Long-delay taste aversion learning in an unpoisoned rat: Exposure to a poisoned rat as the unconditioned stimulus

M. J. Lavin, B. Freise, and S. Coombes (Behavioral and Neural Biology, 1980, 28, 15–33) have shown that if two rats consume a flavored solution and one is poisoned, the unpoisoned partner will also exhibit a flavor aversion during a later preference test. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that a sufficient condition for obtaining this aversion is that the poisoned partner be present with the unpoisoned rat after it has consumed the flavored solution. It is not necessary that the poisoned partner be present when the flavored solution is consumed or indeed have had any exposure to the flavored solution. Experiment 3 showed that the unpoisoned partner can exhibit a flavor aversion when there is a temporal gap of as long as 6 hr between consumption of the flavored solution and exposure to the poisoned rat.     

Locus of control and the perception of freedom in an agent of reinforcement

Internals and externals observed a staged videotape presentation that portrayed a “teacher” and a “learner” engaging in a 20-item anagrams task. For externals, any variability (10, 50, and 90% schedule) in the reinforcing behavior of the “teacher” (agent of reinforcement) resulted in significantly greater perceived freedom than when no variability (0 and 100% schedule) occurred in behavior. For internals, perceived freedom was a negative linear function of the amount of reinforcement administered. Internals indicated that they could influence the behavior of the “teacher” in all reinforcement conditions, whereas externals indicated that they could influence only the “teachers” in the variable reinforcement conditions. It was concluded that greater freedom is attributed to a person whose behavior is perceived as congruent with the person's inner disposition.     

Test anxiety and breadth of encoding experiences in free recall

Subjects made three ratings for each of 30 words, then had an unannounced immediate free recall test and a second test after 1 week. There was no evidence to indicate significantly better retention on either test when the dimensions rated were unrelated as opposed to related. Subjects low on test anxiety performed better overall than subjects who scored high on either the emotionality or worry components of test anxiety. On the delayed test, the test anxiety effect was apparent only when study ratings involved unrelated dimensions (i.e., broad encoding). This interaction is consistent with two conclusions. First, rating related dimensions led to narrow encodings, thus hindering low-anxiety subjects who normally encode broadly. Second, even explicit ratings of unrelated dimensions did not induce high-anxiety subjects to encode more broadly. That the high-anxiety deficit was not overcome even with explicit orienting tasks may indicate inflexibility in deploying memory strategies.     

A study of the relationship between individual differences in nonverbal expressiveness and factors of personality and social interaction

Some theoretical and applied implications of individual differences in nonverbal expressiveness were investigated in a medical setting. In Study I, the abilities of 21 physicians to express different emotions through voice tone were assessed and related to physician personality and to actual patient ratings of the physician. Study II replicated Study I using visual as well as vocal cues (i.e., videotapes) of a new sample of physicians, and added a study of physician greetings. It was found that: (1) Aspects of expressive ability were reliably correlated with a cluster of personality traits, thus supporting the notion that nonverbal affective style may be a window to inner dispositions; and (2) expressive ability was related to patient satisfaction with the interpersonal manner of their physicians and to the judged likeability of the physician's greeting, thus providing evidence for the importance of this ability for social interaction.     

Do alcoholic amnesic patients passively rehearse verbal information?

Recently it has been claimed that alcoholic amnesic patients mainly engage in passive repetitive rehearsal during spontaneous learning and that this contributes to their memory problem. To test this hypothesis further, two experiments were conducted which compared list learning in amnesic patients and normal controls. In Experiment I both groups of subjects were required either to learn a list which was presented five times consecutively with free recall following each presentation, or they were asked to repeat each word out loud as they saw it and carry on doing so until the next word was shown. Five presentation trials were given and free recall was again tested after each presentation. It was predicted that if the amnesics' spontaneous form of learning involved only passive repetition there should be no difference between learning and repetition for this group while the controls should show an impairment in repeating compared to learning. The results showed that both groups of subjects were impaired to the same extent with repeating compared to learning and it was concluded that spontaneous learning was similar in both groups and that neither group merely passively rehearsed during spontaneous learning. A second experiment examined recognition performance of the two groups of subjects after learning or repeating lists of 20 words. Recognition was tested with distractors which were irrelevant, acoustically similar, graphemically similar, or semantically similar to the target word. It was found there were no differences between either of the groups in the pattern of errors made over the different distractor types. It was thus concluded that there was no encoding or rehearsal abnormality in the amnesic group. The possibility of differences between groups of alcoholic amnesics was discussed as well as the putative role of slow cognitive processing in their memory problems.     

