Self-control and choice in humans: Effects of video game playing as a positive reinforcer

Participants chose between reinforcement schedules differing in delay of reinforcement (interval between a choice response and onset of a video game) and/or amount of reinforcement (duration of access to the game). Experiment 1 showed that immediate reinforcement was preferred to delayed reinforcement with amount of reinforcement held constant, and a large reinforcer was preferred to a small reinforcer when both were obtainable immediately. Imposing a delay before the large reinforcer produced a preference for the immediate, small reinforcer in 40% of participants. This suggested a limited degree of “impulsivity.” In Experiment 2, unequal delays were extended by equal intervals, the amounts being kept equal. Preference for the shorter delay decreased, an effect that presumably makes possible the “preference reversal” phenomenon in studies of self-control. Overall, the results demonstrate that video game playing can produce useful, systematic data when used as a positive reinforcer for choice behavior in humans.     

Time urgency and the Type A behavior pattern: Implications for time investment and psychological entrapment

Type A's have been described as more time urgent than Type B's, and research indicates that they underestimate the passage of fixed time intervals. The present study examined the implications of these differences in time perception for decisions where time is a resource that can be invested. Type A's and B's were given an initial stake of $4 and provided the opportunity to invest some or all of that amount for the chance to win an additional $2. Investment occurred as a function of time, with subjects believing they would win the additional $2 if a counter reached a randomly determined number. Each unit increment on the counter also resulted in the loss of 1¢ from the initial stake, thus as the counter progressed, goal attainment became more certain, but expenses also increased. Subjects could stop the counter at any time and keep the remainder of their initial stake or continue to invest until the initial stake was depleted (the counter was programmed to never hit the “jackpot”). Half of the subjects could monitor the counter directly, while the other half could not and had to rely on their subjective time estimates. Results indicated that when objective time passage cues were present, Type A's and B's did not differ in their investment decisions. When subjects had to estimate time passage, however, Type A's invested far more than Type B's. These results indicate that under appropriate conditions, Type A's are more susceptible than Type B's to psychological entrapment.     

Immediate memory span, recognition memory for subspan series of words, and serial position effects in recognition memory for supraspan series of verbal and nonverbal items in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia

Four Broca's aphasics, four Wernicke's aphasics, and four matched controls were investigated on three verbal and one visual short-term memory tasks. Experiment 1 considered memory span and subspan recognition memory for verbal items and Experiment 2 assessed serial position effects in supraspan verbal recognition memory. The Broca's aphasics demonstrated verbal memory deficits, which could not be attributed to linguistic disturbances, while the verbal memory deficiencies seen with the Wernicke's aphasics could be regarded as secondary to linguistic defects. In Experiment 3, where visual recognition memory was investigated, only the Broca's aphasics showed deficient performance. The wider context of deficient mnemonic performance in aphasia is discussed.     

Psychological studies of children who have cancer

Increasingly, more optimistic prognoses for children who have cancer have led investigators to study the adjustment reactions of children who survive this traumatic experience. There is considerable evidence that the experience of having cancer, receiving prolonged and often painful treatment, and the uncertain condition of cancer survivorship have profound emotional effects on children. The characteristic features of the psychological impact of cancer are the experience of continuing uncertainty in a life-threatening crisis and the resultant search for meaning. Studies are beginning to find that even very young children actively struggle to organize and make sence of this experience.     

Acquisition and transfer effects of cued and noncued double alternation schedules with rats

In an attempt to establish patterning, rats were administered eight daily runway trials in a double alternation schedule with distinctive goal events in either a consistent or a varied sequence. Different magnitudes of reward differentiated the reinforced trials, whereas different lengths of confinement in the empty goal box distinguished the nonreinforced trials. During acquisition, rats given the consistent cue sequence “patterned”, whereas the group presented varied cues did not. Subsequently, the Consistent and Varied Cue Groups were subdivided and were administered for 2 days only one of the four acquisition training goal events. During the final 5 days of transfer testing, all subgroups were switched to receiving four daily trials with a second and then a third goal event. In agreement with expectations derived from stimulus aftereffects theory, performance was immediately in accord with the reinforcement contingencies previously established during acquisition training and not the goal event actually presented during testing.     

Physiological activity in an attribute learning task.

The relationship between the amount of information processing in an Attribute Learning task and autonomic activity, measured by skin conductance response (SCR), was investigated. The amount of information processing was manipulated by type of concept and feedback. Furthermore, the influence of practice and verbalization was studied.Three types of concepts were used: conjunction, exclusion and joint denial. The stimulus population consisted of four three-valued dimensions. The results showed that (1) SCR did not differ among concepts; (2) SCR varied with type of feedback, it being smallest at blanks and largest at infirming feedback; (3) SCR was related to the number of confirmations preceding infirmation; (4) subjects mainly used the strategy ‘reject hypothesis only after infirmation’; (5) subjects usually selected not-yet-tested hypotheses; (6) practice influenced performance; (7) verbalization did not result in more efficient use of information; however, the appropriateness of the experimental set-up to study this factor was questioned; (8) conjunction was easier to learn than the other concepts. The results were discussed in terms of uncertainty reduction, resulting from testing hypotheses in a concept learning task.     

The development of analogical reasoning processes.

Two experiments were conducted to test the generalizability to children of a theory of analogical reasoning processes originally proposed for adults (R. J. Sternberg, Psychological Review, 1977a, 84, 353–378; R. J. Sternberg, Intelligence, information processing, and analogical reasoning: The componential analysis of human abilities, Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1977b) and to examine the development of analogical reasoning processes in terms of five proposed sources of cognitive development: (a) availability of component operations; (b) strategy for combining multiple component operation; (c) strategy for combining multiple executions of the same component operation; (d) consistency in use of strategy; (e) component-operation latency and difficulty. Between 15 and 21 subjects in each of grades 2, 4, 6, and adulthood (ages 8, 10, 12, and 19 years, respectively) were tested in their ability to solve analogies of systematically varied difficulty. Performance was measured in terms of latencies for items solved correctly, latencies for all items solved, and error rates. A slightly modified version of the Stenberg, 1977(a), Stenberg, 1977(b) theory was found to be applicable to the data for each of the age levels tested. In analogies with perceptually separable attributes, change over age was found in sources (d) and (e) noted above. In analogies with perceptually integral attributes, change over age was found in sources (a), (c), (d), and (e). Developmental trends were discussed in terms of past theory and findings, and possible reasons for differences in developmental patterns between the two kinds of analogies were suggested.     

Effectiveness of a brief counseling intervention in stimulating vocational exploration

The intervention procedures used in this study, a brief report of vocational interest scores and small group sessions on vocational planning, were designed to encourage girls to consider the full range of occupations, unrestricted by sex-role stereotypes. In each of three schools, ninth-grade girls with average academic ability or above were randomly assigned to an intervention group (N = 195) and a control group (N = 195). Analyses of 1- and 3-month outcome data indicated that the intervention stimulated occupational exploration and increased congruence between occupational preferences and measured interests. Outcomes differed according to interest type, thus suggesting that certain students may need more counselor attention than others.