Self-verbalization and emotional arousal.

Investigated certain assumptions derived from A. Ellis' theory relating implicit verbalization to emotional arousal. Emotional responses (GSR and respiration changes) of 18 undergraduates instructed to silently read sequences of affectively loaded sentences were compared with those of 9 Ss who read neutral sentences. The relationship between relevance to S of the content of the sentences and level of emotional response was investigated, as was the effect of sentence type (observation, inference, or evaluative conclusion) on level of emotional response. Results were that Ss showed a significantly greater response to affectively loaded than to neutral sentences on 2 out of 3 responses measures. Neither relevance nor sentence type were found to have any significant effect. Results were interpreted as offering only partial support for the theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A theoretical and empirical integration of the rational-emotive and classical conditioning theories.

Tested the assumptions of A. Ellis's ABC theory of psychopathology, which relates implicit verbalizations to emotional arousal. The theory is recast in a developmental conditioning framework which becomes the basis for criticism of a previous study by D. C. Rimm and S. G. Litvak (see record 1969-09037-001) of these assumptions. An empirical replication and extension was conducted, in which 5 hypotheses were derived and tested, using 40 female undergraduates as Ss. Sentence dyads, relevance of content, and neuroticism were manipulated. Response measures were galvanic skin conductance, respiration rate, and respiration depth. Only the galvanic skin response (GSR) measure differentiated the responses of the experimental Ss (with emotionally loaded stimuli) from those of control Ss (with neutral stimuli). The ABC theory was supported by the GSR measure on 3 of the 5 hypotheses under investigation. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Effects of Reinforcement Omission on Rats with Lesions in the Amygdala": Erratum.

Reports an error in "Effects of Reinforcement Omission on Rats with Lesions in the Amygdala" by Peter G. Henke (Journal of Comparative & Physiological Psychology, 1973[Jul], Vol 84[1], 187-193). On page 188, the sentence beginning on Line 20, Column 1 should read: "Prior to any behavioral training, six animals received bilateral RF lesions in the amygdaloid complex." (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 1974-06538-001.) Trained 12 male Wistar rats with bilateral lesions in the amygdala to barpress on an FI schedule of reinforcement. During test trials, when reinforcement was occasionally omitted, response rates of 12 controls increased in the subsequent interval, whereas lesioned Ss showed no significant change. In Exp II Ss received fixed-ratio reinforcement on 1 lever, which was followed by a time-out period and fixed-ratio reinforcement on a 2nd lever. Results indicate that after reinforcement was withheld Ss with damage in the amygdala did not increase responding in the subsequent time-out period, whereas controls showed significantly higher rates. Differential latencies to initiation of response after nonreinforcement were also found. The deficits following brain damage are attributed to a reduction in nonreinforcement-induced frustration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Discourse-based emotional consistency modulates early and middle components of event-related potentials.

In this study, participants read stories describing emotional episodes with either a positive or negative valence (Experiment 1). Following each story, participants were exposed to short sentences referring to the protagonist, and the event-related potential (ERP) for each sentence's last word was recorded. Some sentences described the protagonist's emotion, either consistent or inconsistent with the story; others were neutral; and others involved a semantically anomalous word. Inconsistent emotions were found to elicit larger N100/P200 and N400 than consistent emotions. However, when participants were exposed to the same critical sentences in a control experiment (Experiment 2) in which the stories had been removed, emotional consistency effects disappeared in all ERP components, demonstrating that these effects were discourse-level phenomena. By contrast, the ordinary N400 effect for locally anomalous words in the sentence was obtained both with and without story context. In conclusion, reading stories describing events with emotional significance determines strong and very early anticipations of an emotional word. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Seating arrangement and leadership emergence": Ettatum.

Reports an error in the original article by L. T. Howells and S. W. Becker (Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1962, 64[2], 148-150). On page 148 of the article, the last sentence of Paragraph 2, Column 1, should read: However, Steinzor did not investigate the present program, namely, the relationship between seating distance and leadership emergence. The original sentence implied that Steinzor had reached conclusions about seating arrangement and leadership, and this implication is incorrect. (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 1964-02596-001): Based on the proposition that seating position effects the flow of communication which, in turn, effects leadership emergence, 20 groups of 5 Ss performed a problem solving task and then rated the group members on exhibited leadership. The seats were arranged so that 2 Ss were opposite 3 Ss. A greater number of leaders than would be expected by chance emerged from the 2-seat side of the table, thus, lending support to the hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Facilitative and disruptive effects of prior exposure to shock on subsequent avoidance performance": Erratum.

