bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Fearlessness and courage: A replication experiment
Authors: O'Connor K. , Hallam R. , Rachman S.
Published: April 2011

An attempt was made to replicate the finding that decorated bomb‐disposal operators show lower cardiac activity under stress than do comparable but non‐decorated operators. The performance under stress of three groups of soldiers (decorated operators, non‐decorated operators, less experienced soldiers) was assessed by behavioural, psychophysiological, and subjective measures. The original result, showing lower cardiac activity under stress among decorated operators, was reproduced. With minor exceptions, no group differences in behavioural performance or in subjective activity were found. The results strengthen the view that it is possible to identify physiological indices of fearlessness.
One man's memory for prose, faces and names
Authors: Wilding John , Valentine Elizabeth
Published: April 2011

Further studies are reported of a mnemonist, T.E., in which his memory for a story, faces and names for faces was studied. He scored at a high level on these tasks compared with control subjects, through the use of mnemonics, usually involving imagery. He scored highly on a test of imaginal thinking but not on verbal thinking.
Incorrect conditional reasoning among adults: Competence or performance?
Authors: Markovits Henry
Published: April 2011

Two groups of university students were given paper‐and‐pencil conditional reasoning tests. One group received problems based on a simple pr̊q relation, while for the second this relation was embedded in a paragraph describing other relations of the form ar̊q. Results showed that overall performance was better for the second group, confirming previous studies. However, detailed analysis of response patterns indicated that the effect of adding information of the form ar̊q varied according to performance on an initial problem used to evaluate spontaneous conditional reasoning. These results are consistent with the idea that incorrect conditional reasoning in adults may be at least partly due to a basic lack of competence.
Cognitive science and behaviourism
Authors: Skinner B. F.
Published: April 2011

In this paper it is argued that cognitive scientists, claiming the support of brain science and computer simulation, have revived a traditional view that behaviour is initiated by an internal, autonomous mind. In doing so, they have (1) misused the metaphor of storage and retrieval, (2) given neurology a misleading assignment, (3) frequently replaced controlled experimental conditions with mere descriptions of conditions and the assessment of behaviour with statements of expectations and intentions, (4) given feelings and states of mind the status of causes of behaviour rather than the products of the causes, and (5) failed to define many key terms in dimensions acceptable to science.
The locus of the Stroop effect: One site masquerading as two?
Authors: Naish Peter L. N.
Published: April 2011

Two experiments are reported, which used modifications to the normal Stroop task. Both required cued responses, the first being designed to eliminate interference at the output stage, and the second being an attempt to rule out interference before the output. In both cases interference effects persisted. The results are considered to support Seymour's (1977) account of overlapping conceptual codes.
Balance in pictures
Authors: McManus I. C. , Edmondson D. , Rodger J.
Published: April 2011

Three experiments are reported on the phenomenon of the subjective balance of pictures. Subjects were asked to place a fulcrum beneath a picture so that it looked balanced. In Expt 1 reproductions of works of art were used as stimuli. Pictures showed large differences in balance point; subjects showed smaller differences, unrelated to handedness or eye‐dominance. Monochrome reproductions produced similar balance scores to coloured reproductions. Chopping a portion from one end of a picture showed that particular features are not the origin of the balance phenomenon, but rather the balance judgement incorporates an integration of information across the entire picture field. In Expt 2 abstract controlled stimuli were used; balance depended primarily upon the position of an object, and to a lesser degree on its size and colour. Experiment 3 used stimuli similar to those in Expt 2 and showed that subjects differed in the way that they extrapolated from side length to the mass of a rectangular object, that vertical position had no influence upon balance, and that the shape of a rectangle did relate to balance, the effect interacting with the degree of artificial perspective induced in the stimulus.
Dichoptic priming effects on ambiguous picture processing
Authors: Owen Lesley A.
Published: April 2011

The results of two experiments show that pictures, pattern masked to prevent conscious representation, could nevertheless influence the interpretation of supraliminally presented ambiguous pictures. This priming effect was obtained under conditions of dichoptic masking (Expt 1) and under conditions in which the picture primes were presented to one eye and the ambiguous pictures presented to the other eye (Expt 2). In obtaining priming under conditions of pattern masking, the results substantiate recent claims that pattern masking does not prevent perceptual processing. Instead, it appears to prevent the recovery of some of the products of perceptual processing necessary for conscious report. The findings are discussed within the framework of current models of picture processing.
The QWERTY keyboard hampers schoolchildren
Authors: Nicolson Roderick I. , Gardner Peter H.
Published: April 2011

