bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Is equilibration important?— A view from artificial intelligence
Authors: Boden Margaret A.
Published: April 2011

The problem addressed by Piaget in terms of equilibration is the development of harmonious novelties, wherein genuinely new structures are created out of older ones without any impairment of the overall integration of the system. He posited a continuity between biological and psychological systems, such that structurally similar answers exist for embryological and cognitive development. ‘Equilibration’ differs from ‘feedback’ in stressing structural (not quantitative) parameters, and the self‐maintenance of systems whose parameters are changing. Piaget did not specify the concept adequately, but he indicated important questions that might be better addressed later. Computational ideas (which are significantly consonant with Piaget's approach) provide a more rigorous specification of structural and procedural matters, and are in principle suited to the expression of the issues addressed in terms of ‘equilibration’. As yet, however, learning and development are not understood in computational terms. Nor is it known whether there is some general, interdisciplinary, theory of structural development.
Social factors in conservation
Authors: Hargreaves David J. , Molloy Colleen G. , Pratt Alan R.
Published: April 2011

This study is a partial replication, with variations, of the experiments of McGarrigle & Donaldson (1975) and Light et al. (1979). Sixty‐four 5‐year‐old children were tested on traditional Piagetian tests of conservation of number under a standard control condition, and one of two experimental conditions: one (M) in which the task materials were apparently accidentally transformed by a mischievous monkey manipulated by a second experimenter, and another (I) in which the transformation was made to appear irrelevant to the main purpose of the task. The frequency of initial conserving responses was higher in the two experimental conditions than in the control, and this effect was strongest for the I condition. All groups of children but one appeared to exhibit a response set such that initial judgements were preserved in the second test condition. These results are discussed in relation to those of the other two studies, and their implications for Piagetian theory are considered.
The role of conflict and of agreement between intellectual strategies in children's ideas about measurement
Authors: Bryant Peter
Published: April 2011

Four experiments tested the hypothesis that it is agreement and not conflict between strategies which produces intellectual change in young children. The argument behind the hypothesis is that conflict tells the child that something is wrong but not what it is, and certainly not what is the right strategy. On the other hand if one strategy consistently produces the same answer as another, the child can be reasonably sure that both are right. In the first experiment it was demonstrated that children measured more after seeing that measurement agreed with direct comparisons. In the next two experiments experience of conflict failed to have any effect on children's willingness to measure. The final experiment looked at the effect of telling children that their measurements were right. This did not increase measurement either. Together these experiments provide support for the idea that children learn when strategies agree rather than when they conflict.
Class inclusion and conclusions about Piaget's theory
Authors: Smith Leslie
Published: April 2011

An interpretation of Piaget's account of how a child understands class relationships that is compatible with the account put forward by recent critics is proposed. It is claimed that Piaget's account is distinctive because it is an investigation of logical competence and so seeks to explain a child's understanding of the necessity of certain class relationships and not just their correctness. Central to Piaget's account is his claim that a child who understands inclusion must be able to characterize and systematically interrelate the positive, observational properties of a subclass with its negative, inferential properties. By contrast, recent experimentally based accounts allow inclusion to be understood by means of the positive, observational properties of a subclass alone and so allow the correctness of that relation, but not its necessity, to be comprehended. It is claimed that the understanding of correctness may be developmentally prior to the understanding of necessity and in consequence that Piaget's account is compatible with the accounts of his critics. Compatibility is also guaranteed by the fact that the former states necessary, unlike the latter who state sufficient, conditions of understanding.
Piaget's theory of practical morality
Authors: Wright Derek
Published: April 2011

Piaget's theory of the development of practical morality has been neglected by later theorists. A brief statement of that theory is offered. Since Piaget's original account is in certain respects confused, the account of it involves a measure of interpretation. Specifically, it is concluded that practical morality cannot be heteronomous but is a function of mutual respect relationships.
Neuropsychological approaches to the study of language
Authors: Saffran Eleanor M.
Published: April 2011

This paper discusses recent studies of aphasia from the perspective of theories of normal language structure and processing. Patterns of language breakdown are considered to reflect the componential structure of the language system. In some cases, brain damage is seen to fractionate language along lines suggested by existing psycholinguistic models: certain syndromes can be viewed as more or less isolated disturbances involving lexical, syntactic or phonological components of the language system, or psychological functions such as short‐term memory. In other cases, aphasic deficits point to levels of language function not yet well specified by normative models. This review of psycholinguistically oriented research on aphasia supports the effort to construct integrated theories of language functioning on the basis of both normal and pathological performances.
Naming and classifying: Intelligence and frequency effects
Authors: Hermelin B. , O'Connor N.
Published: April 2011