Reports an error in "Facilitative and disruptive effects of prior exposure to shock on subsequent avoidance performance" by H. Anisman and T. Waller (Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 1972[Jan], Vol 78[1], 113-122). On page 114, the sentence beginning on Line 56, Column 2, should read: "Thirty seconds after placement in the compartment one half of the rats were given 10 CS (light and tone) presentations in which the CS was 9 sec. in duration, while the remaining rats received 10 CS-US presentations in which the US was a 1-ma. shock (constant current, ac) 2 sec. in duration." (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 1972-22565-001.) Subjected 40 male rats from each of 5 strains to 10 signaled inescapable 1-ma shock presentations. Shock facilitated subsequent 1-way and shuttle-avoidance performance (1-ma shock) in Charles River hooded, Wistar, Holtzman, and Sasco Ss, but did not significantly affect avoidance learning in Sprague-Dawley Ss. A 2nd experiment employing 120 male Holtzman rats indicated that inescapable shock of 1 ma. facilitated subsequent 1-way and shuttle-avoidance performance, while exposure to shock of 2 ma. facilitated 1-way and interfered with shuttle-avoidance performance. Movement ratings recorded during both CS and intershock intervals in pretraining were found to be good predictors of subsequent avoidance performance in preshocked Ss. Results are interpreted in terms of response repertoire changes produced by shock in conjunction with the defense reaction necessary in acquiring the avoidance response. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Development of the concept of truth-functional negation": Correction to Kim.

Reports an error in "Development of the concept of truth-functional negation" by Kyung Kim (Developmental Psychology, 1985[May], Vol 21[3], 462-472). In the article, several key words were omitted from the last sentence of the Method section on page 464, column 2, third paragraph. The corrected sentence is included in the erratum. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1985-25108-001.) Studied the development of the concept of truth-functional negation in 2 experiments, using 36 English-speaking children (aged 3-6 yrs) and 10 Korean-speaking children (aged 4-5 yrs) as Ss. In Exp I, English-speaking Ss were given a sentence-variation task in which the following 4 sentence types were used to describe 36 pictures of common items: true affirmative, false affirmative, true negative (TN), and false negative. The results show that a majority of Ss under 5 yrs had difficulty with negative sentences, particularly TN sentences, indicating a lack of explicit understanding of truth-functional negation as defined in logic. In Exp II, a cross-linguistic replication of Exp I was attempted with Korean-speaking Ss. Despite some cross-linguistic differences in the negation system, the Korean-speaking Ss showed essentially the same pattern of results, suggesting that the development in question proceeds within the general limit set by the general cognitive development. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotion concepts and emotional states in social judgment and categorization.

An objection to conclusions of research investigating effects of emotions on cognitive processes is that the effects are due to the activation of semantic concepts rather than to emotional feelings. A sentence unscrambling task was developed to prime concepts of happiness, sadness, or neutral ideas. Pilot studies demonstrated that unscrambling emotional sentences did not affect emotional state but did prime semantically related words. Experiment 1 showed that the induction of emotional state but not the sentence unscrambling task produced emotion-congruent judgments. Results of Experiment 2 showed that individuals in emotional states categorized according to emotional equivalence more often than participants in a neutral state. Sentence unscrambling had no effect on emotional response categorization. The influences of emotions and emotion knowledge in cognition and emotion are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Typographical cues that facilitate comprehension: Correction.

Reports an error in the original article by Lawrence T. Frase and Barry J. Schwartz (Journal of Educational Psychology, 1979[Apr], Vol 71[2], pp. 197-206). On page 203, a sentence transposed two letters in an abbreviation. The corrected sentence is published here. (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 1979-27787-001.) Written sentences often contain several meaningful components (e.g., causes and effects or events in a sequence). Preliminary studies of technical documents showed that typographically segmenting these components improved raters' judgments of the comprehensibility of the information. In the present paper, this segmentation notion is generalized, suggesting that phrase segmentation and indentation can be used to facilitate comprehension. Five experiments were conducted (with a total of 72 college students or technical aides) in which Ss verified sentences by reading complex information in several technical passages. Meaningfully segmented and indented text resulted in 14-28% faster response times than standard text. Both segmenting and indenting significantly influenced performance; however, once a text had been meaningfully segmented, the addition of indentation cues did not significantly affect response time. These data shed light on persisting issues in typographic design, namely, whether there is an optimal length for lines and whether justified margins are desirable. Such factors appear to be of minor cognitive relevance. The critical variable is whether the format results in a display of easily encoded units, regardless of length or neatness of margins. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Errata: "A Longitudinal Study of Who Seeks Counseling When"