The introduction of microcomputers into schools has created a new generation of unskilled keyboard users whose needs are quite different from those of the skilled typist. In particular, their interaction with the keyboard is likely to be the keying in of a single word or a single letter in response to a prompt from a computer‐aided learning program, rather than the continuous typing of running text. A standard keyboard skills program for the BBC micro was adapted to allow comparison of an alphabetic (ABCDE) keyboard with the standard QWERTY keyboard layout on speed of single key processing. Three groups (age 8, 12 and 20 years) of inexperienced keyboard users were tested with each layout in a counterbalanced repeated measures design. As expected, mean response time was significantly faster for the older subjects. The major finding, however, was that, in contrast to previous studies of adult continuous typing, the QWERTY layout resulted in significantly worse performance for all three age groups. The QWERTY responses were not only slower but also showed a much greater variability than the ABCDE responses.
How the possibility of error affects falsification on a task that models scientific problem solving
Authors: Gorman Michael E.
Published: April 2011

This paper reports an experiment in which groups of four subjects attempt to solve two related rules when they know that 0–20 per cent of the feedback they receive may be in error. Groups were randomly assigned to one of three strategy conditions: confirmatory, in which subjects were urged to propose experiments consistent with their hypotheses; disconfirmatory, in which subjects were encouraged to propose experiments at variance with their hypotheses; and a control strategy, in which subjects were merely urged to test their guesses by proposing more experiments.

In a previous study using the same rules and strategy conditions, but no error, Gorman et al. (1984) found that disconfirmatory groups performed significantly better than groups in other conditions. In the study described here, this performance difference did not arise. About 60 per cent of the time groups immunized their hypotheses against disconfirmation by classifying disconfirmatory results as error. About 40 per cent of the time groups correctly recognized that there was no error, but spent so much of their time replicating experiments to make sure that there was no error that they failed adequately to test their hypotheses. The few successful groups used a strategy that combined disconfirmation with replication. Detailed examples of how groups handled error are discussed, as are the implications of these results for future research.
Predominant and non‐predominant analysis: Effects of level of presentation
Authors: Groeger J. A.
Published: April 2011

Evidence is presented which supports earlier findings by the author which suggested that stimuli outside our awareness receive a predominantly semantic analysis whereas stimuli which we realize are present, but do not recognize, are processed in a predominantly structural fashion. The work reported here extends such findings to another sense mode. i.e. hearing, and employs a very different task, i.e. sentence completion. The research presented shows that non‐predominant analyses, if carried out at all, do not influence the outcomes of predominant processing. This is taken to suggest that the type of analysis automatically carried out on stimuli depends on the level at which they are received and requires a complex, non‐linear view of the perceptual process.
The factorial structure and specificity of the British Ability Scales
Authors: Elliott Colin D.
Published: April 2011

Average correlations for three age groups from the BAS standardization data were factor analysed using principal‐factor analysis. Children aged 5:0–7:11 years were given 19 scales, those of 8:0–13:11 were given 18, and those aged 14:0–16:11 were given 14. Two factors were extracted with eigenvalues > 1 at each age level. The first factor, clearly identifiable as g, accounted for about 30 per cent of the variance. The second factor, again clearly identifiable for each age group as verbal recall of pictures, accounted for between 5 and 9 per cent of the variance. The proportion of reliable specific variance was calculated for each scale, and this accounted for about 46 per cent of the variance. Well over half the reliable variance is therefore attributable to specificity. These results indicate higher levels of specificity than in the WPPSI, WISC‐R and WAIS. It was concluded that the British Ability Scales have sufficient specificity to justify comparisons between scales in profiles of cognitive strengths and weaknesses.
The spatial demands of graphs
Authors: Bryant P. E. , Somerville Susan C.
Published: April 2011

