Sociolinguistic contexts of the preschool

Two studies were conducted to determined the effects of specific learning centers on preschoolers' functional uses of language. In Study 1, preschoolers in three separate same-age classrooms (2-, 3-, and 5-year-olds) were observed on a time sampling scheduling during their free play periods for four weeks. Preschoolers' individual utterances were coded as serving one or more than one function; functions were defined following Halliday. The housekeeping and block centers tended to elicit the most individual and multifunctional utterances. The fantasy play and social interaction among children in these centers were thought to be responsible for this mature use of language.In Study 2, same-age and same-sex dyads from two age groups (4- and 5-year-olds) were observed in experimental settings playing with blocks alone and with dramatic props alone. Both contexts elicited a predominance of imaginative language, though the dramatic context elicited more imaginative language than the blocks. With age, children generated more individual functions and multifunctional utterances.     

The use of the psychological stress evaluator with stutterers

A lie detection instrument, the Psychological Stress Evaluator, has been reported by the manufacturer as being capable of quantifying changes in the degree of “stress” as reflected by a subject's voice. Speech pathologists might consider the use of the instrument in clinical and research activities concerning the stutterer's emotional (stress) reaction to stuttering.To test the validity of the instrument, four stutterers and four normal speakers were recorded while making consecutive telephone calls. Randomized recordings were analyzed by a company trained technical to determine the degree of stress for each speech sample.Results indicated that both groups had a significant reduction of stress from the first to the fourth telephone call. However, the groups did not differ in the degree of stress during the ordered series of calls. Due to the inability of the Psychological Stress Evaluator to differentiate between the groups, the validity of the instruments is questioned.     

Fluid and crystallized intelligence and primacy/recency components of short-term memory

Primacy and recency recall measures, obtained from both free and probed-recall tasks, were included in a battery of tests which also contained markers for fluid intelligence, crystallized intelligence, and cognitive speed factors. Our results confirmed previous findings that for subjects within the normal range of abilities, recency recall from probed-recall tasks is more closely linked to intelligence than is primacy recall. A new finding was also obtained: that primacy recall is correlated more with measures of cognitive speed than is recency recall. These results are discussed in terms of the concept of working memory and its relation to intelligence.     

The complexity continuum in the radex and hierarchical models of intelligence

The hierarchical and radex models of ability organization are shown to be parallel. Both models suggest a complexity continuum along which cognitive performance tasks can be arrayed. In our revised radex model, the complexity continuum from the center to the periphery is shown to correspond to the general-to-specific dimension in factor analyses, or to test correlations with the general factor; complexity is redefined as apparent processing complexity. Examination of the theoretical and empirical bases for this continuum indicates its central importance for theories of intelligence.     

The effects of hand and direction parameter preknowledge on choice reaction times

The two studies undertaken investigated how reaction times are affected by preknowledge concerning hand and direction parameters, and the order in which these data are disclosed. In the first experiment, preknowledge was manipulated by selecting 2-CRT pairs which had either a common hand or direction component. Reaction signal information content (as defined by the number of unknown response parameters) was controlled, but no parameter differences emerged. When parameter order was manipulated by sequential precuing, the ‘hand then direction’ order conferred a significant advantage. Motor preparation and response selection explanations for this effect are considered. Various difficulties with the paradigms used are discussed, including those of distinguishing between response selection and motor programming contributions, controlling and inferring the strategies adopted by subjects, and defining task difficulty. The prospects for independently fostering either response identification or motor preparation by means of an appropriate selection of precues are also discussed.     

Choice as a function of local versus molar reinforcement contingencies.

