The Attribution of Positive and Negative Qualities to Social Actions

This research reports on the manner in which extrinsic qualities are attributed to different forms of social action. Particular concern was given to the question of how such attribution of properties might be related to a person's desire to be involved in the action. Two findings seemed to be relatively clear. First, quite arbitrary qualities are attributed to various social actions with a high degree of consistency. Because these qualities cannot be considered intrinsic to the action, the consistent attribution of such qualities must come from some source other than the actions themselves. Second, of the several qualities examined, the most powerful attributed quality for purposes of social motivation appeared to be the general concept of display. Actions perceived as having a high degree of display potential for an actor were also actions that respondents were willing to commit themselves to or become involved in to a profound degree.     

Experimental Studies in Ocular Behavior: II. Ocular Inadequacies in Epileptic Patients

The Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Study of Values and the Brown Modification of the Thouless Test of Religious Orthodoxy were administered to 120 male and female students in introductory psychology. Measures of anxiety, self-esteem, authoritarianism, and humanitarianism were also administered to the Ss in an effort to determine whether the two measures of religiosity would yield different personality and attitude profiles of the “religious” individual. A significant positive correlation was found between authoritarianism and the Thouless Test and between humanitarianism and the Study of Values religious measure. All other correlations involving the two measures of religiosity were found to be nonsignificant. These findings lend support to the notion that using two divergent measures of religiosity does result in the formation of different profiles of the “religious” individual.     

中学生好胜心培养的实验研究

以积极的归因训练、表扬与奖励和适当的竞赛等手段对中学生的好胜心进行培养,通过一个学期三个阶段的培养,结果发现,实验班学生的好胜心水平增量显著高于对照班学生,实验班学生的学习成绩增量也显著高于对照班学生,好胜心水平与学习成绩存在着显著的正相关。研究表明,积极的归因训练、表扬与奖励、适当的竞赛是培养中学生好胜心的有效措施。     

The development of analogy making in children: Cognitive load and executive functions

The aim of the current study was to investigate the performance of 6-, 8-, and 14-year-olds on an analogy-making task involving analogies in which there are competing perceptual and relational matches. We hypothesized that the selection of the common relational structure requires the inhibition of other salient features, in particular, perceptual matches. Using an A:B::C:D paradigm, we showed that children’s performance in analogy-making tasks depends crucially on the nature of the distractors. Children chose more perceptual distractors having a common feature with C compared with A or B (Experiment 1). In addition, they were also influenced by unstructured random textures. When measuring reaction times instead of accurate responses, only the 8-year-olds’ reaction times were significantly influenced by perceptual distractors. The 6-year-olds seemed to select the first match they noticed, and the 14-year-olds were not influenced (or much less influenced) by featural distractors. These results are compatible with an analogy-making account based on varying limitations in executive functioning at different ages.     

Sources of the discontinuity effect: Playing against a group versus being in a group

Intergroup relations tend to be more competitive than relations between individuals. This difference, called the “discontinuity effect,” has been demonstrated under a wide variety of conditions. Two separate explanations for the discontinuity effect were explored in our research. The first explanation is that something about playing against a group leads people to compete. The second explanation is that something about being in a group leads people to compete. The results supported both explanations, although the evidence more strongly favored the effect of being in a group. Distrust mediated both effects.     

结构限制和作业难度对双重作业绩效的影响

通过对不同双重任务的呈现间隔时间和不同任务难度的双重任务的操作研究,探讨了结构限制与资源竞争对双重任务操作绩效的影响。实验结果表明：(1)两种作业呈现的间隔时间对双重任务操作绩效有明显的影响。间隔时间越大,双重任务的作业绩效越好。(2)作业难度对双重任务的操作有明显的影响。作业难度越大,双重任务的操作绩效越差。(3)两个作业呈现的间隔时间不同并不影响作业难度对双重任务操作绩效的作用。本研究的实验结果进一步证实了双重任务操作的三因素假设：结构限制、信息干扰和资源竞争是影响双重任务操作绩效的三个独立的原因。