Intellectually gifted children and controls were compared on their ability to name and classify words and pictures of high or low frequency. High IQ children had shorter response latencies than other children and also showed no word frequency effects in the word naming tasks. When having to recall or recognize words of different frequency in a second experiment, no significant frequency effects in recognition were found for either group. With recall, the frequency effect was only significant for the control but not for the gifted children. The results are discussed in terms of ‘relative’ and ‘absolute’ frequencies of words and pictures, and in relation to similar lexical search and comparison processes involved in the naming and the recall of words.
Ease of identifying words degraded by visual noise
Authors: Barber Paul , de la Mahotière Christine
Published: April 2011

A technique is described for investigating word recognition involving the superimposition of ‘noise’ on the visual target word. For this task a word is printed in the form of letters made up of separate elements; noise consists of additional elements which serve to reduce the ease whereby the words may be recognized, and a threshold‐like measure can be obtained in terms of the amount of noise. A word frequency effect was obtained for the noise task, and for words presented tachistoscopically but in conventional typography. For the tachistoscope task, however, the frequency effect depended on the method of presentation. A second study showed no effect of inspection interval on performance on the noise task. A word‐frequency effect was also found in a third experiment with tachistoscopic exposure of the noise task stimuli in undegraded form. The question of whether common processes are drawn on by tasks entailing different ways of varying ease of recognition is addressed, and the suitability of different tasks for word recognition research is discussed.
Contextual effects in the stimulus suffix paradigm
Authors: Ottley Pennie , Marcus Stephen , Morton John
Published: April 2011

Morton & Chambers (1976) showed that the suffix effect ‐ a selective impairment in serial recall on the final serial position of an acoustically presented list ‐ was crucially affected by whether the suffix was a speech sound or a non‐speech sound. They also claimed that the classification of a sound as speech‐like was determined simply by the acoustic properties of the sound and not at all by the context. The crucial sound in their experiments was a steady state, naturally produced vowel sound which failed to give a suffix effect. We report here that when the sound was the only suffix used, it did produce a suffix effect. We conclude that, contrary to Morton & Chambers' conclusion, context effects are indeed operative in determining whether a sound produces a suffix effect.
Wason's selection task: Verification, falsification and matching
Authors: Reich Shuli S. , Ruth Pauline
Published: April 2011

The present experiments were designed to examine the effect of stimulus content on logical performance in a reasoning task. In particular, the selection task was used to elicit preferences for various logical (falsification) and illogical (matching and verification) problem‐solving strategies. Earlier reports of the facilitating effect of thematic material on the tendency to reason logically were not supported: nor were previous reports that matching is the most common determinant of behaviour. Matching is only in evidence when the stimulus material is low in thematic content (Expt 1), and is replaced by verification when the stimulus material is high in thematic content (Expt 2).
The elusive thematic‐materials effect in Wason's selection task
Authors: Griggs Richard A. , Cox James R.
Published: April 2011

A series of three experiments was conducted to examine the possible facilitating effect of thematic materials in Wason's selection task. The first two experiments attempted to replicate the major studies indicating such an effect. Experiment 1 failed to replicate the findings of Wason & Shapiro (1971), and the results of Johnson‐Laird et al. (1972) were not replicated in Expt 2. In support of a memory‐cueing hypothesis, improved performance was found in Expt 3 for an implication rule that was a part of our subjects' past experience. The present results are discussed both with respect to the other studies concerning the effect of thematic content in this task and in the context of a memory‐cueing explanation for the thematic‐materials effect.
Noise effects in free recall with different orienting tasks
Authors: Wilding John , Mohindra Naresh , Breen‐Lewis Kristin
Published: April 2011

Subjects were shown either a list of non‐associated words or a list on which words could be organized into related groups. In Expt 1 either no orienting instructions were given or subjects had to rate the words for Pleasantness (semantic orienting task). The three‐way interaction of noise x list type x orienting task was significant. Eighty‐five dBC white noise compared with 65 dBC improved performance on the non‐associated list with no orienting task and increased recall in the original sequence, but had the reverse effect with semantic orienting. With the associated list noise had no marked effects in the non‐orienting condition, and improved performance in the orienting condition. It is concluded that in noise maintenance rehearsal tends to be adopted unless instructions induce an alternative strategy, and in the latter event noise reinforces use of the alternative strategy. In Expt 2, all subjects carried out a physical orienting task, rating the words for the sounds they contained. Noise aided performance on the non‐associated list and impaired it on the associated list. This result is taken to be compatible with the above interpretation of noise effects.
The effect of a threatening context upon motivation and task‐induced physiological changes
Authors: Svebak Sven , Storfjell Olger , Dalen Knut
Published: April 2011