Rats were trained on a discrete-trial probability learning task. In Experiment 1, the molar reinforcement probabilities for the two response alternatives were equal, and the local contingencies of reinforcement differentially reinforced a win-stay, lose-shift response pattern. The win-stay portion was learned substantially more easily and appeared from the outset of training, suggesting that its occurrence did not depend upon discrimination of the local contingencies but rather only upon simple strengthening effects of individual reinforcements. Control by both types of local contingencies decreased with increases in the intertrial interval, although some control remained with intertrial intervals as long as 30 s. In Experiment 2, the local contingencies always favored win-shift and lose-shift response patterns but were asymmetrical for the two responses, causing the molar reinforcement rates for the two responses to differ. Some learning of the alternation pattern occurred with short intertrial intervals, although win-stay behavior occurred for some subjects. The local reinforcement contingencies were discriminated poorly with longer intertrial intervals. In the absence of control by the local contingencies, choice proportion was determined by the molar contingencies, as indicated by high exponent values for the generalized matching law with long intertrial intervals, and lower values with short intertrial intervals. The results show that when molar contingencies of reinforcement and local contingencies are in opposition, both may have independent roles. Control by molar contingencies cannot generally be explained by local contingencies.     

Pierre de La Ramée et le déclin de la rhétorique

This article provides a basic general introduction to Ramus, and evaluates his role in the history of logic and rhetoric, especially with relation to the study of argumentation. The author agrees with Ong and other historians of logic that Ramus is not to be taken seriously as a logician, and that his undoubted importance in the history of ideas is to be found elsewhere.Ramus advocates a belief in nature, experience and reason, and rejects the reliance on the authority of ancient philosophers, above all Aristotle, though experience does not mean scientific experiment and, paradoxically, includes the example of great philosophers and writers. In the end Ramus is seen as responsible for substituting for ancient classical rhetoric an entirely ornamental rhetoric of figures which was to take over education (with the exception of the Jesuit schools) almost until our own day. This curtailing and diminishing of rhetoric is seen as a degeneration. Ancient five-part rhetoric had been concerned with convincing and persuading: Aristotle distinguished the analytic, scientific reasoning of logic, from dialectic which was based on opinion and probability and had close links with rhetoric; by the time of Cicero and Quintilian, who addressed themselves to jurists and politicians, logic has given way to dialectic. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance the two become assimilated; the evolution of this is traced here through the thirteenth-century Summulae logicales of Peter of Spain to the fifteenth-century German humanist logician Rudolph Agricola, who influenced Ramus partly through the intermediary of Johann Sturm. Ramus took over their topical theories but restricted them to logic/dialectic, and left rhetoric with little more than tropes and figures. He believed that there was only one method for teaching all the arts, and one dialectic common to them all. The distinction between analytical and dialectical has disappeared, with far-reaching consequences for the study of argumentation. Over the centuries logic has lost its connection with controversy and persuasion. With the development of the post-Cartesian, post-Baconian emphasis on the clarity of scientific discourse, and the mid-nineteenth-century interest in mathematical and formal logic, the process was complete. Argumentation, or the new rhetoric, aims to fill the gap thus created.

     

The second offspring of General Process Learning Theory: Overt behavior as the ambassador of the mind

Wasserman suggested in a recent book review that the study of intervening cognitive processes represents a current focus of interest in animal learning and that this has led to a revitalization of comparative psychology. An examination of the volume reviewed suggests that he may have overstated the case. Most of the authors to whom he refers expressed dissatisfaction with traditional stimulus-response associationism but few argued for the extreme (information processing) sort of cognitive approach described by Wasserman.     

The acquisition of observing.

Pigeons were exposed to stimuli correlated with the presence or absence of a variable-interval 60-second schedule of reinforcement only while they depressed a crossbar or "perch." In the first experiment, the stimuli were different tilts of a line displayed on the key. When the difference in brightness between the line and the background (salience) was maximal, seven of eight birds acquired the discrimination, but when the difference was reduced by 50%, only one succeeded. In the second experiment, wavelength of chamber illumination served as the relevant dimension. Neither experiment showed a large effect attributable to the magnitude of the difference (disparity) between the positive and the negative stimulus. Individual differences in time spent observing were positively correlated with level of discrimination in the presence of the stimuli. All birds produced the positive stimulus for a greater proportion of the available time than they did the negative stimulus. This may be the mechanism that provides selective reinforcement of observing. Finally, the formation of a discrimination was analyzed in terms of changes in the proportion of time spent in contact with the discriminative stimuli.