This study is about the spatial demands made by graphs and about the ability of young children to cope with these demands. We wanted to answer two questions: (1) whether children can coordinate spatial information from two axes, and (2) whether the fact that they have to extrapolate non‐perpendicular lines in graphs causes them particular difficulty. Sixteen six‐ and 16 nine‐year‐olds were asked to extrapolate imaginary lines in a graph‐like task in order to find the position on one axis of a graph corresponding to a given position on the other axis. In addition to these axis‐to‐axis extrapolations, they were given separate line‐to‐axis and axis‐to‐line problems requiring the extrapolation of only one line. The older children made significantly smaller errors than the younger ones, but on the whole both age groups made accurate extrapolations in all three types of problem. Most importantly the errors in the axis‐to‐axis condition were not significantly different from the mean summed errors in the other two conditions (line‐to‐axis and axis‐to‐line). This shows that children do not experience difficulty with the axis‐to‐axis condition over and above the difficulty of extrapolating two single lines. We found no evidence that the non‐perpendicularity of the lines which the children had to extrapolate caused them any particular difficulty. We concluded that young children have a more adequate understanding of rectangular coordinate systems than has been evident from their performance in other tasks and that young children can in principle cope with the spatial demands made by graphs surprisingly well.
Effects of format of the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire on content validity, split‐half reliability, and the role of memory in test‐retest reliability
Authors: McKelvie Stuart J.
Published: April 2011

A total of 320 students (163 males, 157 females) were administered Marks' Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) in either its original (blocked) format or in a revised (random) format in which the order of the items was changed. All subjects completed the test on a second occasion, either 10 min or three weeks after the first, and did so under standard or novel memory instructions in which they were asked to recall their initial responses. Mean scores were significantly higher (less vivid imagery was reported) and split‐half reliability significantly lower with the random (0–692) than blocked (0–893) grouping, although females scored lower than males on both forms. Test‐retest reliability was similar at 0–710 for the two versions after three weeks under reassess instructions, but was slightly elevated on the blocked relative to the random test after 10 min, where self‐reported item recall, although low, was enhanced. These results suggest that, although its internal consistency and temporal stability were rather low by psychometric standards, scores on the random form of the test were less contaminated by response bias than those on the blocked version. It is therefore recommended that the random VVIQ be preferred, but that its use be confined to research purposes.
Understanding face recognition
Authors: Bruce Vicki , Young Andy
Published: April 2011

The aim of this paper is to develop a theoretical model and a set of terms for understanding and discussing how we recognize familiar faces, and the relationship between recognition and other aspects of face processing. It is suggested that there are seven distinct types of information that we derive from seen faces; these are labelled pictorial, structural, visually derived semantic, identity‐specific semantic, name, expression and facial speech codes. A functional model is proposed in which structural encoding processes provide descriptions suitable for the analysis of facial speech, for analysis of expression and for face recognition units. Recognition of familiar faces involves a match between the products of structural encoding and previously stored structural codes describing the appearance of familiar faces, held in face recognition units. Identity‐specific semantic codes are then accessed from person identity nodes, and subsequently name codes are retrieved. It is also proposed that the cognitive system plays an active role in deciding whether or not the initial match is sufficiently close to indicate true recognition or merely a ‘resemblance’; several factors are seen as influencing such decisions.

This functional model is used to draw together data from diverse sources including laboratory experiments, studies of everyday errors, and studies of patients with different types of cerebral injury. It is also used to clarify similarities and differences between processes responsible for object, word and face recognition.
Acute effects of meals, noise and nightwork
Authors: Smith Andrew , Miles Christopher
Published: April 2011

An experimental study of the acute effects of meals, noise and nightwork showed that there was a post‐meal impairment in detection of targets in a cognitive vigilance task. This was found both during the day and at night, although certain features of the results suggested that the day and night effects were not equivalent. Noise increased the number of false alarms but reduced the post‐meal impairment in hit rate. Subjects with low levels of trait or state anxiety showed the greatest post‐lunch impairments in performance, but this effect was reduced when the meal was eaten at night.
Emotion and the self: The context of remembering
Authors: Miall David S.
Published: April 2011

In an incidental learning task, the effectiveness of self‐reference as a learning strategy is equalled by that of reference to a friend in terms of amount of material remembered, and both are more effective than reference to imagery or the commonness of material. The results of the present study, however, show that reference to the self enhances memory for emotional material compared with reference to a friend; but emotionally neutral material is remembered better by reference to a friend. Whether the emotional material is positive or negative also influences memory levels. It is suggested that the self‐concept is not a uniform schema for remembering: it is differentiated according to type of material (emotional vs. neutral) and whether material represents items or actions; but the primary form in which the self‐concept appears to be represented is emotional.
Development and differentiation in children's figure drawings
Authors: Silk Angèle M. J. , Thomas Glyn V.
Published: April 2011

