Cecil A. Rogers

Entrainment of respiration to repetitive finger tapping

Subjects were instructed to synchronize finger tapping with visual signals of various frequencies. It was found that breathing rate became entrained to tapping rate if the latter fell within a range of two breaths per minute of the subject’s previous breathing rate. Entrainment did not occur when the subject merely monitored the visual stimuli but only during performance of tapping. The effect occurred without subjects’ awareness and was observed only in the absence of deliberate adjustments in respiratory frequency on the part of the subject. Temporal restrictions on the neural events responsible for motor output appear to be responsible for the phenomenon.

Anagram solution as a function of pronounceability and difficulty

The present study investigates the effect of pronounceability (P), as rated by Ss, on anagram solution probability under two levels of difficulty (D), or number of letters moved. From 60 five-letter anagrams rated for P, four lists of 10 anagrams each were constructed to represent both easy-to-pronounce and hard-to-pronounce anagrams in both levels of D (one vs. two letters moved). The results indicate that P is inversely related to solution probability, and that D is not an effective variable with hard-to-pronounce anagrams.

Discrimination Learning, Social Class, and Type of Reward.

A visual discrimination task was used to determine the effectiveness of verbal reward alone (Verbal group) vs a combination of candy and verbal reward (Combined group) with 16 middle-class 5-yr.-olds and 16 5-yr.-olds from a Head Start class. Social class proved to be the only significant variable, the performance of the higher status group being superior to that of the lower status group. Only a tendency for the verbally rewarded Ss to be superior to combined reward Ss was noted.

A TRANSFER APPROACH TO THE ORE

The present study was conducted to test Lovejoys attentional hypothesis concerning the effect of difficulty in a discrimination task on the overtraining reversal effect (ORE). Results indicated that either criterion or overtraining on a difficult problem produced efficient reversal acquisition. However, significantly rapid reversal performance only occurred when overtraining was combined with a difficult discrimination. Lovejoys approach to the ORE was supported.

Effect of varying picture-sentence congruence on children's free recall.

70 fourth-grade children were shown objects arbitrarily arranged in an integrated scene. Subjects were randomly assigned to conditions which either presented a sentence that correctly labeled and correctly described the physical arrangement of the objects, presented a sentence containing the correct labels of the objects but not the correct physical arrangement, or presented a sentence which did not contain the correct labels and incorrectly described the physical arrangement. Control conditions either provided subjects with correct labels or omitted presentation of verbal prompts. Congruence between the object display and the sentence produced significantly higher recall and clustering than the incongruence or control conditions. The incongruence conditions did not produce significantly higher recall than the control conditions, suggesting that incongruence interferes with formation of stable grouping of items which appears to be an important factor in facilitating free recall.

VISUAL AND VERBAL ELABORATION IN CHILDREN'S FREE RECALL

60 sixth-grade children were shown unrelated objects presented as an integrated scene, in a horizontal row or serially. Half of the children were presented a relational verbal prompt which was omitted for the remaining children. Measures of clustering and recall indicated that free recall and clustering increased with degree of organization of the objects. Presentation of the verbal prompt produced better recall and higher clustering than its absence. The lack of an interaction between verbal prompting and type of object display was interpreted as indicating the relative independence of verbal/auditory and visual processing.

Computer-Assisted Design in Perceptual-Motor Skills Research

A categorization was made of independent variables previously found to be potent in simple perceptual-motor tasks. A computer was then used to generate hypothetical factorial designs. These were evaluated in terms of literature trends and pragmatic criteria. Potential side-effects of machine-assisted research strategy were discussed.

SEQUENCE OF EXTREME BELIEF‐INCONGRUENT VERSUS NEUTRAL INFORMATION IN SOCIAL PERCEPTION1

Order of presenting neutral versus highly belief-discrepant (magical child-care or deviant sexual practices) information on evaluations of a stimulus person was studied in 570 college students. As hypothesized, neutral preceding belief-discrepant content created much greater rejection than did the reverses sequence. When the vivid sexual and child-care messages were themselves paired, order of presentation had negligible immediate effect upon social perception. The recency effects for neutral plus deviant messages were generally maintained after four weeks delay, but an unanticipated primacy effect was found when both deviant (child-care and sex) messages were presented. Information aimed at fostering cultural relativism reduced delayed rejection to a significant but numerically small extent. The data suggested that stimulus vividness affects social perception, and that future research needs to explicate the relative contributions of vividness and valence to impression formation.

Observational Learning of a Verbal Discrimination.

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether second-grade children could learn a verbal discrimination by observing an adult female model associate one algebraic symbol with past-tense words (e.g., watched) and a second symbol with present-participles (e.g., walking). Exposure to the model produced rapid acquisition of the verbal discrimination without the use of either overt practice or extrinsic reinforcement.

On assessing verbal stimulus hierarchies1

Typical word-association procedures result in verbal response hierarchies for a specific stimulus word. The problem of assessing corresponding stimulus hierarchies is discussed Three approaches are entertained: obtaining associations to all of the words in the dictionary, clerical cross-indexing of existing response-hierarchy data, and obtaining backward associations which are then used in forward association. A comparison of data obtainable by the last two methods is presented.