Are there developmental differences in reality-monitoring?

The question addressed by the present experiment is whether the ability to distinguish between veridical and imaginal memory representations changes with age. Second-grade, fourth-grade, and sixth grade children (8, 10, and 12 years old) and college students were shown pictures of familiar objects. Each picture was presented one, two, or three times and, interspersed with these presentations, subjects were asked to imagine each picture zero, one, or three times. Subsequently they were asked to judge the presentation frequency of each picture. For all groups, imagining the pictures resulted in inflated estimates of event frequency. However, contrary to the idea that children have a particularly difficult time discriminating externally generated from internally generated memories, one analysis indicated adults were actually somewhat more affected than children by the imagination trials.     

Stroop interference in the left and right visual fields

The Stroop Color-Word test was employed to study the amount of interference in naming colors when stimuli were presented in either visual field. It was hypothesized that more Stroop interference would occur in the dominant hemisphere. The subjects were 24 right-handed college students, between 18 and 25 years old. There were three conditions in each visual field: Interference, Reading, and Naming. Each slide was presented for 150 msec preceded by a fixation dot. Subjects were asked to verbally report as fast and as accurately as they could either the color words or the color names, depending upon the conditions. Reaction times and error rates were analyzed. As expected, significantly higher error rates were obtained when color words were presented in the right visual field under the Stroop interference condition. Under this same condition, reaction time analysis yielded no significant differences between hemispheres.     

Perceived causality for success in occupations

A representative group of occupations was examined within an attributional framework, utilizing the concept of perceived causality for success. Specifically, it was hypothesized that (1) success in different types of occupations would be attributed to different causes, (2) the causal attributions of incumbents would differ from those of nonincumbents, (3) standard occupational categories could be derived on the basis of perceived causality for success, and (4) perceived causality for success could be used as a basis for generating a circular ordering of occupations.Holland's (1973) occupational classification was used as a basis for categorization. College students, as well as six types of occupational incumbents, were administered a questionnaire in which they attributed causality for success in 35 occupations. The results supported the first three hypotheses and also revealed some systematic relationships between causes and between perceived causality for success and occupational prestige.     

The structure of interests as a structure of occupational stimuli and as a structure of affective responses

The structure of interests has usually been perceived as a structure of occupational stimuli, but it can also be conceived of as a structure of the affective responses that occupational stimuli elicit, or as a structure of these stimuli embedded within the matrix of affective responses which they produce. Each of these three structural representations was examined in this study. The semantic differential technique was used to rate a set of 10 occupational stimuli with 15 bipolar scales. A factor analysis of the stimuli yielded three occupational factors called Science, Things vs. People, and Social Welfare; a factor analysis of the scales indicated that the stimuli elicited Evaluation, Potency, and Activity responses. The three dimensions of affect were then used as the axes of a semantic space within which the occupational stimuli were located according to the unique affective meaning of each. The desirability of studying the structure of interests as a structure of occupational stimuli embedded within a structure of the responses they elicited was discussed.     

Unclogging the bogus pipeline: A critical reanalysis of the Cherry,Byrne, and Mitchell study

The assignment of subjects to conditions on the basis of social desirability scores could not have been done in the manner described by Cherry, Byrne, and Mitchell (Journal of Research in Personality, 1976, 10, 69–75). Even if subject assignment procedures were not challenged the data do not support the authors' conclusions. Additional statistical analyses were carried out to test the hypotheses of the original study. It is concluded that either the demand cue manipulation was not successful or else paper-and-pencil and bogus pipeline measurement procedures are equally reliable measurement devices for the attitude similarity effect.     

Differential methods of causal attributions for strangers vs acquaintances

Previous research has demonstrated that people are more likely to attribute a stranger's behavior to external causes if that behavior is common in a given population than if it is relatively unique (the consensus rule). It was proposed in the present paper that another and perhaps simpler rule is available for causal attributions for an acquaintance's behavior, such that more external attributions are made as the behavior becomes increasingly inconsistent with extant impressions of the target (the goodness-of-fit rule). It was found that the goodness-of-fitrule, but not the consensus rule, was used in the attribution of causality for acquaintances when the behavior could be made to fit with extant impressions. When the behavior was completely inconsistent with extant impressions, both consensus and goodness-of-fit rules were used, such that the most external attributions were made in the poor fit/high consensus condition.     

Sex-role identity as a moderator of the polarization effect in person perception

Male and female subjects with different sex-role identities (Androgynous, Masculine, Feminine, Undifferentiated) rated likability of male and female stimulus persons in the impression formation paradigm. Under certain conditions all the female subjects and feminine males manifested a polarization effect; that is, they made more polar ratings of opposite-sexed stimulus persons in contrast to same-sexed stimulus persons. On the other hand, under certain conditions Masculinetyped males rated male stimulus persons more negatively than female stimulus persons. Results were discussed in terms of moderating effects on the polarization phenomenon and possible explanatory mechanisms.     

The identification and transfer of timesharing skills

Performance on two different task combinations was examined for evidence that timesharing skills are learned with practice and can transfer between task combinations. One combination consisted of two discrete informaion processing tasks, a short-term memory task and a classification task; the other consisted of two identical one-dimensional compensatory tracking tasks. Three groups of 16 subjects were employed in the experiment. The first received dual-task training on both combinations; the second received single-task training on the discrete-task combination and dual-task training on the tracking combination; the third received dual-task training on the tracking combination only. Evidence for distinct timesharing skills was found in both combinations using a new technique designed to separate improvements in timesharing skills from improvements in single-task performance. Transfer of timesharing skills also was found. Several fine-grained analyses performed on the data from the discrete task combination and a Control Theory Analysis of the tracking data indicated that skills in parallel processing were learned in each combination and transferred between them.