Children, aged between 3 1/2 and 6 1/2 years old, were each asked to make a drawing of a man and a dog. The drawings were scored in terms of their relative sizes, orientation and the numbers of common features, human features and dog features portrayed. The total number of features increased with increasing age, as did the proportions of distinguishing features. The lack of differentiation by younger children was due both to the absence of distinguishing features in both drawings, and to the inclusion of human features in their dog drawing. Even in the youngest age group, however, the dog drawing included more dog features than did the man drawing. These results support the hypothesis that first drawings of an animal are often adaptations of the child's scheme for a human figure. Older children increasingly adopted canonical orientations for their drawings (full‐face vertical man, profile horizontal animal). There was no significant effect of the order in which the drawings were made, and drawing both figures together on one page resulted in smaller drawings with fewer features. Girls included more features in total, and proportionally more human features, in their drawings than did boys.
Effects of time of day on the integration of information in text
Authors: Oakhill Jane
Published: April 2011

This paper reports an experiment that used the self‐paced reading technique to explore subjects' integrative processing of short texts at different times of day (early morning and late afternoon). The difficulty of the passages was manipulated by including pronouns which could either be resolved syntactically, or required an inference to determine their referent. The results showed that subjects tested in the afternoon dealt with referential difficulties in the text as they were reading it, whereas subjects tested in the morning did not adjust their reading to take account of the difficulty of the text, but tended to delay necessary processing until it was required to answer a question. The relationship between such a comprehension strategy and subsequent text memory is discussed.
E. C. Tolman: A centenary symposium
Authors: Still Arthur
Published: April 2011

1986 is the birth centenary of E. C. Tolman, and three papers on his work are published together in this issue of the journal. The paper by Mackintosh considers Tolman's learning theory in the light of recent work on conditioning; Amundson argues that Tolman was an epistemological realist, and that the conventional view of him as an operationalist is mistaken; while Good & Still place his early work within a neglected tradition of direct perception.
Tolman and the tradition of direct perception
Authors: Good Jim , Still Arthur
Published: April 2011

During the early part of Tolman's career, he struggled to develop a language of molar behaviourism, which incorporated at a descriptive level the purposiveness he observed in his rats. Drawing upon Gestalt psychology he developed a set of terms to describe the organism in its environment. This work places him at the start of a tradition of direct perception, which has included Heider, Asch, and J. J. Gibson. The point light display of Johansson has recently been used to explore the information underlying perception of intentionality, and can be seen, retrospectively, to validate Tolman's non‐mentalistic account of purposiveness.
A brief computerized form of a schematic analogy task
Authors: May Jon , Kline Paul , Cooper Colin
Published: April 2011

The nature of the components derived from componential analysis has not been fully established. A computerized version of the People Pieces Analogy Task used by Sternberg is described, and despite different materials and pace of testing, results similar so those of Sternberg are reported. These are then used to develop and validate a shorter form of the task, suitable for administration together with a battery of tests to measure other cognitive and psychometric variables. This test will enable further individual difference research into the relationships between components, cognitive processing measures and ability factor scores.
Pictorial communication of abstract verbs in relation to human‐computer interaction
Authors: Rogers Yvonne , Oborne D. J.
Published: April 2011

Graphic symbols, commonly known as icons, are becoming increasingly popular as a medium to present information about computer systems and their command operations. This paper considers the extent to which such pictorial representations can be generated for verb actions like those used at the computer interface and, subsequently, how effective they are in communicating their intended meaning.

An initial experiment showed that the majority of subjects were able to produce drawings for a set of verbs, but found it much easier to do so for high imagery verbs compared with low imagery verbs. Furthermore, drawings produced for the high imagery verbs were considered to be the most representative and also had the highest stereotype strength. The types of representation found in these drawings were generally complex, depicting concrete objects in conjunction with conventional symbols and various line supplements. The results from this study are discussed in relation to various factors which contribute to the production of pictorial images and how these may affect the communicativeness of such images when used as icons at the computer interface.
Do we really need a ‘contingency model’ for concept formation? A reply to Richardson & Bhavnani (1984)
Authors: Abdi Hervé
Published: April 2011

