5至7岁儿童道德判断依据的研究

本研究分别用动机错误程度差异增大与后果严重程度差异缩小的两个系列改编对偶故事对5至7岁儿童的道德判断依据进行了研究。结果表明,在上述两种情况下,儿童由原来的后果判断转为动机判断的人数均达显著性水平。儿童的年龄越大,转变的人数就越多。据此可以认为,这个时期的儿童在进行道德判断时会受到行为后果与行为动机两个方面的影响,只不过是行为后果的影响作用要大大超于行为动机;而随着年龄的增大,两者的相对影响作用逐步会此消彼长。皮亚杰的有关结论应予以补充与修正。     

Irrelevance of sample stimuli and directed forgetting in pigeons

A successive matching procedure was used to investigate which aspect of the test-omission procedure is responsible for establishing a postsample stimulus as a cue to forget in pigeons. It was found that a postsample stimulus that reliably followed a sample that was irrelevant to performance functioned as a cue to forget. This result was obtained regardless of whether termination of that postsample stimulus was followed by reinforcement or by the presentation of sample-independent discriminative stimuli. It was also found that a postsample stimulus that functioned as a cue to forget at the beginning of training lost that function when it was repeatedly presented on trials in which the sample was relevant to performance. These findings reveal that (a) neither a reduction in reinforcement rate nor the omission of the opportunity for discriminated responding is necessary to establish an effective cue to forget and (b) irrelevance of the sample to performance is a sufficient condition to establish a cue to forget. These results suggest that a postsample stimulus that is presented on trials in which remembering the sample is not reinforced differentially will come to set the occasion for not remembering the sample.     

Recognition memory in older adults: adjustment to changing contingencies.

Four older and 4 younger men were given extended exposure to a continuous-recognition memory procedure. Experimental variables included the type of stimulus (alphanumeric strings, words, or sentences), the intervals separating repeated items, gains and losses for correct and incorrect recognitions, and the extent of practice with the memory task. Signal detection analyses indicated that the older men generally were less accurate (sensitivity), particularly when the stimuli were strings, but that age differences decreased with practice. Under conditions in which the payoff matrix was neutral, the older and younger men showed equivalent rates of hits and false alarms (bias). Alteration of the matrix to require more liberal or more conservative patterns of recognition responding led to corresponding changes for men of both ages. Adjustments by the older men, however, were not as close to the bias values called for by the new matrices.     

Facilitative effects of forgetting from short-term memory on growth of long-term memory in retardates

Competing explanations of the beneficial effect of spacing in retardate discrimination learning were tested. Three-trial multidimensional (“junk”) problems were presented concurrently to educable retardates with MAs over 8 years. The spacing interval spearating Trials 1 and 2 was filled with either zero, four, or eight interpolations, the interpolations being either trials on similar junk problems or repetitions of a single, well-learned dot-pattern discrimination. The principal findings were that: (1) while short-term retention of junk problems (as measured by Trial 2 performance) suffered greater interference from similar junk interpolations than from dot-pattern interpolations, long-term learning (as measured by a delayed Trial 3) was superior following the highly interfering junk problems; and (2) spacing facilitated learning only following highly interfering interpolations. These results are inconsistent with consolidation and rehearsal theories but support the prediction of the Sperber. Greenfield, and House (Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1973, 99) spacing model that forgetting from short-term memory facilitates retardate learning.     

Recency, immediate recognition memory, and reaction time

Four classes of possible mechanisms for short-term item recognition are distinguished: (I) pure list-search, (II) direct-access activation (or trace strength) discrimination, (III) mixtures (of I and II), and (IV) response-association. Manipulations of recency, particularly of negative probe items, provide critical tests between them. Two experiments are reported using Sternberg' s 1966 varied-set reaction time paradigm, coupled with procedures intended to minimize rehearsal and control the recency of probes and memory set items. RT and error rate were greater for negative probe items that had recently been presented than for items less recently presented, and this effect increased with positive set size. In contrast, positive RT was, except for the initial item, a decreasing function of recency (= serial position), and there was no additional effect of set size per se. A brief filled delay between list and probe increased positive RT but not the slope of the set size function. These and other findings appear to reject models of Classes I and IV and, while implying some direct discrimination of an item's recency, require modification of the models of Classes II and III. The implications are discussed with respect to the relation between the two versions of Sternberg's paradigm and also in connection with facilitatory “priming” effects in memory.     

THE EFFECTS OF DIFFERENT REINFORCEMENT CONDITIONS ON THE TEST PERFORMANCE OF MULTIHANDICAPPED DEAF CHILDREN1

The present study explored the effects of different reinforcement conditions on the number of correct responses on the Raven Progressive Matrices. Four groups of 11- to 18-year-old multihandicapped deaf children matched on the basis of mean age and pretest scores were used. The groups were randomly assigned to any of four posttest conditions: end-of-session reinforcement, noncontingent reinforcement, delayed reinforcement, and immediate reinforcement. The mean posttest score of subjects tested under the immediate-reinforcement condition was significantly higher than that of any other group. No significant differences were observed between the mean posttest scores of the three other groups. The practical implications of using reinforcement procedures for testing purposes are discussed.     

The developmental relationship between identity and equivalence conservation

Hooper's (1969a) finding that identity conservation develops prior to equivalence conservation was investigated using a more stringent within-subject design. Seventy-two kindergarten, first, and second graders were given three conservation tasks: (1) Identity, (2) Equivalence 1, in which the perceptual cues were comparable to those in Identity, and (3) Equivalence 2, the traditional Piagetian conservation task. Each task was administered under two levels of transformation. No significant differences in performance as a function of level of transformation, type of equivalence task, or sex of S were found, but first and second grade Ss performed better than kindergarten Ss. Eighty-six percent of the sample conserved in an all-or-none fashion, and 7 Ss (10%) passed equivalence while failing identity, thus contradicting the developmental priority of identity conservation.