The effect of a threatening context upon tonic task‐induced physiological changes was tested in an experiment where 14 male subjects performed a continuous perceptual motor task for 150 seconds, once with and once without threat of aversive electric shock (counterbalanced order). Results indicated that task‐irrelevant muscular tension increased and skin temperature decreased over the course of a task, and these gradients were steeper with threat than for the no‐threat treatment. Initial heart‐rate increase was marked for the threat condition. For respiration, a trend parallel to muscular gradients emerged with no‐threat as contrasted with a parallel respiratory‐cardiac activation with threat. Subjects' ratings on items reflecting self‐perception responded to the threat manipulation, but ratings on items reflecting task perception remained unaffected.
Visual memory at birth
Authors: Slater Alan , Morison Victoria , Rose David
Published: April 2011

Two experiments are described whose aim was to explore the new‐born baby's capacity for forming visual memories. An habituation procedure was used that accommodated individual differences by allowing each infant to control the time course of the habituation trials. In Expt 1 an habituation‐dishabituation paradigm was used, and in Expt 2 subjects were given paired presentation of novel and familiar stimuli following attainment of the criterion of habituation. In both experiments a significant novelty preference was found, and the results provide strong evidence that recognition memory can be reliably demonstrated from birth.
The contextual disambiguation of a polysemous word in an unattended message
Authors: Govier Ernest , Pitts Marian
Published: April 2011

Multimode theories of attention state that an unattended message is analysed at a semantic level, although less efficiently than an attended message. This experiment was designed to test this. A stimulus (the polysemous word ‘bank’) was presented to subjects in the attended and unattended messages of a dichotic task. One meaning of the word ‘bank’ had previously been associated with electric shock in a context which indicated that the appropriate meaning was a clearing bank (money bank).

Specifically, a less efficient analysis of the unattended message would predict that the level of GSR activity would be greatest after the presentation of ‘money bank’ in the attended message, less after presentation of ‘money bank’ in the unattended message, even less after presentation of ‘river bank’ in the unattended message and the lowest level of GSR activity should follow the presentation of ‘river bank’ in the attended message. This prediction was confirmed.
Some psychological hypotheses concerning the evolution of constructs
Authors: Benjafield John
Published: April 2011

Evidence supporting five hypotheses concerning the psycholinguistic properties of constructs is presented: (1) The negative poles of overtly marked constructs have lower imagery values than their positive poles; (2) Overtly marked constructs are introduced later in the history of language than are constructs which are not overtly marked; (3) Overtly marked constructs are used less frequently than are constructs which are not overtly marked; (4) The more recently the positive pole of a construct has entered the language, the smaller the difference between its date of entry and that of its negative opposite; and (5) Constructs used primarily to describe psychological events enter the language later than those used primarily to refer to physical events. These findings are discussed in relation to Kelly's (1955) personal construct theory.
The relationship between orienting tasks and the structure of memory traces — evidence from false recognition
Authors: Parkin Alan J.
Published: April 2011

This article reports two experiments in which the pattern of false recognition is examined following incidental learning involving either semantically or non‐semantically oriented processing tasks. Experiment 1 demonstrates that more false recognitions were made to semantic as opposed to non‐semantic distractors when the initial orientation was semantic whilst the reverse was found when initial orientation was non‐semantic. Experiment 2 replicates this effect and, in addition, shows that false recognition rates to completely unrelated distractors were significantly lower than those made to distractors related to the unspecified dimension in both semantic and non‐semantic orienting conditions. The results are seen as supporting the basic assertion of the levels of processing approach by demonstrating that tasks ostensibly addressed to different processing domains give rise to memory traces that differ qualitatively in structure. The results of Expt 2, however, suggest that orienting tasks do not wholly restrict processing to the dimension specified by their overt demands. The failure of some earlier studies to demonstrate a clear relationship between initial orienting task and the pattern of false recognition responses is attributed to methodological problems.
Preferred synonyms for each noun of 279 synonym pairs
Authors: Wilding John , Mohindra Naresh
Published: April 2011

Fifty subjects produced the noun they thought closest in meaning to each of 279 nouns. A further 50 subjects performed the same task for the synonyms used in a previous rating task for each of the 279 nouns. The preferred synonym, number of subjects giving it and the number giving the previously used synonym are provided. The ratings from the previous task were correlated with the number of subjects giving the previously used synonym. Though the correlations were significant, they accounted for less than 15 per cent of the variance. Possible uses of the norms are briefly discussed.
Evaluation of a programme for increasing the effectiveness of personal problem‐solving
Authors: Duckworth Douglas H.
Published: April 2011