In a recent paper, Richardson & Bhavnani (1984) proposed a new model of concept formation christened ‘the contingency model’ which would supersede the so‐called ‘prototype model’. To support their model, they ran an experiment in which the contingency model apparently surpassed a prototype model. It is argued here that their conclusions are doubtful for several reasons. Firstly, some miscomputations have slipped into the data analysis. Secondly, the prototype model used is not appropriate. Precisely, Richardson & Bhavnani have computed their ‘Contingency Values' (CV) assuming that the features composing the exemplars are nominal variables, but have computed one ‘distance to prototype’ assuming the features are ordinal variables. The alleged superiority of the contingency model vanishes when a correct analysis is performed, or when it is evaluated against what we call a ‘mimimal prototype model’ in which the features are nominal variables. The ‘minimal prototype model’ can be interpreted as a particular and simple case of most of the current ‘prototype models’ (recalling that there is not one but several models). Consequently, it provides an overall test between the CV model and most of the current prototype models. The minimal model is shown to be a particular case of the ‘distance to prototype’ models, and the ‘family resemblance to exemplars models’; (including Tversky's contrast model), and the ‘distributed memory models’. Finally, we note that the contingency model (as tested by Richardson & Bhavnani) is a variant of a ‘distance to prototype model’, in which the distance from the prototype to an exemplar is given by an entropic measure. Thus the opposition proposed by Richardson & Bhavnani between the CV model and the prototype models is meaningless.
Effects of alcohol on word categorization and recognition memory
Authors: Maylor E. A. , Rabbit P. M. A. , Kingstone A.
Published: April 2011

Thirty‐six subjects were given no alcohol on one day and 1 ml alcohol/kg body weight on another (the order of administration being counterbalanced across subjects). In both sessions, they performed a word categorization task involving surface and semantic processing of lists of 50 words followed by a recognition task (the presentation of those words in addition to an equal number of new words for speeded recognition). For categorization, subjects were slower and less accurate with alcohol than without. For recognition, alcohol resulted in a decrease in d′ and an increase in beta. Categorization was slower and recognition more accurate for semantic processing than for surface processing. There was no evidence that the detrimental effects of alcohol on recognition memory can be reduced by deeper processing of the to‐be‐remembered items.
Looking for employment: An expectancy–valence analysis of job‐seeking behaviour among young people
Authors: Feather N. T. , O'Brien Gordon E.
Published: April 2011

Frequency of job seeking was investigated in a study of 320 young unemployed men and women in Adelaide, South Australia. Subscales defining each person's expectation of finding a job (control‐optimism) and the perceived attractiveness or desirability of employment (job valence) were constructed on the basis of a factor analysis. It was predicted that job‐seeking behaviour would be positively related to the expectation and valence measures both singly and in combination. The results showed that (1) the young people's job seeking was positively related to their perceived desirability of being employed, to their negative feelings about being employed, to the length of time they had been unemployed and to the number of job applications they made, but unrelated to control–optimism; (2) their perceived desirability of being employed was positively related to their endorsement of the work ethic; (3) their expectations of finding work were inversely related to length of time unemployed and to the number of job applications made; (4) the number of job applications they made was positively related to the length of time unemployed; (5) females reported greater parental support than did males. These results were replicated with a second sample of 131 young unemployed people. Results for both samples were further analysed by using path analysis and multiple regression procedures. The main findings were discussed in relation to expectancy‐valence theory, to research on controllability, to sex‐role differences and to the need to take account of dynamic processes that influence behaviour over time.
Memory for music: A study of musical and listener factors
Authors: Russell P. A.
Published: April 2011

A music recognition test was used to explore the effect of several musical dimensions and listener‐related factors on memory for music. Twenty short pieces of instrumental music (modern jazz) which had been heard once previously were mixed with 20 similar distractor pieces and subjects asked to indicate which pieces had been heard before. Music which had been independently rated as familiar‐sounding, melodic, pleasing and of low complexity was more likely to be recognized and these four dimensions were roughly equally predictive of recognizability. Independently rated memorability did not predict recognizability and nor did two formal structural measures, ensemble size and tempo. Musically competent subjects were better than non‐competent ones at recognizing very familiar‐sounding music but not less familiar‐sounding music. Recognition ability was not related to amount of prior musical listening experience. Results are discussed in the context of theories linking recognizability to the ease with which pieces can be assimilated into existing frames of reference and recognition ability to the number, quality and relevance of existing referents.
Effect of stimulus range on judgements of sweetness intensity in a lime drink
Authors: Conner M. T. , Land D. G. , Booth D. A.
Published: April 2011

The effect of the range of levels of the test stimuli on ratings of sweetness intensity is demonstrated for a lime drink. The results are consistent with Poulton's (1979) suggestion that range effects can be predicted from the deviation of the mean response in a session from the mid‐point of the response dimension. It is demonstrated that this range bias can be avoided by adding a readily anchored mid‐point (ideal) to the response dimension and selecting stimuli so that the mean response is close to this mid‐point. This bias‐reducing, relative‐to‐mid‐point procedure also produces a stronger linear relationship between ratings and concentration ratios than does the conventional end‐point‐anchored intensity rating procedure. The similarity of the linear semi‐log functions of response relative to extremely sweet and relative to ideally sweet is taken as evidence that the two types of responses are not independent.
Measuring the effects upon cognitive abilities of sleep loss during continuous operations
Authors: May Jon , Kline Paul
Published: April 2011

