Conditional reasoning and the competence-performance issue: A developmental analysis of a training task

Empirical investigations of conditional reasoning have generally found that both children and young adults perform poorly on tasks that require the selection or evaluation of those propositions that test the truth status of conditional statements (if p then q). Earlier work (D. O'Brien & W. F. Overton, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 1980, 30, 44–60) suggested that poor performances with these tasks by young adults show improvement following the introduction of evidence that contradicts earlier faulty inferences, and this improvement generalizes to other conditional reasoning tasks. The effects of the contradiction training were not found with younger subjects. The present research is an extension of the contradiction training paradigm. Ten-, fourteen-, and eighteen-year-olds were tested to assess developmental differences in improvement with an evaluation and a conditional syllogism task. Significant improvement in performance was found for the twelfth grade students following the contradiction training, and this generalized across tasks. This effect was not found for the two younger groups. The usual poor performance of the oldest group is considered to be a false negative assessment of their conditional reasoning competency. Further, it is suggested that several correct performances of younger reasoners are false positive assessments of their conditional reasoning competency.     

Cortical localization of finger spelling and oral language: A case study

Finger spelling of letters and words was mapped by means of the cortical stimulation procedure in a hearing patient undergoing a left dominant anterior temporal lobe resection for relief of a seizure disorder. Finger spelling was disrupted at five sites: three overlapping with one or more oral language functions at sites in the classical posterior language area, two relating only to finger spelling in the anterior temporal region. Following the resection which included these latter sites, both short- and long-term postoperative deficits in finger spelling are described. Implications for the organization of manually based communication behavior in the left hemisphere are discussed.     

Cognitive consequences of self-awareness

Recent research stimulated by Duval and Wicklund's self-awareness theory has shown that self-focused attention influences a wide range of attitudes, attributions, and behavior. The cognitive processes that supposedly mediate these effects have not been carefully explored, however. In order to discover whether a manipulation of self-awareness actually activates self-relevant thoughts, two studies were conducted using the Stroop color-word measure of concept activation in memory. The first revealed a pattern of differences between means that was consistent with the hypothesis, although the expected interaction of word content and presence of mirror and camera to produce longer color-naming latencies did not appear. Also, self-relevant words were read faster than neutral words, even though they had been matched for length, frequency, and part of speech. In the second study (a refinement of the first), the expected interaction was significant. The results support one of the central claims of self-awareness theory and suggest an alternative interpretation of classic findings concerning anxiety and memory.     

Stimulus learning versus response learning in a discriminated punishment situation

The suppression of bar pressing under two kinds of conditions was compared. Under one condition the response was occasionally punished by shock in the presence of a signal. Suppression to the signal was quickly acquired, indicating rapid learning about the signal-shock relationship (stimulus learning). Under the other condition the response was occasionally punished in the presence of the signal but additional free shocks were given in the absence of the signal. The slow acquisition of suppression found in this case indicated that there was, at best, only gradual learning about the response-shock relationship (response learning).     

The effects of active choice,shock duration,shock experience,and probability on the choice between immediate and delayed shock

The choice between immediate and delayed shock was investigated in three experiments with college students. Some Ss were required to choose between a longer-duration shock immediately and a shorter-duration shock later. Immediate, as opposed to delayed, choices were more frequent when: (a) Ss were required to choose the immediate or the delayed shock in contrast to other procedures in which Ss were required to choose immediate shock or passively wait for automatic shock to occur, (b) the duration of the immediate shock was reduced, (c) the S was given prior experience with shock, and (d) the probability of the immediate shock was reduced. Under some circumstances, shock delay and anxiety increased the frequency of immediate choices.