The effects of positive examiner verbal comments on the total WISC-R performance of institutionalized EMR students

Forty educably mentally retarded (EMR) students were randomly selected and assigned to one of two treatment groups. Students in the experimental group were verbally praised after their responses to the WISC-R questions, while the students in the control group received nonevaluative procedural comments. The scaled scores for five of eleven subtests, in addition to the Verbal, Performance and Full Scale indices, were significantly greater under the experimental procedure. The treatment's efficacy and considerations for future research were noted and discussed.     

Avoiding and seeking self-focused attention

Male and female undergraduates read aloud statements about women which were either attitudinally consistent, discrepant, or neutral relative to their attitudes toward women. Following this, they were given the opportunity to choose to wait in front of a mirror or a nonreflecting wall. Subjects engaging in attitudinally discrepant behavior avoided self-focusing stimuli; those engaging in attitudinally consistent behavior sought contact with self-focusing stimuli. Intermediate tendencies to seek or avoid self-focused stimuli were demonstrated by subjects reading attitudinally neutral material. The theory of objective self-awareness was extended by demonstrating that self-focusing stimuli are not just avoided in response to negative discrepancies, but are sought out in response to attitude-behavior consistencies.     

The fate of ear asymmetries in short-term memory

Recognition memory for word lists presented to left or right ears was tested after filled retention intervals of 0-to 60-sec duration. Experiment 1 showed that the right-ear advantage (REA) for immediate recognition in dichotic listening does not occur after 10 sec delay. In Experiment 2, monaural presentation produced a nonsignificant REA which did not appear to be affected by delay. These data suggest that the REA for immediate report usually observed in the dichotic listening situation is a transient phenomenon which is based on phonetic encoding. The left hemisphere seems to be specialized for the initial reception of verbal information, but not for the storage or retention of such information over time.     

Sequential analysis of visual habituation in preschool children

The study breaks down the data from a preschool (mean age of students, 63 months) visual habituation experiment using a second-by-second analysis of the entire process, including fixation time and onsets for habituation and recovery trials and for each intertrial interval. The results parallel those suggested by Cohen, DeLoach, and Rissman (Child Development, 1975, 46, 611–617), for infants and are described using a two-process model of visual attention.     

An experimental analysis of social traps

Social traps, such as the overgrazing of pasturelands, overpopulation, and the extinction of species, are situations where individuals in a group respond for their own advantage in a manner damaging to the group. A laboratory analog was devised to simulate conditions that produce social traps. The traps were constructed by superimposing schedules of reinforcement. Single responses were followed by multiple consequences which were opposite in valence, with the negative consequence delayed. Subjects in groups of three could respond individually for points that applied toward class credit. Each ten presses of a button added one point to the subject's total and subtracted one point from a common pool. The pool was replenished with points at fixed rates. If subjects responded for points faster than the replenishment rates, the pool would empty and the experiment would terminate before subjects could accumulate maximum credit. In addition, the maximum pool size and the ability to communicate were varied. Main effects were found for both, which indicated the least effective resource management occurred when the pool was small and no communication allowed. An analysis of cumulative records showed differing response patterns across conditions.     

Extinction after aversive conditioning: An associative or nonassociative process?

A series of three eyelid-conditioning experiments with rabbits examined the traditional extinction procedure in which the CS is presented in the absence of US presentations. The first study employed a savings test to demonstrate that the rate of reacquisition is faster after a conventional extinction procedure than after a procedure in which the CS and US have been unpaired. The second experiment indicated that this readiness to respond in reacquisition was related to a carry-over effect from the initial acquisition trials. The third study demonstrated that acquisition and reacquisition are similar when the US is maintained in extinction but not when it is omitted. These results imply that procedures which retain the US during extinction are more effective than the conventional CS-alone extinction procedure in eliminating or inhibiting the associative connection between the CS and the US.