Reports an error in the original article "A Longitudinal Study of Who Seeks Counseling When" by W. Harry Sharp and Barbara A. Kirk (Journal of Counseling Psychology, 1974[Jan], 21[1], 43-50). The sentence on page 50 should read as follows: "They appeared to be more intellectually oriented, less personally integrated, and altruistically inclined." (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 1974-26400-001.) Determined at what time the members of a university freshman class who sought counseling initiated their contacts with counselors. Over the 4-yr period 401 males and 319 females sought counseling. In general, the rate of initiation declined steeply over time, both by years and by quarters within years. An occasional reversal occurred for females. Characteristics of the Ss as related to time of initiating counseling were also studied, utilizing scores on the School and College Ability Test, Omnibus Personality Inventory, and SVIB, administered in freshman orientation. Neither male nor female Ss differed significantly in test results when time of counseling initiation was considered by the 4 academic quarters. By year, quarter by quarter, and by parts of quarters, the Omnibus Personality Inventory yielded significant results on some scales. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"When are social judgments made? Evidence for the spontaneousness of trait inferences": Correction to Winter and Uleman.

Reports an error in "When are social judgments made? Evidence for the spontaneousness of trait inferences" by Laraine Winter and James S. Uleman (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1984[Aug], Vol 47[2], 237-252). There are errors in the labeling of Figure 1 on p. 244. The ordinate percentages should be three times greater than indicated. In addition, the algebraic formula in the note for Table 2 on p. 245 is incorrect. The correct ordinate percentages and the correct algebraic formula are provided in the erratum. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1985-01259-001.) Adapted E. Tulving and D. M. Thomson's (see record 2005-09647-002) encoding specificity paradigm for 2 recall experiments with 153 undergraduates to investigate whether Ss would make trait inferences without intentions or instructions at the encoding stage of processing behavioral information. Under memory instructions only, Ss read sentences describing people performing actions that implied traits. Later, Ss recalled each sentence under 1 of 3 cuing conditions: a dispositional cue (e.g., generous); a strong, nondispositional semantic associate to an important sentence word; or no cue. Results show that recall was best when cued by the disposition words. Ss were unaware of having made trait inferences. Interpreted in terms of encoding specificity, findings indicate that Ss unintentionally made trait inferences at encoding. It is suggested that attributions are made spontaneously, as part of the routine comprehension of social events. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Maternal Emotional Reactions to the Premature Infant in the Context of the Family": Erratum.

Reports an error in "Maternal emotional reactions to the premature infant in the context of the family" by Robert M. Hodapp and Kathryn T. Young (Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science Revue canadienne des Sciences du comportement, 1992[Jan], Vol 24[1], 29-40). The authors of the article should be listed as Robert M. Hodapp, Yale University, Kathryn T. Young, Yale University, Marie Algieri, Hospital for Sick Children, and Klaus Minde, Montreal Children's Hospital. The two last names were inadvertendly omitted. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1992-27071-001.) Examined maternal emotional reactions to the birth and early development of premature infants and whether such reactions are influenced by specific social support variables. 22 mothers of premature infants (aged 26–31 wks) were rated on 13 general psychological characteristics common to "maternal mourning reactions" of mothers of handicapped and at-risk children. Ss experienced relatively brief adverse reactions. The proposed 3-stage model of maternal mourning (i.e., shock; emotional disorganization; emotional organization) did not appear to characterize this sample. Ss with supportive spouses and close friends experienced less severe emotional reactions, as did Ss whose husbands were looking forward to becoming fathers. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sentence verification and delusions: a content-specific deficit

BACKGROUND: A sentence verification task was developed to investigate semantic memory in schizophrenia. METHODS: The test consisted of three types of sentence (true, unlikely and nonsense) and seven different types of content (neutral, persecutory, grandiose, political, religious, relationships and somatic) representing common delusional themes present in schizophrenic patients. Sixty-three schizophrenic patients and 66 matched control subjects were asked to make true/false judgements to 143 sentences. RESULTS: Overall accuracy was similar across the two groups; sentences with some emotional themes and sentences of the unlikely type produced the most violations. Significant differences between the two subject groups were found specifically on nonsense sentences with persecutory and religious themes. Patients made significantly more incorrect responses (acceptance) to nonsense sentences that had an emotional content congruent with their delusional beliefs, past or present, and also on unlikely sentences (incorrect rejections) whose content was not congruent with their delusions. Further analysis of response bias in the patients showed, overall, that there were more incorrect rejections (a reflection of the large number of unlikely sentence errors) and more incorrect responses to sentences congruent with patients delusions. Furthermore, analysis of those patients currently experiencing delusions revealed more incorrect responses to sentences congruent with their delusional ideas compared with patients not currently deluded. CONCLUSIONS: These findings are indicative of cognitive bias in schizophrenia towards certain emotional themes that may underlie illogical semantic connections and delusions.     

"Psychology in Latin America": Errata.