A programme was developed for training people to apply generic problem‐solving techniques to their personal problems. These are basic problem‐solving operations which, in principle, should be applicable to any specific problem. Sixty‐four male student volunteers were divided into sets of internals and externals, on the basis of pre‐test scores on the Rotter Internal‐External (I‐E) scale. They were assigned at random to a training group and a no‐training control group, and subjects in the training group attended a five‐week programme. Dependent measures included the standard of bachelor's degrees gained by subjects at graduation, the I‐E scale, and the neuroticism scale of the Eysenck Personality Inventory. The two scales were administered one week and eight weeks after the programme. Results demonstrated that the training group achieved a higher standard in their bachelor's degrees, developed an increased belief in internal control and became more emotionally stable. There was no evidence of an interaction between locus of control and the effects of the programme.
Phonemic segmentation and spelling
Authors: Perin Dolores
Published: April 2011

Consciousness of the phoneme has often been studied in relation to reading skill. However, it is possible that reported differences in segmentation performance between good and poor readers are due to subjects' differences in spelling skill. Using two novel tasks which required the production of spoonerisms and the judgement of phoneme length respectively, segmentation in a group of subjects who read well while spelling poorly was compared with that of good readers/spellers and poor readers/spellers. Irrespective of reading skill, the poor spellers showed difficulty in phonemic segmentation. Spelling error patterns of the two groups of poor spellers were similar and this was linked to their segmentation performance. Examination of spelling errors in two tasks suggested that error pattern can be manipulated by word characteristics and testing situations.

Certain errors in Expt 1 indicated that the relationship between spelling and segmentation performance was due to the use of an orthographic code in segmenting phonemes. Expt 2 varied orthography in order to investigate this possibility. A clear effect of word type was found in all groups indicating that, although poor spellers have problems in phonemic segmentation, they employ strategies similar to those of good spellers, using spelling knowledge as a guide in their attempts to segment phonemically. Since reading level alone does not ensure phonemic awareness and since orthography affects segmentation performance, further studies of phonemic segmentation should take spelling ability into account.
Phonological processes in reading: New evidence from acquired dyslexia
Authors: Funnell Elaine
Published: April 2011

This paper investigates the reading performance of two patients with acquired dyslexia. The first patient read aloud all classes of word (85–95 per cent correct), including affixed words, but failed to read aloud non‐words. In addition, semantic judgements about written words were shown to be significantly impaired, relative to the ability to read the words aloud. These dissociations support the view that two independent lexical routes are available for reading aloud familiar words, a semantic route and a lexical phonological route. While unable to read aloud non‐words, this patient retained the ability to segment orthographic and phonological stimuli. The reading of non‐lexical material, therefore, does not appear to be mediated by lexical analogy procedures. Instead, it is suggested that a non‐lexical phonological route exists that is clearly independent of lexical phonological procedures. This patient could process isolated written suffixes orthographically, but could only access complete phonological word forms. Suffixed words (but not isolated suffixes) appear to be represented in the phonological word store.

The second patient read aloud non‐words, but could not give phonetic sounds appropriate to single letters. This dissociation suggests that the reading aloud of non‐words is not reliant upon grapheme‐phoneme rules.
Eye‐movements and sequential tracking in dyslexic and control children
Authors: Stanley Gordon , Smith Glen A. , Howell Edwin A.
Published: April 2011

The efficiency of eye‐movements while tracking sequential lights was compared for 15 dyslexic children and 15 controls, matched on age and non‐verbal intelligence. Contrary to Pavlidis (1981), no significant differences were found between the two groups on two measures of efficiency. A hierarchical cluster analysis did not demonstrate unique patterns of errors for dyslexics, with the exception of a single female dyslexic.
Comparison of transitory and chronic loners on selected personality variables
Authors: Hojat Mohammadreza
Published: April 2011

This study is concerned with an investigation of personality differences between transitory and chronic loners. Two groups of subjects were studied: Group I consisted of 232 Iranian students studying in American universities; and Group II comprised 305 Iranian students studying in Iranian universities. Based on responses to a question concerning duration of experiencing loneliness, 83 subjects in Group I and 114 in Group II were identified as transitory loners. Also, 43 subjects in Group I and 82 in Group II were identified as chronic loners. Chronic loners in both groups scored significantly higher than transitory loners on measures such as global loneliness, anxiety, depression, neuroticism and external locus of control. Also, chronic loners scored significantly lower on self‐esteem, and extraversion scales. When the effect of the global loneliness was controlled, no significant difference was observed between transitory and chronic loners in Group I but, in Group II, the differences on depression and extraversion remained significant.
Influences of delayed distraction on the modality effect in free recall
Authors: Gathercole Susan E. , Gregg Vernon H. , Gardiner John M.
Published: April 2011

