Pauses and syntax in American sign language

Research on spoken languages has shown that the durations of silent pauses in a sentence are strongly related to the syntactic structure of the sentence. A similar analysis of the pauses (holds) in a passage in American Sign Language reveals that sequences of signs are also interspersed with holds of different lengths: long holds appear to indicate the ends of sentences; shorter holds, the break between two conjoined sentences; and the shortest holds, breaks between internal constituents. Thus, pausal analysis is a guide to parsing sentences in ASL.     

Effects of sucrose concentration and goal units on runway behavior in the rat

Experiment 1 investigated the between-S and within-S effects of sucrose concentration (32 and 6%) and number of goal units (equal volumes of sucrose presented in single or multiple goal cups). The goal-unit variable had no effect on behavior under any of several test conditions employed. Within-S effects of sucrose concentration were approximately equal to between-S effects; no contrast effects were found. When 64 and 6% sucrose solutions were used as reinforcers in Experiment 2, a simultaneous, but not a successive, negative contrast effect was found. Results were discussed in terms of possible functional differences between the successive and simultaneous contrast paradigms and between sucrose solutions and solid food as reinforcers.     

Effects of list length and first-trial reward upon concurrent discrimination performance

Rhesus monkeys were given 2304 two-trial object discrimination problems that were presented as members of lists consisting of two, four, or eight problems. The problems within each list were presented concurrently, Trial 1 for all problems in the list being presented before initiation of Trial 2 for any problem. Each problem involved exposure of a single object on Trial 1, which was either rewarded or not rewarded, followed by presentation of the Trial 1 object along with a second object on Trial 2. Performance varied inversely with list length, and this effect became more prominent as a function of training. Performance after Trial 1 nonreward was substantially better than that after Trial 1 reward, and this effect became enhanced both with continued training and with increased list length. The findings were discussed in terms of Bessemer's short-term memory analysis of learning set.     

Brief escape from a dangerous place: The role of reinforcement in the rat's one-way avoidance acquisition

Five experiments are reported which attempt to eliminate two possible sources of reinforcement in one-way avoidance learning: a period of escape from aversive apparatus cues and the termination of the warning signal (WS). A “brief escape”/one-way avoidance procedure was developed to minimize the time rats spent away from the shock box. It was found that, although prolonged escape from shock box cues contributes to the acquisition rate of one-way avoidance, it is not essential for relatively rapid acquisition to occur. It was also found, in agreement with earlier evidence, that WS termination makes no discernible contribution to learning in the one-way situation. Thus, neither source of reinforcement appears to be necessary for acquisition. At this point, one may argue either that reinforcement is not necessary for rapid one-way avoidance acquisition [e.g., Bolles' 1972 species-specific defense reaction hypothesis (In G. H. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation: Advances in research and theory (Vol. 6). New York: Academic Press, 1972)] or that there are other sources of reinforcement. As an example of the latter approach, a consummatory stimulus reward hypothesis is advanced.     

Conditional reasoning and the competence-performance issue: A developmental analysis of a training task

Empirical investigations of conditional reasoning have generally found that both children and young adults perform poorly on tasks that require the selection or evaluation of those propositions that test the truth status of conditional statements (if p then q). Earlier work (D. O'Brien & W. F. Overton, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 1980, 30, 44–60) suggested that poor performances with these tasks by young adults show improvement following the introduction of evidence that contradicts earlier faulty inferences, and this improvement generalizes to other conditional reasoning tasks. The effects of the contradiction training were not found with younger subjects. The present research is an extension of the contradiction training paradigm. Ten-, fourteen-, and eighteen-year-olds were tested to assess developmental differences in improvement with an evaluation and a conditional syllogism task. Significant improvement in performance was found for the twelfth grade students following the contradiction training, and this generalized across tasks. This effect was not found for the two younger groups. The usual poor performance of the oldest group is considered to be a false negative assessment of their conditional reasoning competency. Further, it is suggested that several correct performances of younger reasoners are false positive assessments of their conditional reasoning competency.     