One hundred and thirty‐five soldiers attending a 10‐week training course in the Brecon Beacons were divided into three groups, each of which sat a different kit of five tests taken from the Kit of Factor‐Referenced Cognitive Tests (Ekstrom et al., 1976). The tests were given three times, with the first administration serving as a baseline, and the second and third administrations being completed after exercises involving either two nights' loss of sleep, or a physically fatiguing day. The experimental design allows the effects of practice and physical fatigue to be taken into account, and measures of the cognitive effects of sleep loss are obtained for each test. The results show that tests adversely affected by sleep loss are those that involve visual encoding and scanning, production of novel responses, as well as those in which lapses of attention critically affect performance. Performance on tests which involved logical thought and reasoning did not suffer, and in some cases improved.
The coding of relations versus the coding of independent cues in concept formation
Authors: Richardson K.
Published: April 2011

A major issue in theories of concept formation at the present time is whether people encode relations among component features in experience, or whether they simply encode the occurrence of features separately as independent cues. It is suggested in this paper that two problems have particularly obstructed a clear resolution of the issue. The first is a failure to check to what extent training materials actually contain relations among features, before results are declared in favour of a particular model. The second is the use, hitherto, of only informal methods of analysing such relations, where they exist, and of predicting from them the structure of the concept. This paper describes an expression for measuring the overall relations among feature variables in concept training materials. It also introduces a methodology, using log‐linear models, for predicting concept structures on the basis of those relations. Two experiments combined these methods to assess whether subjects abstracted relations among features, or whether they abstracted independent cues. The results came out strongly in favour of relational coding.
Age, affect, and memory for pictorial story sequences
Authors: Yoder Carol Y. , Elias Jeffrey W.
Published: April 2011

Sixteen young (19·1 mean years), 16 middle‐aged (39·4 mean years), and 16 older women (71·1 mean years) were presented with simple stories in an eight‐frame pictorial format. The stories contained no verbal information and were designed to have emotional or neutral affective content. Immediate and delayed (72 hours later) recall were measured in terms of response to specific questions (structured recall) and total number of written propositions (free recall). Recall of affective content was greater for both structured and free recall conditions for all age groups. The superior recall of affective as compared to neutral material became more important with delay although the elderly did not differentially benefit from this relationship. The primary conclusion drawn was that affective content has similar effects on recall at all ages.
An error analysis of the word‐superiority effect
Authors: Solman Robert T.
Published: April 2011

In this experiment subjects were asked to report the identity of a position‐cued critical letter in a linear array of four letters. There were four types of arrays used: (1) unpronounceable non‐words; (2) pronounceable non‐words; (3) words in which the critical letter was minimally constrained, by the context letters; and (4) words in which the critical letter was maximally constrained by the context letters. A different group of subjects was assigned to each of these four array conditions. All four‐letter stimuli were presented in two parts. A leading array in which the information from two quadrants of a vertical by horizontal division of each letter was presented, and, after intervals of 0, 20, 40, 80, 160, 320, 640 ms and infinity (i.e. no trailing array) a trailing array of the complementary letter parts. Examination of identification errors showed that performance in the word conditions was consistently superior to performance in the non‐word conditions, and the magnitude of this difference (i.e. the word‐superiority effect) increased with increasing stimulus onset asynchrony up to 160 ms and then gradually declined. It was argued that these systematic changes in the size of the word‐superiority effect were suggestive of the presence during encoding of robust word and fragile letter codes. This was consistent with the Interactive Activation Model of Word Perception. However, this model also assumes that all strings of letters are encoded in the same way independent of their linguistic properties, and comparisons of the relative proportions of the types of errors made were not necessarily consistent with this assumption. The identification errors were classified either as ‘intrusion’ (i.e. a report of a letter not in the array), or as ‘ location’ (i.e. a report of a non‐critical or context letter from the array), and an analysis of the proportions of the latter indicated that mislocations contributed more to the total errors in the unpronounceable non‐words than in the other three types of stimuli. This suggested that the non‐words may have been encoded differently.
Repetition and active listening: The effects of spacing self‐assessment questions
Authors: Parkin Alan J. , Wood Anne , Aldrich Frances K.
Published: April 2011