The free recall of recency items is better following lists presented auditorily rather than visually. This modality effect was eliminated by a 30‐second, but not a three‐second, period of auditory distraction delayed by 15 seconds following list presentation. It is argued that these findings are entirely consistent with the notion that the modality effect in free recall arises from the direct use of persistent modality‐specific information, and not from the use of acoustic information which has been recoded into modality‐independent memory.
Right‐ and left‐hand skill I: Effects of age, sex and hand preference showing superior skill in left‐handers
Authors: Kilshaw Diana , Annett Marian
Published: April 2011

Hand preference and hand skill were examined in relation to sex and age from 3 1/2 to 50+ years. The data were drawn from several samples which avoided volunteer bias, either by selecting children according to birth‐date or by taking complete class groups. The distribution of hand preference and of asymmetry of skill gave no evidence of systematic changes with age. Younger children were more variable and showed larger absolute differences in favour of the right hand than older children but L‐R times were similar over most of the age range.

Time for peg moving decreased with increasing age to a minimum in the late teens, remained stable for the next three decades and increased slightly in the 50+ age group. Males were faster than females with the left hand in almost all age groups. Females tended to be faster than males with the right hand up to 10 years of age but males then equalled and surpassed females, to be faster in most older groups. Correlations between hands did not vary systematically with age or sex.

Left‐handers were faster than right‐handers and right mixed‐handers were intermediate for peg‐moving time by the non‐preferred hand, in both sexes and both sets of samples. Differences for the preferred hand were less clear but still favoured left‐handers in several comparisons. The findings raise the possibility that left hemisphere specialization for language is achieved through a right hemisphere handicap and that left‐handers escape this risk to cerebral efficiency.
Right‐ and left‐hand skill II: Estimating the parameters of the distribution of L‐R differences in males and females
Authors: Annett Marian , Kilshaw Diana
Published: April 2011

The distribution of differences between the hands (L‐R) in skill, as measured by a peg‐moving task, was examined for several samples in which volunteer bias was absent or minimal. After comparing the main samples for hand preference and L‐R times, they were combined to give 617 males and 863 females, aged 12–63 years. There was also a smaller sample of 122 males and 156 females, aged 6–15 years.

The L‐R distributions were negatively skewed and leptokurtotic. They were not compatible with the sum of two normal distributions, one of right‐handers and one of left‐handers. They were compatible with the sum of two or three normal distributions when one was unbiased to either side and the others were shifted to the right, as expected for the dominant or additive versions of the single gene interpretation of the right shift theory of handedness (Annett, 1978 b, 1979). Sex differences in L‐R scores confirmed that females tend to be more dextral than males. This was true of right‐handers but not of left‐handers, as expected if the sex difference is due to stronger expression of the rs+ gene in females than males and if this gene is absent in the majority of left‐handers. There were trends suggesting that L‐R asymmetry differs with educational status, undergraduates being less shifted toward dextrality than the general population.
Attention and behaviourism — fact and fiction
Authors: Lovie A. D.
Published: April 2011

The paper investigates, using studies of attention as exemplars, the modern truism that cognition was almost completely suppressed by Watsonian behaviourism and its offspring during the first half of this century. This is done by, first, examining the abstracting journals for the period 1910–1960, then by looking at relevant reviews over this period and, finally, by seeing if it is possible to detect conceptual links between old and new work on attention. The picture thus revealed provides no support for the triumph of behaviourism. The paper concludes by briefly discussing the source of cognitive psychologists' attitudes to the history of their subject.
The use of electrophotographic techniques in differentiating state depression and state anxiety
Authors: Hovsepian William , Rupert Patricia
Published: April 2011

The ability of electrophotographic techniques to differentiate levels of state anxiety and state depression were investigated. Forty male and female undergraduate students, who were screened with the DACL, STAI, and Mini‐Mult and who met certain dietary and medicinal restrictions, had the index finger of their left hand electrophotographed. In addition, the skin resistance level of these subjects was assessed. The discharge patterns produced by these electrophotographs were rated by two volunteer judges using a seven‐point scoring system. The differences in discharge pattern ratings and skin resistance levels between high and low anxious subjects were significant, with high anxious subjects having lower‐rated discharge patterns and higher skin resistance levels. No significant differences were obtained with either measure for the depression variable or the interaction effect. Interestingly, there was no significant relationship between skin resistance and discharge ratings. Regression analyses indicated that each measure accounted for unique sources of variance, with skin resistance being the best predictor of anxiety.
Memory symptoms and memory performance of neurological patients
Authors: Kapur Narinder , Pearson David
Published: April 2011