Gaze and emotional expression: The effects of message positivity-negativity and emotional intensity

The effects of emotional positivity-negativity and emotional intensity on actor's gaze were examined by simulating emotional situations to a camera. Female subjects were first asked to act out a neutral message as if they were speaking to a person to obtain a baseline for direct gaze. Subjects were then asked to perform a positive or a negative message to the camera. Half the subjects attempted to express the message with strong emotion; half expressed it with weak, ambivalent emotion. As expected, it was found that more direct gaze was maintained when expressing strong emotion. Whether the message was positive or negative did not affect gaze direction. The results were discussed in relation to the dimensions of nonverbal communication.     

Machiavellianism and spontaneous cheating in competition

Seventy-two undergraduates were assigned to groups defined by the combinations of the factors opportunity to cheat (yes, no), type of competition (personal, impersonal), and subject Machiavellianism (high, low). As predicted, cheating occurred in the opportunity to cheat, impersonal competition, high Mach group and in the opportunity to cheat, personal competition, low Mach group, extending the results of previous Machiavellianism research from situations in which cheating was explicitly encouraged by another person to a situation in which cheating was undertaken at the subject's own initiative.     

Predicting social behavior from personality traits

The classic view of traits as dispositions was examined and a number of ambiguities noted. When clarified, implications for predicting social behaviors from personality variables were derived. Two types of behavioral criterion were delineated, and it was argued that personality measures should be systematically related to multiple act criteria, but not necessarily to single act criteria. It was suggested that behaviors could be treated as items on a behavioral measure of personality and that standard scaling criteria be applied in identifying behaviors that should be related to a given trait dimension. In attempting to identify behaviors which are linearly related to a personality trait, the application of Bayes theorem was shown to be of theoretical interest. Two indices, a validity index and a linearity index, were derived from Bayes theorem and it was shown that validity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for linearity.     

Performance as a function of resultant achievement motivation (perceived ability) and perceived difficulty

Subjects worked on a task which was described as either easy or difficult. When the task was thought to be difficult, Ss high in resultant achievement motivation performed better than those low in resultant achievement motivation. However, when the task was perceived as easy, the high motive group performed worse than the low group. These results confirm a prediction from Kukla's attributional theory of performance, in which resultant achievement motivation is conceived as a measure of perceived ability. They are not, however, deriveable from Spence's theory of the effects on performance of objective task difficulty, nor from Weiner's hypothesis concerning the motivational effects of success and failure. On the other hand, Kukla's theory provides an explanation for both the data usually cited in support of Spence's position and those taken to confirm Weiner's hypothesis. The relationship between the present results and Atkinson's theory of achievement motivation, which also hypothesizes an effect of perceived difficulty on performance, is discussed.     

Individual differences in speed of retrieval from semantic memory

In the first of two experiments, the stimulus items consisted of category names followed by a single letter (e.g., fruit-P). The subjects (half introverted, half extraverted) were required to respond as quickly as possible with a member of the specified category starting with the letter. Extraverts responded significantly faster than introverts, and more so when the most likely response was of low frequency than when it was of high frequency. In the second experiment, subjects were assigned to one of four groups representing the four combinations of high and low Extraversion and high and low General Activation. The speed-of-recall task from the first experiment was used on some trials; on the remaining trials, a speed-of-recognition task was used. Extraverts had greater response speed than introverts for recall, but not for recognition. That finding, plus interactions between Extraversion and General Activation, suggested an interpretation of the results in terms of the Yerkes-Dodson Law.