Stimulus factors in children's learning set performance

Three experiments are reported which investigate the effects of attentional factors on learning set performance of children. Number of varying irrelevant dimensions, trials per problem, and age were examined. The first experiment tests with 6- and 8-year-old-children the effects of one as opposed to two varying irrelevant dimensions. An interaction between age and dimensions showed younger children to be differentially affected by the treatment conditions, two varying irrelevant dimensions being more difficult than one. There was no difference between treatments for the older children, nor between older and younger subjects receiving one varying irrelevant dimension. In the second experiment, 6- and 8-year-olds were examined on two varying irrelevant dimension problems, receiving either 4 or 12 trials per problem. Amount of exposure within-problems, affected performance with 12 trials per problem resulting in superior performance at both age levels. A third experiment tested 6-, 8-, and 10-year-old-children using one and two varying irrelevant dimension problems with 4 and 12 trials per problem. Results confirmed the finding that learning set acquisition is influenced by irrelevant dimensions and within-problems exposure, with these effects interacting with age and amount of training. These findings support the utility of applications of an attentional analysis to the learning set performance of normal children.     

Self-verification processes: How we sustain our self-conceptions

It is proposed here that individuals use their social interactions as opportunities to verify and confirm their self-conceptions. In a series of empirical investigations, three unique strategies of self-verification are examined. In Investigation I, participants were more likely to seek social feedback when they believed that it would confirm their self-conceptions. In Investigation II, participants elicited reactions from their interaction partners that confirmed their self-conceptions, especially when they suspected that their interaction partners' appraisals might disconfirm their self-conceptions. In Investigation III, participants preferentially recalled social feedback that confirmed their self-conceptions. Thus, within each of three distinct phases of the social interaction, people sought to verify their self-conceptions. The interplay of different strategies of self-verification and the conditions under which they will occur are discussed.     

The effects of symmetry and contour on recognition memory in children

Children in prekindergarten, kindergarten, and second grade were tested on a delayed match-to-sample task using abstract visual patterns. The patterns varied both in type of visual organization (unstructured, diagonally symmetrical, vertically symmetrical, and horizontally symmetrical) and in amount of contour. Following the initial memory task, we attempted to train half of the children at each grade by directing their attention to axes of symmetry; the other half of the children received a control task. Subsequently, the subjects were given a second delayed match-to-sample test. On both pre- and post-training trials, structure influenced performance, especially in the two younger groups. Vertical and horizontal symmetry generally facilitated performance in the prekindergarteners, while all three types of symmetry facilitated performance in the kindergarteners. In addition, children generally responded more accurately to patterns with lower levels of contour. They also made more like-contour than unlike-contour confusions, indicating that quantitative aspects of patterns were encoded. Group differences suggested that both processing capacity and memory increase during the age range studied. Finally, there was no indication that training improved performance at any age.     

Instrumental to Pavlovian transfer: Learning about response-reinforcer contingencies affects subsequent learning about stimulus-reinforcer contingencies

Two experiments examined the interaction between response-reinforcer (R-S) and stimulus-reinforcer (S-S) learning. In both experiments, three groups of rats were exposed to escapable, yoked inescapable, or no shocks. All groups were then exposed to either two or four sessions of truly random control (TRC) conditioning (Experiment 1) or to an excitatory conditioning procedure (Experiment 2) in which the shock US occurred with either moderate or low probability. Excitatory strength of the CS was assessed during extinction by a conditioned emotional response (CER) test. Inescapably shocked rats conditioned less than did their escapably shocked and nonshocked partners under all TRC conditions of Experiment 1, but only conditioned less than their partners in Experiment 2 when exposed to the moderate CS-US contingency for four sessions. These results provide a clear demonstration of transfer between instrumental training and Pavlovian excitatory conditioning and thus, support the influence of learning about R-S contingencies upon subsequent learning about S-S contingencies. Both a contextual blocking interpretation and an expansion of the learned helplessness theory were discussed as possible explanations of this transfer.     

A stimulus-compounding assay of conditioned inhibition and excitation

Rats were trained in an operant discrimination involving two panel lights, A and B. Group CI (Conditioned Inhibition) was trained to lever press in the presence of A (S+), and not in the presence of the compound AB (S?). The opposite contingencies held in Group CE (Conditioned Excitation). Response rates were higher in Group CE than in Group CI, especially to the positive stimulus. However, the groups acquired the discrimination at comparable rates. In a separate phase of the experiment, a tone (C) was separately trained in the absence of the lights to control responding. All seven possible combinations of A, B, and C were then presented randomly during extinction. The inhibitory effect of B on C in Group CI was comparable in magnitude to the excitatory effect of B on C in Group CE. B's effect on C was not altered by the presence or absence of A, regardless of whether A was inhibitory or excitatory. The symmetry between CI and CE revealed by the stimulus-compounding test may be partly artifactual.     

The effectiveness of attentional diversion and situation redefinition for reducing stress due to a nonambiguous Threat

After receiving a sample shock, subjects in a Threat Condition were told that they would receive additional painful shocks while subjects in a Nonthreat Condition were not threatened with additional shocks. Subjects in an Attentional Diversion Condition were then instructed to read and think about an amusing story, subjects in a Situation Redefinition Condition were instructed to write down reasons why they should not be afraid in this situation, and subjects in a Control Condition were not given any instructions for coping with stress. (Coping Conditions were factorially crossed with Threat Conditions and 192 subjects were employed.) Physiological measures (pulse rate, finger pulse volume, skin resistance) indicated that unlike the results of previous research, attentional diversion was effective in reducing stress but situation redefinition was not. Discussion was focused on the parameters which determine whether or not a coping strategy will be effective.     

Simultaneous and successive syntheses and intelligence

Recent studies on information processing have developed an alternative model of mental abilities which constitutes an integration of Russian clinical research and North American factor analytic research. This model proposes that information may be processed in a simultaneous synthesis or a successive synthesis. The present study examines variations in these syntheses in three intelligence groups in order to identify the types of information processing characteristic of different intelligence groups. A stratified sampling of verbal and nonverbal IQ was used to select 60 boys of age 9–10 in each of three verbal IQ ranges: 71–90, 91–110, and 111–130. A battery of tests used in previous research was administered to all subjects. Multivariate analyses of variance and discriminant analyses indicated that the IQ groups differed markedly on tests used to identify simultaneous synthesis, most notably Raven's Progressive Matrices, and differed slightly less on tests of successive synthesis. Factor analyses of the test intercorrelations for each group revealed more factorial invariance across the IQ groups than had been suggested by a previous exploratory study. It was concluded that strong individual differences exist in simultaneous and successive syntheses over the major portion of the standardized intelligence range, and no high degree of specialization of information processing was characteristic of an intelligence group.