This study is concerned with the practical application of repetition effects in a classroom setting. In Expt 1 subjects listened to a short passage. At various points in the passage they were required to answer a self‐assessment question (SAQ) which referred to an item of information in the immediately preceding portion of the text. Each SAQ was then repeated either immediately, or after one minute, two minutes, or four minutes. Three hours later subjects were given an unexpected recall test in which they attempted to recall the answers they had given earlier. The recall data showed that accuracy increased as a function of lag between presentation and repetition of SAQs. Experiment 2 examined whether the effect of lag in Expt 1 was due to the increased effort that might be involved in answering an SAQ repeated after a longer lag. The data showed that increasing the lag between an SAQ and its target information did not affect subsequent delayed recall. Practical aspects of the data are considered.
Patterns of visual—spatial performance and ‘spatial ability‘: Dissociation of ethnic and sex differences
Authors: Mayes J. Terence , Jahoda Gustav , Neilson Irene
Published: April 2011

Is there a common basis for the ethnic and sex differences that are characteristically obtained on psychometric tests of spatial ability? Three experiments approached this question by observing subject differences in the recognition and reconstruction of visual‐spatial displays. The pattern of performance on these experimental tasks was compared with that on a traditional spatial ability test.

In the first experiment, two samples of 40 students, balanced for sex, from Zimbabwe and Scotland respectively, attempted a forced‐choice recognition task for meaningful scenes. Both ethnic groups and both sexes showed equivalent performance. The same subjects then undertook a task involving the reproduction of an arrangement of blocks into two‐dimensional plan and elevation views. On this task, involving spatial reorientation, the Zimbabweans made over three times as many errors as the Scots. In a third experiment the requirement for spatial reorientation was added to the original recognition task and this was performed by a further 40 subjects. A significant difference between ethnic groups now emerged and this effect covaried with spatial ability. Again, however, no sex difference was observed.

The overall pattern of results points to spatial reorientation as a major factor in the cross‐ethnic differences. The absence of a sex difference on the experimental tasks contrasts with its appearance in both samples on the spatial ability test and represents a puzzling obstacle to our current understanding. This dissociation of sex and ethnic differences provides evidence against the hypothesis that they stem from the same source.
Reinstatement of context following exposure to post‐event information
Authors: Gibling Felicity , Davies Graham
Published: April 2011

In an earlier study, Jenkins & Davies (1985) reported significant interference to facial memory from exposure to an erroneous composite picture of a target in the interval between observation and test. Subjects (n = 194) in the present experiment first viewed a videotaped incident depicting a male target and then received a composite of the target which was designed to present either correct or misleading information concerning his appearance. Control subjects received no composite of the target. Following a delay of one week, all subjects were required to recall the appearance of the target in a cued recall questionnaire and to recognize him from a photospread. For half of the subjects, the context of the original incident was revived by means of a guided memory interview, modelled on Malpass & Devine (1981). The remaining subjects received no contextual reinstatement but simply completed recall and recognition tests. For subjects receiving no contextual reinstatement, interference in facial memory from the composites was observed both for recall and recognition of the target. However, for subjects in the context condition, significant reductions in the influence of the misleading composites were observed. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
Understanding of anaphoric relations in skilled and less skilled comprehenders
Authors: Yuill Nicola , Oakhill Jane
Published: April 2011

This experiment investigated comprehension of four types of anaphor (reference, ellipsis, substitution and lexical) in 7 to 8−year‐old good and poor comprehenders, matched in decoding skills but differing in reading comprehension skill. Poor comprehenders performed less well than skilled comprehenders both in identifying antecedents of anaphors in a story, and in answering questions on the text which required anaphor resolution. Both groups performed more poorly as distance between anaphor and antecedent increased, and poor comprehenders were more adversely affected by distance than good comprehenders for ellipsis. Children's errors are used to suggest differences between the groups in processes of resolving anaphors, in terms of scanning text for appropriate antecedents and integrating text with world knowledge.
Calendar calculating in ‘idiots savants’: How do they do it?
Authors: Howe Michael J. A. , Smith Julia
Published: April 2011

A number of mentally handicapped individuals are able to solve difficult calendar date problems such as specifying the day of the week for a particular date, sometimes over spans of more than 100 years. These individuals are self‐taught and do not follow procedures at all similar to the usual, published, algorithms. An investigation of one individual revealed that he retained considerable information about the structure of days in particular months, probably as visual images. His skill closely depended on the extent and form of his knowledge of calendars, and his errors were often a consequence of lack of knowledge about a particular time period. Mentally retarded individuals who perform calendar‐date feats are often socially withdrawn and devote considerable periods of time to calendar dates. The most capable calendar‐date calculators are usually individuals who have a strong interest in calendars as such.
The visual processor module and normal adult readers
Authors: Bigsby Pamela
Published: April 2011

