left-subcortical hemorrhage

The neuropsychological assessments of a patient with language disturbance following left thalamic-putaminal hemorrhage over a $\text{2}\text{1}\text{2}\text{-}\text{year}$ period are presented together with premorbid measures of performance. Findings indicate that behavioral deficits which are both linguistic and nonlinguistic in nature differ from cortical aphasic syndromes in symptomatology and recovery course. The deficit pattern is also unlike that in other reported cases of left-subcortical lesions. Persistent dysarthria with fluent speech, limitation of verbal span and repetition, agraphia and anomia, and disturbances in self-regulation of behavior were noted, in addition to recovery of an initially severe auditory comprehension deficit. A distinguishing feature of this case was the relative preservation of reading comprehension in all four assessments.