Reports an error in the original article by Ruben Ardila (American Psychologist, 1968[Aug], 23[8], 567-574). The next to the last sentence in the first column on page 573 should read "In Table 5 I have listed 39 Latin American journals of psychology." On page 568 of the same article corrections for Table 1 are noted, and the corrected Table 1 listing the number of South American psychologists in 1941 and 1968 is given. (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 1969-01690-001.) Psychology in Latin America began as a practical discipline related to medicine, education, and philosophy. Scientific psychology started in 1898 with the foundation of the 1st laboratory of experimental psychology in Buenos Aires. Today there are departments of psychology in the majority of the Latin American countries, the main areas of interests being clinical psychology, cross-cultural research, psychometrics, operant conditioning, etc. Clinical psychology is growing as a profession, and in most of the countries there are professional associations of psychologists. Most psychological journals are devoted to general and applied psychology. Research and its applications are in progress, showing that psychology is a growing science and profession in Latin America. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of number signals on reading and recall.

Examined the influence of number signals (i.e., numbers or number words preceding important textual information) on text recall. 120 undergraduates read and recalled 2 texts containing 10 target sentences each. Reading times were recorded for each target sentence. For half of the Ss, the target sentences were preceded by numbers indicating their organization; for the other half, the target sentences were not signaled. Half of the Ss completed a free-recall task, while the remainder completed a cued-recall task. Results indicate that Ss read target sentences more slowly if they were signaled than if they were unsignaled. Ss' recalls of target information followed the text organization more closely if the sentences were signaled. Signaling aided free recall of target sentences, but had no effect on cued recall. Results demonstrate that number signals directed attention to the sentences they marked, led to better encoding of the organization of target information, and influenced the process of recalling the target information. (33 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sentence processing in schizophrenic listeners.

40 hospitalized schizophrenics and 40 volunteers from the community (age range for both groups 17-59 yrs) listened to sentences in which a click was embedded. 20 schizophrenic Ss and 20 normal Ss were asked to reproduce the sentences and indicate precisely where the click occurred. The remaining Ss were given the previously heard sentences and asked to recognize the click locations. Results show that schizophrenic Ss tend to be less accurate than normal Ss in locating the clicks. However, this inferior performance was not due to an inability to use syntactic rules. Rather, the pattern of errors demonstrated that schizophrenic Ss distinguish between sentences which are acoustically identical but syntactically distinct, and that this distinction is maintained under response conditions with varying emphases on sentence retrieval. It is concluded that schizophrenics appear to use syntax as a basis for sentence processing at least to the same extent as normal Ss do. (27 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Integration of topic and subordinate information during reading.

Four experiments examined how readers integrate subordinate information with relevant context as they read. Ss read texts a sentence at a time with occasional interruptions lasting 30 sec. Following a distractor task, they resumed reading after being reminded of the topic sentence of the last paragraph they read (topic cue condition), being reminded of the last sentence they had read (local cue condition), or receiving no reminder of what they had been reading (no cue condition). Reading times on the 1st sentence following interruption were faster in the topic and local cue conditions than in the no cue condition (1) when the topic and local cues supplied missing referents for the target sentences, (2) when the target sentences were written to be understood as independent statements, and (3) whether the target sentences were embedded in short or long texts. Results are interpreted as demonstrating that readers integrate subordinate information with relevant topics, as well as with the immediate local context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Emotional disclosure about traumas and its relation to health: Effects of previous disclosure and trauma severity": Correction to Greenberg and Stone.

Reports an error in "Emotional disclosure about traumas and its relation to health: Effects of previous disclosure and trauma severity" by Melanie A. Greenberg and Arthur A. Stone (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1992[Jul], Vol 63[1], 75-84). In the article, a sentence was incorrect. The sentence on page 76 that reads "For example, Esterling, Antoni, Kumar, and Schneiderman (1990) found that subjects who wrote more emotion-focused words (high disclosers) had a larger lymphocyte response to mitogen stimulation than low disclosers" should have read as follows: "For example, Esterling, Antoni, Kumar, and Schneiderman (1990) found that subjects whose essays contained greater proportions of emotionfocused words (high disclosers) had better immunological control of latent Epstein-Barr virus, relative to low disclosers." (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1992-39142-001.) Sought to replicate previous findings that disclosing traumas improves physical health and to compare the effects of revealing previously disclosed vs undisclosed traumas. According to inhibition theory, reporting about undisclosed traumas should produce greater health benefits. 60 healthy undergraduates wrote about undisclosed traumas, previously disclosed traumas, or trivial events. Contrary to expectations, there were no significant between-groups differences on longer term health utilization and physical symptom measures. However, Ss who disclosed more severe traumas reported fewer physical symptoms in the months following the study, compared with low-severity trauma Ss, and tended to report fewer symptoms than control Ss. Results suggest that health benefits occur when severe traumas are disclosed, regardless of whether previous disclosure has occurred. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)