Four experiments are reported which investigated the nature of the code used by normal adult readers in nominal matches. It was established that the code is not a name code but a non‐visual, non‐phonological, case‐independent, font‐independent, abstract representation: the abstract letter identity code. As nominal matches were found to be impaired when stimuli contained reversible letters from the set (Bb, Dd, Pp, Qq) it is argued that the visual processor must contain a component for checking the orientation of these letters prior to ALI assignment. Results are consistent with the theory that the ALI code is the code generated in the visual processor for use in direct lexical access. It is suggested that the four experiments might be useful in the diagnosis of any possible visual processor malfunction in impaired readers.
Approaches to the study of animal intelligence
Authors: Mackintosh N. J.
Published: April 2011

One tradition has seen the task of comparative psychology as that of ordering animals by their degree of intelligence. A more appropriate goal for psychology, however, is to elucidate the structure of animal intelligence, and comparative studies have a valuable part to play in this endeavour. Thus rather than being content to show that several species can be rank ordered by their performance on, say, learning sets, comparative psychologists would be better occupied analysing the nature of the processes involved in learning‐set formation and seeing whether animals more or less proficient at learning sets differed in terms of these presumed processes. This argument is illustrated by an analysis of the behaviour of crows and pigeons which suggests that they differ not only in learning‐set formation but also in other tasks that require the abstraction of a general rule across a change of stimuli. Put crudely, pigeons are rote learners, crows rule learners.
Verbal operant conditioning as a function of extraversion and reinforcement
Authors: Gupta Sunita , Shukla A. P.
Published: April 2011

The present investigation was designed to study the effects of rewarding and punishing verbal reinforcers on verbal operant conditioning as a function of extraversion‐introversion. A randomized block design involving three levels of extraversion (extraverts, ambiverts and introverts) and two verbal reinforcement conditions (‘good’ and ‘poor’), was replicated 20 times. One hundred and twenty undergraduate and postgraduate female students were individually subjected to Taffel's verbal conditioning procedure. The study supports the following conclusions: (1) extraverts as compared to introverts and ambiverts condition better with the rewarding reinforcer (‘good’) while the introverts compared to extraverts and ambiverts condition better with the punishing reinforcer (‘poor’); (2) extraverts condition better with the rewarding reinforcer compared to the punishing one, whereas the introverts condition better with the punishing reinforcer compared to the rewarding one; (3) ambiverts condition comparably with both the rewarding and punishing reinforcers.
Does hand proficiency determine hand preference?
Authors: Bishop D. V. M.
Published: April 2011

There is debate in the handedness literature over whether proficiency and preference measures are indicators of common underlying factors, or separate dimensions of behaviour with different causes. It has been argued that hand preference has different origins from hand proficiency on the grounds that (i) the two types of measure are imperfectly correlated and (ii) distributions of relative hand proficiency are normal or nearly so, whereas distributions of hand preference are J‐shaped. A model is described in which the probability that one hand will be preferred for a given activity is directly proportional to the relative proficiency of the two sides, the latter being normally distributed. It is shown that imperfect correlations between proficiency and preference measures, and J‐shaped distributions of hand preference, can be predicted by such a model. These facts about hand preference and proficiency do not, therefore, go against the view that preference is determined by proficiency.
The disadvantages of dextrality for intelligence*
Authors: Annett Marian , Manning Margaret
Published: April 2011

The right shift (RS) theory of handedness suggests that the human bias to dextrality has costs as well as benefits. Samples of children from six primary schools were individually tested for hand preference, hand skill and Raven's Matrices. Scores on standardized educational tests recently given by teachers were available for three schools. When children were stratified for ability, the distributions of hand preference and of right minus left (R‐L) hand skill were as expected if extent of RS is inversely related to ability. When children were classified for R‐L score, the most strongly dextral children were poorer than all others for Matrices, English and several other tests. The trend for ability to decline from left to right across the laterality continuum was consistent for all scores available. Strong dextrality is associated with weak left‐hand skill, not good right‐hand skill, in accord with the hypothesis that the costs of RS are to the right hemisphere. The findings and their interpretation are discussed in comparison with Geschwind's theory of developmental pathology, and for their implications for theories of hemisphere specialization.