The effects of observation on emotional arousal and affiliation

This study assessed the influence of anticipated experimenter surveillance during the performance of a painful or potentially embarrassing act on affiliative preferences before engaging in that act. As predicted, there was an overall preference for isolation when the act to be performed was embarrassing, and this tendency increased with anticipated surveillance. There was an overall preference for affiliation under fear arousal, and this preference also increased with anticipated surveillance. Contrary to previous research, whether or not the potential affiliate was a subject in the experiment (i.e., in a similar or dissimilar emotional state) did not affect these tendencies. Possible ways of accounting for these findings are discussed.     

The extinction of within-compound flavor associations

Three experiments studied extinction of the associations which are formed between two flavors presented in a simultaneous compound. In Experiment 1 those associations were identified by a sensory preconditioning procedure in which the poisoning of one element of the compound led to the rejection of the other element. Separate presentation of either element between their joint occurence and the poisoning of one element sharply attenuated the rejection of the other element. That attenuation was interpreted in terms of the extinction of within-compound associations. Experiment 2 obtained similar results with an alternative extinction procedure in which the elements of the original compound were presented in other compounds. Experiment 3 obtained similar results when the existence of the within-compound associations was determined by an alternative assessment procedure in which one element of the compound was made more attractive by the induction of a specific hunger. These experiments suggest that within-compound associations can be extinguished when the elements are separately presented outside of the compound. Experiments 2 and 3 make less plausible an alternative interpretation of the effects of separate element presentation in terms of reduction of the novelty of the element. The findings may be taken as implying that the elements of a simultaneously presented compound are joined by a single symmetrical association which acts at various points during a sensory preconditioning experiment.     

Electromyographic indications of laryngeal-area activity during stuttering expectancy

Using surface electrodes, mean microvolt values of laryngeal-area muscle activity were determined for 13 male and 6 female stutterers during 10-sec periods in which single words were silently read and stuttering expectancy was indicated. No significant differences in levels of laryngeal-area muscle activity were found between periods of fluency expectancy and stuttering expectancy preceding both fluent and stuttered speech. The results were interpreted as being nonsupportive of the hypothesis that a breakdown in stutterers' laryngeal-area muscle activity occurs during moments of stuttering expectancy. In addition, the results suggest that the most common rationale for the utilization of laryngeal biofeedback procedures to enhance fluency should be questioned.     

The effects of individual differences in test anxiety and type of orienting task on levels of organization in free recall

In Experiment 1, high and low test-anxious subjects recalled a list composed of words that could be organized either by taxonomic categories or first letters. High-anxiety subjects showed less recall and conceptual clustering. There was no anxiety difference in alphabetic clustering, but low-anxiety subjects used alphabetic clusters to bridge transitions between conceptual categories more often than did high-anxiety subjects. An initial orienting task which required semantic processing reduced the recall deficit for high-anxiety subjects but not the clustering deficit. Low-anxiety subjects seemed minimally affected by a nonsemantic-orienting task. Experiment 2 used a list that could be organized by associates or rhymes. High-anxiety subjects recalled less and exhibited less clustering of both types. The nonsemantic-orienting task depressed performance for both anxiety levels, though the effect was somewhat greater for high-anxiety subjects. Overall, these results provide little evidence to support the hypothesis that high-anxiety subjects process differently only for semantic content, but methodological limitations preclude unequivocally rejecting that view.     

Self-consciousness,self-report of aggressiveness,and aggression

Private self-consciousness consists of attending to one's thoughts, feelings, and motives. Public self-consciousness consists of attending to oneself as a social object. The effect of dispositional self-consciousness on the accuracy of self-reports was studied in research on aggression. High- and low-private self-conscious subjects rated their own aggressiveness. Several weeks later their aggressive behavior was objectively measured. The correlation between self-report of aggressiveness and aggressive behavior was significantly higher for high-than for low-private self-conscious subjects. The correlation between self-report and behavior was unaffected by public self-consciousness. The implications of these findings for self-consciousness theory and personality dispositions are discussed.     

Experiential and physiological responses associated with anger and aggression in women and men

In a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design, 48 male and female college students were either given a “sex-appropriate” provocation or were not provoked. Half of the subjects were then requested to give a “stream of consciousness” (SOC) report. Throughout the experiment, three physiological measures were monitored. Finally, all subjects delivered noxious sounds to their same-sex partner as part of a Buss-type learning task. No sex differences were found for subjects not giving the SOC report; provoked men and women were equally angry, hostile toward their partner, and displayed equal amounts of aggressive behavior. Provoked men reporting on their SOC, however, appeared to stimulate themselves to more aggression, whereas women seemed to adopt a nonhostile strategy for coping with their anger, thus reducing their inclination to behave aggressively. These patterns of results were closely paralleled by physiological changes. The relative validity of systolic and diastolic blood pressure as indicators of anger arousal was also discussed.     

Neuropsychological significance of phonetically accurate and phonetically inaccurate spelling errors in younger and older retarded spellers

The performances of two groups of retarded spellers (who were equated with respect to the level of deficient performance in spelling, but who differed in the level of phonetic accuracy of their misspellings) at two different age levels were compared to those of normal spellers who had been matched for age and WISC Performance IQ with the retarded spelling groups. The results indicated very marked differences in a number of linguistic skills between the normal spellers and the retarded spellers whose misspellings were characterized by phonetic inaccuracy. The performances of the retarded spellers who produced a preponderance of phonetically accurate misspellings differed markedly from those of the normal spellers only when the task demands involved fairly complex linguistic-cognitive operations. For the most part, the differences among the three groups were in evidence only at the older age level studied.     

The universal nature of human intelligence: Evidence from games

Mentally retarded individuals have relatively greater difficulty in dealing with strategic games and puzzles than with many other tasks. Consequently, it is of interest to find that strategic games have been played since ancient times, are played throughout the world, and that players who excel are frequently considered wise. Hidden within the more obvious differences between cultures, strategic games are an invariant expression of certain universal intellectual traits.     

Selective attention and changes in clinical state

Thirty inpatients of a psychiatric unit were given the Mini-Mult and a series of auditory selective attention tasks in order to test the hypotheses that (1) impaired attention is related to degree of pathology, and (2) improvement in clinical state leads to improved ability to selectively attend. The results showed that the relationship between the Mini-Mult and the listening tasks is significant only when the subjects had to exclude irrelevant stimuli (interference condition). The results also indicated that the relationship between clinical changes and changes in attentional performance is significant. The findings were discussed in terms of a quantitative theory of attention.     

The neurotic paradox and self-punitive behavior in humans

Human subjects learned a key-pressing response in order to avoid or escape shock. The reinforcement contingencies were then changed to punishment or to regular nonpunished extinction. The locus of shock onset and offset was systematically varied during the punishment phase. More subjects reported awarencess of the change in the nonpunished extinction group. By inference, the punished groups responded more, and thus the results appear analogous to animal studies on vicious circle, self-punitive responding. Discriminability of change from acquisition to extinction appeared to affect detection of the change.