Reading skill and the minimum distance principle: A comparison of listening and reading comprehension

Experiment I compared the listening and reading comprehension of sentences which follow the Minimum Distance Principle, e.g., John tells Bill to bake the cake, and of those which do not, e.g., John promises Bill to bake the cake. Third, fourth, and fifth graders were tested. Support for Chomsky's Stage analysis of mastery of the Minimum Distance Principle was found for the listening but not for the reading task. Reading skill level was found to be positively correlated with Stage and a significantly better predictor of promise performance than was age or IQ. Experiment II investigated the effect of the composition of the experimental presentation list on performance by comparing comprehension when the list contained only promise or tell sentences with that obtained when the list contained both types of sentences. For half the subjects, performance differed as a function of the list composition: Implications of these findings for the assessment of the development of language competence are discussed.     

The use of the cumulative rehearsal strategy: A developmental study

This study was designed to address two issues: (1) At what age do children spontaneously use a cumulative rehearsal strategy; and (2) What effect does the use of the strategy have on their performance?Twenty-eight children at each of five grade levels (nursery, kindergarten, 1, 3, and 5) were tested in a serial-position recall task. Stimuli were pictures of common objects and animals whose labels were one or two syllables in length. Following testing, the children were asked to report the memory strategy they had used.The assumption was made that children who were using a cumulative rehearsal strategy would perform better on series of one-syllable items than on series of two-syllable items. As predicted, nursery, kindergarten, and first-grade subjects correctly recalled as many two-syllable as one-syllable items: Both third- and fifth-graders recalled significantly more one-syllable than two-syllable items. Results indicated that (1) young children do not spontaneously use a cumulative rehearsal strategy until after first grade, and (2) the use of rehearsal did not facilitate overall performance of the rehearsers relative to the nonrehearsers at any grade level. Results are discussed in terms of their theoretical implications for the study of memory development.     

Texture gradient registration and the development of slant perception.

The processes underlying the development of slant perception were investigated by manipulating the degree of texture element variability. Subjects at four grade levels were required to make judgments of physical slant of surfaces with three levels of variability. Absolute error of judgment decreased with age, but texture variability had no effect at any grade level. The results suggest that there is no improvement in the ability to extract gradient information. Rather, improvement in the consistency of judgment reflects a developmental change in the relationship between stimulus information and judgment.     

Primary and secondary reinforcers as distinctive cues which acquire information value in partial-reinforcement discrimination training

To assess the cue as opposed to incentive effect of reward, rats were trained on an easy visual discrimination with food contingent on 50 or 100% of the correct responses, and white-noise contingent on 0, 50 or 100% of these responses. Additionally, the 50% food and noise schedules were structured for different groups to produce positive, zero, or negative correlations of the two events. Although the addition of noise did not affect learning with 100% food, the slower learning observed with 50% food was increasingly offset by greater percentages of noise, with the 50% groups showing faster learning under the negative than zero correlation and faster under the zero than positive correlation. Together with supporting speed data, these results indicate that a “neutral” stimulus can be substituted for food with little loss in performance. Consequently, the reinforcing effect of food is attributed in part to its function as a cue which, like noise, can increase the discriminability of the alternatives and provide information about the correctness of the response.     

Procedures for synthesizing ratio judgements

Requirements which seem reasonable for functions synthesizing judgements (quantities or their ratios), in particular separability, associativity or bisymmetry, cancellativity, consensus, reciprocal or homogeneity properties are investigated and all functions satisfying them are determined.     

Self-directed attention and the comparison of self with standards

Several theorists have assumed that self-directed attention causes a comparison between one's present behavior or state and whatever is salient and relevant as a standard of comparison. Indirect evidence bearing on this assumption was gathered in a series of four studies by monitoring subjects' tendencies to access concrete information needed to make such behavior-standard comparisons. Self-focus was varied in two of these studies by experimental manipulations: a mirrored surface, and a live observer. In the other two studies, self-focus was operationalized in terms of subjects' dispositional tendencies to direct attention to themselves (self-consciousness). Consistent with expectations, in Experiments 1 and 2, self-directed attention led to increased frequency of referring to drawings of geometric figures when attempting to reproduce them. In Experiments 3 and 4, self-focused attention increased subjects' tendencies to seek out information about ostensible performance norms reflecting the behavior of other subjects, also as predicted.     

Evaluation of social competence training in the schools

A social competence program for high risk children is described and evaluated in this paper. Advanced undergraduates majoring in psychology used interpersonal problem-solving techniques to work with 32 maladapting first through third graders who were seen on a small group basis. The intervention program was conducted for 14 weeks. Compared to a control group of 32 children, results indicated that children in the program made siginficantly greater gains in classroom adjustment as rated by teachers. Additionally, socimetric status served as a criterion for evaluating program effectiveness. Results demonstrated that children who participated in the social competence training made significantly greater gains in peer acceptance as measured by a brief sociometric questionnaire than the controls. The implications of these findings and the methodological limitations of the study are discussed.     

Selectivity and strategy in early search

Early information-processing strategies were examined in a study of very young children's search for hidden objects. Sixteen younger children (mean age: 1 year; 11 months) and sixteen older children (mean age: 2;6) received search problems in which observational and/or verbal information about an object's location was provided. The question of primary interest was how they would respond when given two conflicting sources of information, which differed in modality (observational vs verbal) and in currentness. Both younger and older children showed some use of an appropriate strategy of relying on the more current information, although they did not follow it consistently. Children also showed preferential use of observational over verbal information and response biases favoring the middle location. Age differences were found in children's use of verbal information, in the degree to which they benefitted from practice, and in response biases. These results suggested a distinction between two aspects of the development of search: the acquisition of new search skills and the establishment of appropriate priorities among skills already in the child's repertoire.     

A test of parallel versus serial processing applied to memory retrieval

Townsend has identified necessary and sufficient conditions that reaction time distributions meet if they are produced by two underlying processes that are parallel and within-stage independent. This paper describes an attempt to use one of these conditions to assess the assumption of independent parallel memory retrieval in Anderson's ACT theory. In the experimental test, subjects studied profession-location pairs, with each profession and location included in two pairs. One pair had a high frequency of presentation and the other had low. When cued with a profession (or location), subjects responded with the first of the two studied locations (or professions) that came to mind. The reaction times to these responses were used to test the ACT assumption of independent parallel search. The problems encountered in trying to apply Townsend's abstract test to a concrete situation included the need to consider mixtures and convolutions of distributions and empirical, rather than theoretical, distributions. These difficulties are discussed at length and some formal analyses concerning their effect on the test are given. Despite these problems, we were able to use Townsend's test and the results of the experiment support the within-stage independent parallel assumption of ACT.