The spontaneous memory symptoms of 100 brain‐damaged patients suffering from a variety of conditions were elicited. The most frequent types of symptom related to memory for people's names, memory for recent events occurring a few days or weeks ago, memory for a spoken message and remembering to do something. The spontaneous symptoms from 50 non‐brain‐damaged patients were also elicited. There was a considerable degree of overlap between the type and incidence of symptoms in brain‐damaged and control patients. Some symptoms (e.g. remembering people's names) were reported by a similar proportion of control as brain‐damaged patients. A few symptoms (e.g. spatial disorientation, temporal disorientation) were reported by brain‐damaged patients but not by any control patients. One symptom (remembering to do something) occurred more frequently in the control group of patients than in the brain‐damaged group. The relationship between memory symptoms and memory performance was examined in a group of head‐injured patients. A short questionnaire on memory symptoms was completed by each patient and by a close observer, and the head‐injured subjects also performed tests of immediate and delayed recall. Although there was a highly significant correlation between degree of memory impairment as perceived by the patient and as perceived by an observer, there was generally a low correlation between subjective or observed memory impairment and scores on commonly used clinical memory tests.
The effects of noise and memory load on a running memory task
Authors: Smith Andrew P.
Published: April 2011

An experiment was carried out to investigate the effects of noise on recall of order using a running memory task. When five items had to be recalled noise improved recall for all items except the last one, whereas when eight items had to be recalled noise improved recall of the last two items but impaired recall of others. This supports the view that the storage load may be very important in determining the effects of noise on memory. However, the storage load also changes the way in which the task is carried out and it is, at present, unclear whether the noise effect depends on the storage load or whether it depends on the strategy used to do the task, which may be determined by factors such as the memory load.
Attribution and contrast: Two explanations for the effects of external rewards on intrinsic motivation
Authors: Levine Fredric M. , Broderick Joan E. , Burkart Michael
Published: April 2011

Within motivational theory, there have been several demonstrations that giving an ‘external’ reward for a task reduces ‘intrinsic’ motivation. One explanation of these results is that the subject attributes engaging in the rewarded task for the reward rather than to the ‘intrinsic’ value of the task. This article provides evidence suggesting that the finding of reduced value of a rewarded task is, in some cases, due to perceptual contrast. By giving an ‘external’ reward, the task is judged against the reinforcement background of the more highly rated stimulus ‐ the reward. The task is perceived as being of reduced reinforcement value by contrast with the reward.
Measurement of stress and arousal: Validation of the stress/arousal adjective checklist
Authors: King M. G. , Burrows G. D. , Stanley G. V.
Published: April 2011

It is suggested that, although often confounded, the mood states of stress and arousal may be independent, and that they may have different psychological consequences. The present investigation demonstrated the ability of a stress/arousal adjective checklist to differentiate between groups of people subject to different potentially stressful situations. The results are interpreted as suggesting that two distinct responses to a perceived demand are possible. Elevated arousal is associated with a coping response, whilst elevated stress appears to indicate the presence of fear or doubts about coping.
Measures of internal category structure: A correlational analysis of normative data
Authors: Hampton James A. , Gardiner Margaret M.
Published: April 2011

Normative data were collected from samples of students from The City University, London, and other London colleges, for 12 semantic categories. Measures of typicality, familiarity and associative frequency are listed. These data are published as a research tool for semantic memory research in the UK. The reliability and intercorrelation of the measures are reported, and their correlation with previous American measures is discussed. The results permit certain important conclusions to be drawn about the role of familiarity in typicality ratings, and about the determinants of associative frequency.
Left‐handers and right‐handers compared on performance and preference measures of lateral dominance
Authors: Borod Joan C. , Caron Herbert S. , Koff Elissa
Published: April 2011

Ninety‐three right‐handed and 53 left‐handed adults were compared on a range of performance and preference measures of handedness and footedness. Performance measures included tests of accuracy, speed, and strength. Non‐parametric statistical procedures were used to determine whether left‐handers (LHs) were less lateralized than right‐handers (RHs), and whether distributions for LHs were the mirror images of those for RHs. On performance measures, the distributions for LHs and RHs were generally normal and similar in central tendency, shape, and range. However, on preference measures, distributions were J‐shaped, and LHs were significantly less lateralized and more widely dispersed than RHs. Correlations among performance measures were generally low for all subjects. Sex and familial left‐handedness did not significantly moderate the responses of these right‐and left‐handers on performance or preference measures of lateral dominance.
Syntactic comprehension in Down's syndrome children
Authors: Bridges Allayne , Smith Joanne V. E.
Published: April 2011

The ability of 24 Down's syndrome children to act out active and passive semantically biased and neutral sentences in a comprehension task was compared with that of 24 non‐retarded children, matched on the basis of their verbal comprehension scores on the Reynell Developmental Language Scale (Reynell, 1969). Down's syndrome children closely resembled control children both in terms of percentage correct responses and in terms of individual children's patterns of error. The results are taken as support for the proposition that the processes underlying language comprehension in the retarded are fundamentally the same as those of non‐retarded children. Even so, there was evidence of a slight (6 to 12 months) delay in the appearance of syntactic strategies of comprehension by the Down's syndrome children compared with those non‐retarded children matched with them in terms of verbal comprehension age.
The validity of ‘;biorhythmic’ theory questioned
Authors: James Arthur
Published: April 2011

