Delayed effects of practiced versus unpracticed responses after observation of movie violence

University men participating in an ostensible study of “impression formation” first received either an insulting or neutral evaluation of themselves from their supposed partner and then watched either a prize fight or an exciting but nonaggressive scene. After this, they either had an opportunity to evaluate their partner right away or they had to wait an hour before evaluating him. On scoring the subjects' written statements about the partner (to be seen by him and the experimenter), it was found that (1) for those given the immediate opportunity to be aggressive, the violent movie increased the strength of the angered subjects' initial attack on their partner over that displayed by the similarly insulted men shown the nonaggressive film; (2) if the angry subjects had to wait an hour before evaluating their partner, there was no difference between the aggressive and nonaggressive movie groups; (3) the aggression-heightening effect of the violent scene did carry over the intervening hour, however, if the insulted men had been given the earlier opportunity to evaluate their partner. It is suggested that the performance of an aggressive response soon after seeing an aggressive film increases the persistence of the aggressive reactions over time.     

Developmental changes in predicting one's own span of short-term memory

Developmental changes in the accuracy of predicting one's own recall were studied, using preschool, third grade, and college subjects in Experiment 1 and third grade and college subjects in Experiment 2. Experiment 1 showed that prediction accuracy increased from the preschool to the college years, subjects were not influenced by a potential “expectancy” bias in the procedure, and only third grade subjects were influenced by the presence of norms about peer performance. Experiment 2 showed that third graders and college subjects lower their predictions in the face of “false” norm information, with college subjects being the only group to under predict actual recall in both experiments. Thus, although adults are significantly more accurate than elementary shool children in estimating short-term recall, their susceptibility to norm information suggests that even they have uncertainty about their exact capabilities.     

Effects of warm and neutral models on the attention of observational learners

The study was conducted to examine observers' attention to adults following warm and neutral interactions with them. Forty-two preschool and 36 third grade girls interacted with a pair of female models in one of three treatment conditions in which models were, respectively, warm and neutral, neutral and neutral, or warm and warm. Subiects then witnessed the models play a picture-preference game and were asked to recall the models' responses. Analyses of the children's overt attention to the models' responses revealed a greater attention to a warm model when in the presence of both a warm and neutral model and less distraction by nonsocial stimuli when at least one warm model was present. A significant positive correlation was obtained between attention to and recall of the models' responses.     

The effect of children's spontaneous cognitive sets on discrimination learning

Two experiments investigated the role of children's spontaneous cognitive “sets” in pictorial discrimination learning. Lists were constructed to highlight either perceptual or conceptual similarities among the stimuli. In each experiment age by treatment interactions revealed that in comparison to the behavior of older children (sixth graders), that of younger children (kindergartners) is governed more by the perceptible than by the conceptual attributes of stimuli—data in complete accord with Bruner's view of cognitive development.     

Immediate and delayed punishment of human behavior by loss of reinforcement

Young adult humans pressed a key to obtain money. When responding was punished by presentation of a stimulus signifying that money was lost, response frequencies decreased and response latencies increased. Since these changes did not increase relative earnings, the aversive properties of loss of reinforcement were manifested independently or reinforcement gain. When loss punishment was delayed for either 10, 20, or 40 sec the extent of suppression was found to vary inversely with the response-punishment interval. Subsequent manipulations indicated that the effectiveness of delayed punishment was increased when the response also produced immediate conditioned punishment, i.e., a stimulus paired with the delayed loss stimulus. Instructions about the response-punishment contingency had similar effects. The findings were consistent with animal studies of delayed shock punishment, insofar as a similar delay-of-punishment gradient was observed, and with studies of delayed positive reinforcement, insofar as mediation through conditioned punishment (or instructions) increased the effectiveness of delayed punishment.     

Children judge "perspective" transformations of letterlike forms as different from prototypes

Children from 5 to 11 years old made same-different judgments of prototypes of letterlike forms paired with transforms of these prototypes generated on a dimension either critical or noncritical for object identification. For compression transformations (noncritical: as in perspective shift), frequency of correct “different” judgments increased as the degree of compression in the transform increased. This result challenges the view that dimensions irrelevant in object identification are ignored or not detected in graphic discrimination.