Studies in dialogue and discourse. III. Utterance structure and utterance function in interrogative sequences

Natural conversations in first-grade classrooms are analyzed. Exchanges that are initiated and extended by questioning are the focus of attention, and analyses are directed principally to a comparison of adult-initiated and child-initiated interrogative series. Differences in structural features are found for each component utterance of an interrogative unit of discourse, namely, question, response, and confirmation. Adults ask more constraining questions than children, and children respond in more complex although less appropriate ways to children's questions than to adults' questions. The type of discourse within which an utterance is located influences the features of children's responses to children's but not to adults' questions. These differences are interpreted as reflecting differences in the relative power of adults and children in these settings.This work has been supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation for research on Social Effects on Language and Communication, Grant No. GS-3001.     

Interpersonal Reactions to Depression and Physical Disablllty In Dyadic Interactions1

Examined the interpersonal responses of persons engaged in dyadic interactions with confederates who enacted either depressed or socially appropriate roles and appeared either with or without a physical disability. Subject negative evaluations of confederates were indirectly obtained from a thought-listing measure. The overt behaviors of subjects were surreptitiously recorded on videotape and measures of verbal and nonverbal behavior were acquired. Subjects spoke less to the depressed targets and had significantly higher rates of negative evaluations of these persons. In addition, subjects gazed less at the depressed confederates. These effects were not moderated by target physical appearance. Findings are discussed as they relate to social models of depression and the stigmatizing effects of disability.     

Decision-makers use social information to update their preferences but choose for others as they do for themselves

People's risky decisions are susceptible to the social context in which they take place. Across three experiments using different paradigms, we investigated the influence of three social factors upon participants' decisions: the recipient of the decision-making outcome (self, other, or joint), the nature of the relationship with the other agent (friend, stranger, or teammate), and the type of information that participants received about others' preferences: none at all, general information about how previous participants had decided, or information about a specific partner's preference. We found that participants' decisions about risk did not differ according to whether the outcome at stake was their own, another agent's, or a joint outcome, nor according to the type of information available. Participants did, however, adjust their preferences for risky options in light of social information.     

A study of parents of violent children

This study based on in-depth interviews of 25 parents of violent children and a control group of 25 parents of nonviolent children concerned the parents' personalities. Parents were between 22 and 48 years of age and were from middle and lower middle socioeconomic backgrounds. Differences in classification by the nonblinded interviewers of parents into the two groups on six behavior characteristics were significant on chi2 tests. Some recommendations are made for further research.     

The effect of midazolam on implicit and explicit memory in category exemplar production and category cued recall

Transfer-appropriate processing theory (Roediger, Weldon, & Challis, 1989) proposes that dissociations between performance on explicit and implicit memory tests arise because these tests often rely on different types of information processing (e.g., perceptual processing vs conceptual processing). This perspective predicts that implicit and explicit memory tasks that rely primarily on conceptual processing should show comparable results, not dissociations. Numerous studies have demonstrated such similarities. It is, however, possible that these results arise from explicit memory contamination of performance on implicit memory tasks. To address this issue, an experiment was conducted in which participants were administered the sedative midazolam prior to study. Midazolam is known to create a temporary, but dense, period of anterograde amnesia. The effects of blocking stimulus materials by semantic category at study and generation at study were investigated on category exemplar production and category-cued recall. The results of this study demonstrated a dissociation of the effects of midazolam on category exemplar production and category-cued recall. Specifically, midazolam reduced the effect of blocking stimulus materials in category-cued recall, but not in category exemplar production. The differential effect of midazolam on explicit and implicit memory is at odds with transfer-appropriate processing theory and suggests that theories of memory must distinguish the roles of different types of conceptual processing on implicit and explicit memory tests.     

Inspiration: core characteristics, component processes, antecedents, and function

The authors examined the core characteristics, component processes, antecedents, and function of state inspiration. In Studies 1 and 2, inspiration was contrasted with baseline experience and activated positive affect (PA) using a vivid recall methodology. Results supported the tripartite conceptualization of inspiration. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that inspiration may be decomposed into separate processes related to being inspired "by" and being inspired "to." Study 3 found that daily inspiration is triggered by illumination among individuals high in receptive engagement, whereas activated PA is triggered by reward salience among individuals high in approach temperament. Approach temperament was also implicated in being inspired "to." Inspiration and activated PA appear to serve different functions: transmission and acquisition, respectively.