Meditation,personality and arousal

A questionnaire survey of people who had learned a technique of meditation was carried out to assess persistence with practice, perceived effects of meditation practice and subjective experiences during meditation. The results suggested that a significant proportion give up meditating (42.9%) and that the subjective experience of meditation was similar to that of the hypnagogic state. Reported effects of meditation were generally physiological and psychological benefits related to relaxation.A personality questionnaire was also distributed and the results suggested that those attracted to meditation are significantly more neurotic and introverted than the general population but that those who continue with meditation are significantly less neurotic than those who give up their practice.These findings are discussed in terms of regression effects and in relation to a theory of personality and arousal.     

Effects of neutral and positive stimuli on stuttering: “Calling attention to stuttering” revisited

This study investigated the effects of presumably positive and neutral response-contingent stimuli on the occurence of stuttering. Eight adult stutterers spoke spontaneously during a 60-min experimental session, which was divided into three 20-min periods. During Condition I no stimuli were delivered. During Condition II a digital counter and a pair of yellow lights were activated each time the subject stuttered. During Condition III these same response-contingent stimuli were delivered, but with the additional factor that the subject would earn 5¢ each time the counter moved forward and the lights were illuminated. Conditions II and III were counterbalanced across subjects. The experimenter was unaware of which of the two contingencies were operative during Conditions II and III. Results showed no significant changes in occurence of stuttering due to either response-contingent stimulus. A discussion of theoretical and experimental implications is given.     

Incidental learning,attention, and curiosity in squirrel monkeys calorie deprived as infants

The long-term effects of infantile malnutrition on information processing were studied in squirrel monkeys. From 2 through 8 weeks of age, four low-calorie infants were fed reduced amounts of a high protein diet, limiting their mean body weight gain to 23% of that of four well-fed controls, with all of this gain occurring during the first 2 weeks on the low-calorie diet. Thereafter, both groups received the standard diet ad libitum. At 68 weeks of age, incidental learning was tested by introducing shape cues that were redundant to the solution of a previously learned, two-choice, color discrimination. Removal of the color cues showed that the low-calorie monkeys had learned significantly less about the shape cues than had the controls. The basis for this incidental learning failure was then examined with an embedded-figures dicrimination, to measure attentional ability, and a novel stimulus substitution task, to measure curiosity. The groups did not differ in detecting embedded figures, but the low-calorie monkeys were significantly less likely than controls to select or handle novel stimuli that had been substituted for previously learned discriminative cues. It was concluded that undernutrition in infancy may induce a long-term strategy of only learning information which leads to an immediate reward, while suppressing the acquisition of information due to intrinsic curiosity.     

The effects of Familial Sinistrality and preferred hand on dichaptic and dichotic tasks

Processing asymmetries for tactile-spatial and auditory-verbal processing were investigated in two studies using the S. F. Witelson (1974, Cortex, 10, 3–17) dichaptic procedure. Experiment 1 used eight right-handed males in a free recall procedure. More shapes were correctly detected by the left hand but only with a right hand response. In Experiment 2, right and left handers with no Familial Sinistrality (FS) were compared with left handers with various types of FS, looking at pre- and postcued order of report and precuing the response hand. No group showed hand asymmetry with pre- or postcuing for either responding hand. Right handers showed no difference with order of report; however, left handers made fewer correct detections for items to be reported second. There were differences between the Parental FS and the Sibling FS groups both on the dichotic listening and the haptic tasks.     

A challenge to vocational psychology: How important are aspirations in determining male career development?

Nationally representative longitudinal data on 1394 employed white men aged 15 to 24 in 1966 were used to assess whether job opportunities or vocational aspirations are the more important determinants of later job held. Support was found for two hypotheses: (a) men more often achieve congruence between their aspiration and their field of employment by changing aspirations to match the job rather than vice versa; and (b) aspirations for field of work generally are not as useful as actual job field for predicting the field of jobs held 1 to 5 years later. Contrary to expectation, middle-class young men were no more able to attain their aspirations either for field of employment or for status level of occupation than were lower-class male youths. These results suggest that although aspirations have some predictive power, the opportunity structure—which both conditions aspirations to narrow ranges early in life and affects the direction of early career development—is too often neglected by vocational psychology. One suggestion for counseling practice is that interest and maturity assessments be used as sources of information to both client and counselor about past influences. Attempts to actually counteract those influences should be clearly specified as such and separated from the assessment process.     