Distraction,amnesia, and the next-in-line effect

Two studies use a free recall task to track, moment by moment, cognitive repercussions of an upcoming performance. As in earlier research, subjects display impaired recall for events which immediately precede an anticipated public performance. This “next-in-line effect” occurs even if the “performance” consists of reading a word to oneself. However, subjects show no memory deficit if their performance is not anticipated, and they have generally poor recall if they know they will be performing—but not when. Distraction and amnesia accounts of these recall deficits are discussed. Ancillary findings illuminate the organization of memory in social settings.     

Surface dyslexia: A case report and some theoretical implications to reading models

This paper reports on the psycholinguistic investigation of a surface dyslexic aphasic patient's abilities to handle written material. The analysis of paralexic errors produced in reading aloud single words and nonwords classically suggested that the patient was using an analytical strategy parsing the letter string stimulus, from left to right, into graphemes, and assigning phonemic values to graphemes. The patient's results were found to be sensitive to irregularities in correspondence between graphemes and phonemes not only in reading aloud but in lexical decisions, writing on dictation, rhyming, and written-word comprehension. Moreover, the patient's linguistic behavior brought out the reverse pattern observed in deep-dyslexic performances within word/nonword and content/function word dimensions. It was found that some semantic information about written words could be retrieved from both phonological and nonphonological processes presumably operating concurrently and both providing converging or conflicting pieces of meaning to the understanding of written words. Some considerations derived from the observation of this pathological reading behavior are discussed, contributing to a psycholinguistic model of normal reading.     

The time course of learned helplessness, inactivity, and nociceptive deficits in rats

Four experiments are reported which explore the nature of the effects of inescapable shock on subsequent shuttlebox escape learning. The first experiment demonstrated that shuttle escape deficits dissipate within 48 hr after treatment with inescapable shock. Experiment 2 showed that exposure to inescapable shock suppressed unlearned activity in the shuttlebox and that this activity deficit recovered within 48 hr. Experiment 2A demonstrated that this shuttlebox crossing decrement was at least partly attributable to the inescapability of the shocks. These results suggested that activity factors might partly mediate the shuttle escape learning deficit reported in Experiment 1. Experiment 3 explored the possibility that activity and shuttle escape learning deficits are subserved by the effects of inescapable shock on pain sensitivity. The results supported this notion. It was found that rats were less sensitive to painful stimulation 24 hr after inescapable shock and that this analgesic tendency also dissipated within 48 hr after pretreatment. The implications of these results were discussed.     

Task relevant effects on the assessment of cerebral specialization for facial emotion

Hemispheric specialization for processing different types of rapidly exposed stimuli was examined in a forced choice reaction time task. Four conditions of recognition were included: tacial emotion, neutral faces, emotional words, and neutral words. Only the facial emotion condition produced a significant visual field advantage (in favor of the left visual field), but this condition did not differ significantly from the neutral face condition's left visual field superiority. The verbal conditions produced significantly decreased latencies with RVF presentation, while the LVF presentation was associated with decreased latencies on the facial conditions. These results suggested that facial recognition and affective processing cannot be separated as independent factors generating right hemisphere superiority for facial emotion perception, and that task parameters (verbal vs. nonverbal) are important influences upon effects in studies of cerebral specialization.     

Anxiety and aggression of high and low assertive persons following conflict

This experiment examined changes in anxiety and differences in aggression for high and low assertive women when different degrees of conflict were encountered. As predicted, low assertive women were intially more uneasy or anxious than high assertive women when they were placed in a conflictual situation. When the level of actual conflict was low, the level of anxiety of low assertive women decreased. However, when the actual level of conflict was high the anxiety level of low assertive women remained unchanged. These results were taken as support for the fear of conflict hypothesis which predicted that the reduction in anxiety for low assertive persons is contingent upon whether or not the anticipated conflict is actually encountered. The results also indicated that high assertive women were not significantly more aggressive than low assertive women. This finding provided support for Galassi's position that assertiveness and aggression are distinct concepts.