Social influence on attitudes and on anchoring of congeneric attitude scales

Criteria for distinguishing between attitude and response scale effects in “after-only” studies of source-recipient discrepancy were developed and applied in two experiments. These criteria refer to congeneric scales (i.e., multiple measures of the the same property, which may differ in origin, unit, and reliability). Persuasive information may function as a scale anchor, in which case it is expected to affect only that response scale to which it directly pertains. Alternatively, it may convice recipients to change attitudinal positions, and produce effects on all congeneric scales. In one experiment, the self-proclaimed leniency-sternness of a presiding judge in a manslaughter case was varied along with the sentence he imposed and his trustworthiness. In the second study, only the sentence was manipulated, while both leniency ratings and sentencing were measured as dependent variables. Both analyses revealed support for the response scale interpretation, in that effects were observed only on those scales that were directly manipulated.     

Stimulus control and delayed reinforcement

Pigeons were tested for generalization along the line-orientation dimension, after being trained on various two-component multiple schedules. The first component contained either a variable-interval 1-min schedule of immediate reinforcement or an extinction schedule and was associated with a plain white key (S1). The second component contained a variable-interval 1-min schedule of delayed reinforcement and was associated with a black line on a white background (S2). The major results showed that (a) decremental gradients were obtained around the stimulus associated with the delayed reinforcement component when S1 was associated with extinction, but that incremental gradients were obtained when S1 was associated with immediate reinforcement, (b) the subjects' pretraining did not affect the generalization gradients if sufficient training on the terminal multiple schedule was provided, and (c) changing the S1 schedule from immediate reinforcement to extinction produced behavioral contrast if reinforcement was delayed for 10 sec during S2, but not if it was delayed for 20 sec.     

Do the mentally retarded have poor memory?

The hypothesis that mentally retarded persons have a short-term memory deficit whixh is due to inadequate rehearsal strategies is reexamined. A reevaluation of results of a number of experiments suggests that normal and retarded persons differ on short-term memory tasks, and the superiority of normals is present from the time of initial stimulus exposure. While some evidence for slope differences in retention curves is found in a few tasks, it is not strong support for memory differences. The hypothesis that “memory” differences are due to differential encoding as a result of more adequate rehearsal by the normal subjects is unacceptable. If this were the case, some differences in slope of retention curves could be expected unless rehearsal beyond the encoding stage was totally precluded. The review points to a need for an empirical reevaluation of the issue with a full recognition that deficits in particular processes may characterize some retarded persons and not others.     

Cognitive changes associated with social skills training

Changes in locus of control and self-esteem during social skills training and at 6 month follow-up were investigated. Forty-four adolescent, male offenders were randomly assigned to a social skills training, attention-placebo, or no-treatment control procedure. The results showed that pre- to post-training increases in self-esteem were produced for both the social skills training and attention-placebo control groups, but not for the no-treatment control group. These increases did not continue during the follow-up phase; the social skills training group, which showed the greatest improvement during training, displayed a decrease in self- esteem during follow-up.The locus of control measures showed a statistically significant shift towards internality for the social skills training group during training, which was not found for the attention-placebo and no-treatment controls. During the follow-up phase, all three groups showed a statistically significant shift towards externality, suggesting a tendency for boys to view their behaviour and consequences as being under the control of chance factors or powerful others, during institutionalization. This effect was partly reversed during training for the social skills training group, but the effect was not long lasting. It seems therefore that social skills training is effective in producing an increase in self-esteem and a shift towards internal locus of control. These changes are, however, of short duration and the self-esteem shift may be the result of increased staff contact or other non-specific therapy factors.     

Infant search tasks reveal early concepts of containment and canonical usage of objects

It is difficult to gain unambiguous evidence on the use of concepts by infants. Many results can be accounted for in terms of action-based strategies. The evidence reported here fulfils the minimal criteria for the operation of working concepts in infants. Search tasks are used with a filled interval which forces memory-search, and the object is hidden in containers which fulfil their customary job or violate it. Infants treat an upright cup as a more reliable location marker than an inverted one. A series of experiments probes the phenomenon. The results indicate that the infants have a working concept of containment which can be triggered by the provision of containers in their canonical orientation. Even “object permanence tasks” lead infants to access their knowledge of the relationships into which things typically enter in the world outside the laboratory.     

A new measure for determining children's subjective organization of speech

A new technique for determining children's subjective organization of speech is described. The technique consists of teaching a child a sentence and then repeatedly (1) reading the sentence up to a selected point, (2) sounding a tone, and (3) having the child supply the next word. The time from the tone to the onset of the child's voice is the dependent variable. In the first study 6- and 8-year-old children memorized the following sentence: “John likes to feed the little puppies in the barn.” Their response times suggested that the dominant segmentation pattern consisted of four phrases: a subject phrase, a verb phrase, an object phrase and a modifier phrase. Within each phrase differences between reaction times were on the order of 30 msec. Across phrases they were on the order of 120 msec. The same trend emerged for subsamples of the children with various short-term memory sizes, and for adults. It also appeared for subsamples of the total scores (e.g., first six trials and last six trials). In order to provide further evidence of the technique's validity, different sentences of the same general type were presented to children with short-term memory spans of either 3, 4, or 5. As predicted, it was found that when children's spans corresponded to the number of hypothesized chunks (i.e., 4), they could repeat the sentences verbatim on the first exposure. They could not do so, however, when their spans were lower than that value or when the number of phrases was increased. It was concluded that the new technique is a promising one for assessing young children's patterns of speech segmentation.     

The effects of expected future interaction and prior group support on the conformity process

Previous results indicate that people conform more to group judgments when they have received unanimous group support for their opinions than when they have received no support. The present study tested the hypothesis that these differences would be attenuated when future interaction with the group members was anticipated. The 70 male subjects were tested in a Crutchfield-type conformity situation, where prior group support (100 vs 0%) and anticipation of future interaction (alone vs group) were manipulated. Predictions were based on an examination of conformity incentives that considered normative and informational sources of social influence, as well as Hollander's model of idiosyncracy credit. Consistent with predictions, conformity in the 0% prior support condition was greater when subjects anticipated future group interaction than when they did not, whereas the reverse was true in the 100% prior support condition. In addition, conformity was correlated negatively with both confidence in task ability and feelings of group acceptance when future interaction with the group was anticipated. These data suggest that when future group activity is expected, the tendency to reciprocate past treatment from the group is reduced.     

An investigation of the arousal model of interpersonal intimacy

In a study designed to test Patterson's arousal model of nonverbal intimacy, the heartrate, gaze, smiles, body orientation, and body lean of each of 40 female subjects who interacted with an accomplice were measured. Within a factorial design, subjects were induced to view more or less favorably the accomplice, who subsequently increased or maintained the same level of nonverbal immediacy as she did in an earlier session. It was hypothesized that (1) an increase in the accomplice's immediacy would effect an increase in subjects' arousal (heartrate) which, in turn, (2) would lead to either reciprocal or compensatory nonverbal adjustments by subjects, depending on whether they viewed the accomplice more or less favorably, respectively. The results supported the first but not the second hypothesis. However, interpretation of the results suggests, nevertheless, that they may be consistent with the arousal model.