Attitudinal qualities relating to the strength of the attitude-behavior relationship

A study was conducted to examine the relation between each of several attitudinal qualities and attitude-behavior consistency. Subjects' attitudes toward volunterring to participate in psychological research were assessed. The number of experiments in which each subject volunteered to participate was employed as the measure of behavior. Attitude-behavior consistency was significantly related to (1) the amount of direct experience upon which the subject's attitude was based (specifically, the number of experiments in which the subject had previously participated), (2) the degree of certainty with which the attitude was held, and (3) how well-defined the subject's attitude was, as measured by the width of his latitude of rejection. These three attitudinal qualities were significantly intercorrelated, suggesting that direct experience with an attitude object may produce an attitude that is both better defined and more confidently held than an attitude formed through more indirect means.     

The extinction of within-compound flavor associations

Three experiments studied extinction of the associations which are formed between two flavors presented in a simultaneous compound. In Experiment 1 those associations were identified by a sensory preconditioning procedure in which the poisoning of one element of the compound led to the rejection of the other element. Separate presentation of either element between their joint occurence and the poisoning of one element sharply attenuated the rejection of the other element. That attenuation was interpreted in terms of the extinction of within-compound associations. Experiment 2 obtained similar results with an alternative extinction procedure in which the elements of the original compound were presented in other compounds. Experiment 3 obtained similar results when the existence of the within-compound associations was determined by an alternative assessment procedure in which one element of the compound was made more attractive by the induction of a specific hunger. These experiments suggest that within-compound associations can be extinguished when the elements are separately presented outside of the compound. Experiments 2 and 3 make less plausible an alternative interpretation of the effects of separate element presentation in terms of reduction of the novelty of the element. The findings may be taken as implying that the elements of a simultaneously presented compound are joined by a single symmetrical association which acts at various points during a sensory preconditioning experiment.     

The effects of individual differences in test anxiety and type of orienting task on levels of organization in free recall

In Experiment 1, high and low test-anxious subjects recalled a list composed of words that could be organized either by taxonomic categories or first letters. High-anxiety subjects showed less recall and conceptual clustering. There was no anxiety difference in alphabetic clustering, but low-anxiety subjects used alphabetic clusters to bridge transitions between conceptual categories more often than did high-anxiety subjects. An initial orienting task which required semantic processing reduced the recall deficit for high-anxiety subjects but not the clustering deficit. Low-anxiety subjects seemed minimally affected by a nonsemantic-orienting task. Experiment 2 used a list that could be organized by associates or rhymes. High-anxiety subjects recalled less and exhibited less clustering of both types. The nonsemantic-orienting task depressed performance for both anxiety levels, though the effect was somewhat greater for high-anxiety subjects. Overall, these results provide little evidence to support the hypothesis that high-anxiety subjects process differently only for semantic content, but methodological limitations preclude unequivocally rejecting that view.     

Neuropsychological significance of phonetically accurate and phonetically inaccurate spelling errors in younger and older retarded spellers

The performances of two groups of retarded spellers (who were equated with respect to the level of deficient performance in spelling, but who differed in the level of phonetic accuracy of their misspellings) at two different age levels were compared to those of normal spellers who had been matched for age and WISC Performance IQ with the retarded spelling groups. The results indicated very marked differences in a number of linguistic skills between the normal spellers and the retarded spellers whose misspellings were characterized by phonetic inaccuracy. The performances of the retarded spellers who produced a preponderance of phonetically accurate misspellings differed markedly from those of the normal spellers only when the task demands involved fairly complex linguistic-cognitive operations. For the most part, the differences among the three groups were in evidence only at the older age level studied.     

The universal nature of human intelligence: Evidence from games

Mentally retarded individuals have relatively greater difficulty in dealing with strategic games and puzzles than with many other tasks. Consequently, it is of interest to find that strategic games have been played since ancient times, are played throughout the world, and that players who excel are frequently considered wise. Hidden within the more obvious differences between cultures, strategic games are an invariant expression of certain universal intellectual traits.     

Parameters for vowel substitutions in Broca''s aphasia

Most phonological investigations of aphasic speech have focused on consonants. In this study, the vowel substitutions of five English-speaking Broca's aphasics were investigated with respect to several major explanatory hypotheses. An important possible motivating factor for aphasic substitutions, phonological environment, is an unlikely origin for these errors, since most substitutions occur along the paradigmatic axis. Another prominent hypothesis, markedness, also has no predictive power for the data of this sample. However, an analysis of the five Chomsky and Halle (1968, (The Sound Pattern of English), New York: Harper and Row) vowel features indicates that the two features for vowel height are selectively impaired: There is a strong tendency for lower vowels to replace higher targets. Moreover, the substitution sounds tend to be close to their target sounds along the height axis. Four possible hypotheses are advanced to account for this consistent lowering tendency.     

Field articulation and working memory

This experiment assessed the proposal that performance differences associated with field independence/field articulation reflect differential efficiency in the use of a limited capacity information-processing system termed working memory. Extreme scores on a group-administered version of the embedded figures test were used to identify subjects “high” and “low” in degree of field articulation. The task required that a subject retain a series of digits for subsequent report while performing a semantic modification of a target phrase. Concurrent information load on working memory was varied in two ways: by increasing memory load from 3 to 6 digits, and by increasing the complexity of the semantic processing required. In low information load conditions no differences were found between high FA and low FA groups. In high information load conditions low FA subjects made more errors in digit recall and took longer to perform the difficult semantic modification.     

Sensory modality and method of item information presentation in memory

Investigated were differences in paired-associate learning for auditory versus visual modalities and within each modality the anticipation and study test methods of item presentation were compared. Extant reports re these two sensory modalities and of the two learning methods had been inconsistent. In this study of 40 university students, the learning of CVC-CVC nonsense syllable pairs was significantly better with the visual than with the auditory modality. The study-test method was significantly superior to the anticipation method in the visual mode. With auditory presentations, however, acquisition levels for both methods were the same. Significant interactions were observed between sensory modalities and methods of presentation. At present the retention interval theory (Izawa 1972–1979b) appears to account best for the varied findings with respect to the two methods of presentation.     

Slow brain potentials in the CNV-paradigm

Slow brain potentials were recorded during the foreperiod of a reaction time task, and the effects of instructions governing the trade-off between speed and accuracy were investigated. One brain potential, a slow negative shift preceding S₂, was largely attenuated under accuracy instructions. It is suggested that this shift is dependent on a motor response and that its amplitude reflects the level of motor preparation. Two other brain potentials, a slow positive and a slow negative wave, seem to depend on the psychological properties of S₁. Enhanced amplitudes were found, when S₁ provides information, besides its warning function.