Self-evaluation,self-reinforcement,and locus of control

Two verbal recognition memory tests were administered to 24 internals and 24 externals. Subjects were required to self-evaluate (SE) their responses on the first test and both SE and self-reinforce (SR) on the second. There were no internal-external differences in performance accuracy on either task, but internals gave themselves consistently higher self-evaluations, administered more positive SR and less negative SR. There were no differences in the criteria used by the two groups for SR. SR differences appeared to be a function of the differential SE. It was suggested that external locus of control could be viewed as a self-regulation deficit. Externals are hypothesized to be unable to evaluate their own behavior adequately in the absence of external input and therefore do not make effective use of self-reinforcement. Discussion also made reference to the process of self-regulation.     

Social skills training for juvenile delinquents

Twenty-seven incarcerated juvenile delinquents matched on the number of previous offenses, age, WISC-R IQ, and locus of control were assigned to a Social Skills. Discussion or Control group. Social skills training consisted of instruction, feedback, modeling, behavior rehearsal, social reinforcement and graduated homework assignments. All subjects were assessed before and after treatment on a variety of self-report, role-play and behavioral measures. Analyses of variance for difference scores indicated that the Social Skills group improved significantly more than the Discussion and Control groups, which did not differ. Appropriate interpersonal skills were learned, state anxiety was reduced, internal locus of control was increased, and significant shifts in adjustment to the institutional program were evidenced for the Social Skills group.     

Behavioral treatment of obsessive-compulsive neurosis

Three chronic and severe obsessive-compulsive neurotics were treated with behavioral intervention strategies and psychotropic medication. The effects of treatment were evaluated in three separate experiments with single case experimental designs. The results suggest that response prevention was effective in reducing ritualistic behavior while the effects of flooding and antidepressant medication added little to outcome. The results also suggest that strategies aimed only at reducing compulsive behavior per se are insufficient in eliminating other associated difficulties (e.g., depressive symptoms, interpersonal problems) and that a comprehensive approach to treatment is needed.     

Sex differences in retention of verbal and spatial characteristics of stimuli

Males and females from Grades 3, 6, and college viewed sets of five or seven letters in a 4 × 4 matrix, and remembered either (a) names of the letters, (b) positions of the letters within the matrix, or (c) both letters and positions. At all grade levels females remembered letters more accurately than positions, while males remembered letters and positions equally well. However, there was also evidence that verbal and spatial information was processed independently by both males and females. Results are discussed in terms of neurological development and sex differences in specific abilities.     

Eye fixations and cognitive processes

This paper presents a theoretical account of the sequence and duration of eye fixation during a number of simple cognitive tasks, such as mental rotation, sentence verification, and quantitative comparison. In each case, the eye fixation behavior is linked to a processing model for the task by assuming that the eye fixates the referent of the symbol being operated on.     

An analysis of writing in a case of deep dyslexia

In tests of her ability to produce written and spoken language, this deep dyslexic patient produced semantic, visual, and derivational errors, including functor substitutions, and exhibited part-of-speech and abstractness effects in oral reading, oral and written naming, and writing to dictation, but not in repetition of single words and copying from memory. This patient therefore provides confirmation of the hypothesis presented in Nolan and Caramazza (1982) that the defining symptoms of deep dyslexia will be observed in responses to any task which requires lexical mediation. The patient's written responses in all tasks but direct copying were characterized by spelling errors which included transpositions, omissions, substitutions, and additions of letters. A model of writing is proposed which explains these errors in terms of a disruption of a phoneme-grapheme conversion process which normally functions to prevent decay of information from a Graphemic Buffer.