The study was of the relation between three categorical independent variables (cases in the critical, positive or regenerative phase of their ‘biorhythmic’ cycle) and two numerical independent variables, academic performance and factor scores on the psychoneurotic component of the University College London Study Questionnaire. The sample comprised 368 Open University students. A subset was used to study the relation between cases at the peaks and troughs of their cycles. If ‘biorhythms' had any effect then it would be expected that the mean scores of the three subgroups would differ significantly. Results for 18 ANOVAs showed that none of the observed relations was greater than would be expected by chance.
Evidence of unconscious semantic processing from a forced error situation
Authors: Groeger J. A.
Published: April 2011

A study was carried out to determine whether subjects extracted information from words presented below their recognition and awareness thresholds. A series of target words was used to generate the word matrix, which was a set of 24 words related to the target in specified ways. Following subthreshold exposure of a target word, subjects chose the word they thought had been shown from the word matrix for that particular target. It was held that the alternative chosen was a function of the type of processing the target was receiving. Results showed that structural analysis of the target predominated below recognition threshold, whereas semantic analysis predominated below awareness threshold.
Personal construct theory and the emotions: An interpretation in terms of primitive constructs
Authors: Katz Jeffrey Owen
Published: April 2011

The Psychology of Personal Constructs (Kelly) is examined and found to suffer from an ‘Origin Problem’. In order to solve the Origin Problem, a new postulate, the ‘Origin Postulate’, is proposed and incorporated into the theory's assumptive structure. The Origin Postulate leads to a consistent account of the initial formation and elaboration of systems of personal constructs. It suggests that as a consequence of our biological evolution we begin life, not with a construct‐free ‘tabula rasa’, but already in possession of a set of ‘primitive constructs' or constructional predispositions which serve as the starting‐points for the elaboration of our personal constructs. It is then shown how the dimensions of the Semantic Differential, the process of imprinting, and even the Jungian archetypes can be understood in terms of the Origin Postulate and its primitive constructs. Another weakness in Kelly's theory is then pinpointed and, with some aid from the Origin Postulate, it yields to the ‘Emotion Corollary’. A general ‘interpretation’ of emotional phenomena results which incorporates and extends those conceptions originally put forth by Kelly (and later elaborated by McCoy). Emotions are hypothesized to be what occurs when a certain kind of primitive construct is employed in the appraisal of an event. In conclusion, some evidence in support of the proposed interpretation is adduced.
Person memory: A semantic category model of personality traits: A reply to Hampson
Authors: Kline Paul
Published: April 2011

Hampson (1982) proposed a semantic category model of personality traits, and reported four experiments in its support. Careful scrutiny of these experiments, however, reveals severe flaws, which render their findings irrelevant to the theory.
Heuristic and analytic processes in reasoning*
Authors: Evans Jonathan St B. T.
Published: April 2011

A general two‐stage theory of human inference is proposed. A distinction is drawn between heuristic processes which select items of task information as ‘relevant’, and analytic processes which operate on the selected items to generate inferences or judgements.

These two stages are illustrated in a selective review of work on both deductive and statistical reasoning. Factors identified as contributing to heuristic selection include perceptual salience, linguistic suppositions and semantic associations. Analytic processes are considered to be context dependent: people reason from experience, not from inference rules. The paper includes discussion of the theory in comparison with other contemporary theories of human inference, and in relation to the current debate about human rationality.
An investigation of the accuracy of momentary time sampling procedures with time series data
Authors: Brittle Andrew R. , Repp Alan C.
Published: April 2011

Momentary time sampling is a procedure in which one records whether or not responding is occurring at the end of an interval. As a sampling procedure, it presents both the advantage of ease and the disadvantage of imperfectly representing data collected through continuous recording. The present study was conducted to determine the interval sizes at which momentary time sampling accurately represents continuous recording. Observations using an event‐recorder produced permanent records of five behaviours which were sampled five times, each time at intervals of 10, 20, 30, 60, 120 and 240 s, for each day's data with starting delays of 0, 12, 24, 36 and 48 s. These procedures allowed comparison of the results of this study with previous studies which had grouped their results across sessions, and provided repeated samples of each behaviour which allowed examination of the accuracy of momentary time sampling on a session‐by‐session basis. When the data were grouped as in previous studies, results indicated that (a) the 10, 20, 30, and 60 s intervals accurately estimated the average duration of behaviours, (b) the 120 s interval was accurate when the behaviour occurred more than 10 per cent of the time, and (c) the 240 s interval was accurate when the behaviour occurred more than 20 per cent of the time. When the data were not averaged, however, the results indicated that the 60, 120, and 240 s intervals were inaccurate.
How a concept is formed: Prototype or contingency abstraction?
Authors: Richardson K. , Bhavnani K. K.
Published: April 2011