The dilution effect: Nondiagnostic information weakens the implications of diagnostic information

In a series of studies, subjects were asked to make predictions about target individuals. Some subjects were given information about the target which pretest subjects had judged to be “diagnostic”—that is, had judged to be usefully predictive of the outcome. Other subjects were given a mix of information judged to be diagnostic and information judged to be “nondiagnostic” by pretest subjects—that is, judged to be of little value for predicting the outcome. Subjects given mixed information made much less extreme predictions than did subjects given only diagnostic information. It was argued that this “dilution effect” occurs because people make predictions by making simple similarity judgments. That is, they compare the information they have about the target with their conception of outcome categories. The presence of individuating but nondiagnostic information about the target reduces the similarity between the target and those outcomes that are suggested by the diagnostic information. One of the major implications is that stereotypes and other “social knowledge structures” may be applied primarily to abstract, undifferentiated individuals and groups and may be largely set aside when judgments are made about concrete, individuated people.     

The psychometric attributes of Furth's nonverbal conservation test

The study examined the suitability of Furth's nonverbal conservation test as a psychometric tool for measuring individual differences in Zambia. The subjects included normal and mentally deficient Zambian children aged 7–13 years. The test was validated against age differentiation, differentiation of different intellectual levels, and school performance. The results showed that scores on the test increased significantly with increase in age, correlated positively and significantly with school scores, and differentiated normal from mentally deficient children. Within the normal sample the test also differentiated dull from average children; within the deficient sample the test did not differentiate the moderately mentally deficient from the severely mentally deficient. These results are explained by reference to the characteristics of the test, performance on which requires learning, memory, and perceptual abilities.     

Attention to important versus trivial tasks and salience of fatigue-related symptoms for coronary prone individuals

The present study tested the hypothesis that individuals with the Type A coronary prone behavior pattern focus their attention more on important tasks, and less on trivial tasks than do Type B's. The study used a paradigm in which some subjects worked on math problems (important task) and rated intervening mood items (trivial task), whereas others rated mood items they were to memorize (important task) and worked on intervening math problems (trivial task). All subjects were later tested on recall of mood items. Results indicated that Type A's performed better on math problems and recalled more fatigue-related mood items when the task was important than when it was trivial; for Type B subjects, there was no difference in the number of math problems solved correctly or number of mood items recalled between important and trivial task conditions. Moreover, Type A's reported greater fatigue when mood recall was the important task than when math was the important task, whereas fatigue ratings of Type B's did not differ across these conditions. The findings suggest that Type A's suppress their attention to fatigue-related symptoms only when symptoms are not the objects of focus.     

Concurrent validity of the WISC-R factor scores

This study investigated the efficacy of predicting academic achievement as measured by the Wide Range Achievement Test using the factor scores of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised as potential predictors. Both instruments were administered to 200 school children referred for psychological evaluations. Factor scores for the WISC-R were computed according to equations provided by Gutkin (1978). These factor scores then were regressed in a stepwise manner on the Reading, Spelling, and Arithmetic standard scores from the Wide Range Achievement Test. Stepwise regressions also were performed using the traditional Verbal and Performance IQs as the potential predictors. A comparison was made between the results obtained by use of the factors or the more common scores. The results indicated that the Freedom From Distractibility factor score significantly aided in the prediction of Reading and Spelling achievement and was of primary importance in predicting Arithmetic achievement. When the stepwise results using the different scores were contrasted, the factor scores accounted for appreaciably more variance in Arithmetic than did the traditional Verbal and Performance IQs. Derived regression equations are reported along with a discussion of the interpretability of the Freedom From Distractibility factor.