‘Prototype’ models of concept formation have been popular in recent years, in spite of several misgivings. In this paper a new model, called the contingency model, is introduced which meets some of these misgivings, and suggests that the empirical success of prototype models in the past may be explained by the fact of sharing certain computational processes with the new model. The ecological and evolutionary foundations of the new model are explained, and an experiment is reported which compared the predictions of the two models. The contingency model fared better than a representative prototype model.
A multidimensional approach to the relationship between mood and weather
Authors: Howarth E. , Hoffman M. S.
Published: April 2011

Ten mood variables were related to eight weather variables in a multidimensional study. Data were collected from 24 male subjects over 11 consecutive days. The mood variables were as follows: concentration, cooperation, anxiety, potency, aggression, depression, sleepiness, scepticism, control, and optimism. The weather variables included: hours of sunshine, precipitation, temperature, wind direction, wind velocity, humidity, change in barometric pressure and absolute barometric pressure. Humidity, temperature and hours of sunshine had the greatest effect on mood. High levels of humidity lowered scores on concentration while increasing reports of sleepiness. Rising temperatures lowered anxiety and scepticism mood scores. Humidity was the most significant predictor in regression and canonical correlation analysis. Implications for school and office performance are discussed which highlight the importance of humidity as a weather variable.
Embedded Figures Test performance before and after childbirth
Authors: Woodfield Robert L.
Published: April 2011

Performance on the Embedded Figures Test was investigated before and after childbirth when biochemical changes are marked. Females comprising a first experimental group were tested in their 38th to 40th week of pregnancy. Their husbands who comprised a male control group were tested concurrently. The females were again tested in the sixth week following delivery. There was a significant (P < 0·001) test‐retest difference in EFT scores. Testing of a second female experimental group, to investigate the possibility of a practice effect, indicated that a factor over and above the practice effect was operating in the scores of the first experimental group.
Right‐ and left‐hand skill: Failure of the right shift model
Authors: McManus I. C.
Published: April 2011

Annett's right shift model of the distribution of skill asymmetry, and of the genetics of handedness, is examined in relation to several sets of data. It is found to be a less adequate description than is the more intuitively obvious ‘symmetric bimodal’ model, which is described in this paper.
The recognition of tachistoscopically presented words, varying in imagery, part of speech and word frequency, in the left and right visual fields
Authors: Jackman Michael K.
Published: April 2011

Previous research has shown conflicting findings when subjects have performed some task involving words varying in imagery, part of speech (nouns versus verbs) and word frequency presented to the left and right visual fields. This problem was investigated in the present paper. In the first investigation, a group of subjects rated 308 words for imagery and part of speech. It showed that nouns tended to be of higher imagery than verbs. This implies that it is important to control for part of speech while investigating imagery, and vice versa. Experiments 2 and 3 investigated the effects of imagery and part of speech on recognition performance using different sets of words and subjects while keeping other aspects of the experiments identical. Conflicting results were found when the analysis regarded words as being a ‘fixed effect’ rather than a ‘random effect’ (cf. Clark, 1973). A quasi‐F analysis revealed no significant effects due to either variable. When the data were combined from the two experiments, a quasi‐F analysis revealed that imagery had an equal effect in both visual fields. Thus we can draw the conclusion that the effect of imagery in both visual fields is reliable across both new subjects and new words. However, a sufficiently large sample is required in order to demonstrate this. No other effects were significant. Experiment 4 investigated the effect of frequency on report from the two visual fields. Quasi‐F analysis revealed that the effect of frequency was larger in the right visual field than in the left visual field. We can conclude that this effect is reliable across both new subjects and new words ‐ if a sufficiently large sample is used. The findings are discussed. in terms of whether one could ever draw conclusions on the basis of previous work, when the analysis had regarded words as a fixed effect. It was concluded that it was possible to draw tentative conclusions, but a firm conclusion could only be based on an experiment in which large numbers of words had been used and in which the results were significant on a quasi‐F analysis.
The measurement of self‐reported stress and arousal
Authors: Cox Tom , Mackay Colin
Published: April 2011

This paper provides further discussion on the measurement of mood using self‐report inventories. It comments on questions raised by Cruickshank (1984) about the structure and use of the stress‐arousal checklist developed by Mackay and Cox (Mackay et al., 1978).