Toward a task analysis of assertive behavior

Conceptualized assertiveness problems in terms of a task analysis of the topography of competent responding. 47 male and 54 female undergraduates who ranged from extremely nonassertive to highly assertive (according to their scores on the Conflict Resolution Inventory) responded to 3 sets of situations requiring refusal of an unreasonable request. Content knowledge of an assertive response, delivery of the response under 2 conditions, heart rate, self-perceived tension, and the incidence of positive and negative self-statements were assessed. Differences on these variables between low-assertive (LA), moderate-assertive (MA), and high-assertive (HA) groups were analyzed to determine the nature of the response deficit in nonassertive Ss. LA Ss differed from MA and HA Ss on role-playing assessments requiring them to deliver an assertive response, but they did not differ from MA and HA Ss on their knowledge of a competent response or on hypothetical delivery situations. No significant differences in heart rate were observed between LA, MA, and HA Ss; however, higher self-perceived tension was found in LA compared to MA and HA Ss. A greater number of negative and fewer positive self-statements were reported by LA compared to MA and HA Ss. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relationship between digit span and anxiety.

The hypothesis was tested that WAIS Digit Span (DS) performance is disrupted by anxiety. 110 college students, who had been tested on Taylor's MA scale and Sarason's Test Anxiety Questionnaire, were tested under an anxiety-inducing or rapport-establishing (control) procedure. After testing on DS, experimental Ss were asked if the instruction variable had disturbed them. With respect to DS: (a) no-significant differences were found between experimental and control groups, but within the experimental group, those who were disturbed were inferior on DS to control Ss (p r = -.23, p r = .26, p     

Relationship of ego disjunction and manifest anxiety to conflict resolution.

The purpose of this study was to discover the influence of 2 determinants, ego disjunction (ED) and manifest anxiety (MA), on conflict resolution. ED, defined as antagonistic response tendencies within an individual, was measured by the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule, and MA by the Taylor MA scale. From a sample of 56 college Ss, it was found that Ss high in both ED and MA required significantly more time to resolve approach-approach and avoidance-avoidance conflicts than Ss high in only one determinant but low in the other and Ss low in both determinants. No significant differences in conflict scores were found when Ss low in both determinants were compared with Ss high in only one determinant but low in the other. The results were interpreted as indicating that ED and MA interact, producing interfering responses which hinder efficient resolution of conflicts when ED and MA are both high within an individual High MA and high ED scores, when taken alone, did not yield any conclusive results. It is only when both determinants are taken into consideration that greater confidence can be invested in those measures to predict conflict performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relationships among manifest anxiety, response to stress, and the perception of autonomic activity.

Recorded the GSRs of a total of 48 male undergraduates with high or low anxiety levels (as measured by the MA scale), during exposure to a mild ego-involving stress or a nonstress condition. After an initial rest period, Ss in the stress condition were asked to identify their own "emotional responses" while monitored by a "lie detector." Results indicate that high-anxiety Ss showed a significant increase in GSR rate in the stress period when compared with low-anxiety Ss. Nonstress Ss showed no difference as a function of anxiety level. It is concluded that scores on the MA scale reflect "reactive" anxiety, the autonomic components of which are differentially elicited by ego-involving stress situations. (18 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A study of anxiety and learning in children.

"A general anxiety scale and a test anxiety scale were administered to 747 grade school children. Out of this group, 24 HA-LA pairs of subjects were given 2 modified paired-associate learning tasks, separated by neutral, failure, and success instructions. The results showed no differences due to instructions, but LA Ss performed better than HA Ss in the second task. Alternative explanations for the lack of differences on the first task were offered. The study was interpreted as positive evidence for the validity of the anxiety scales." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceived control and learned helplessness among retarded and nonretarded children: A developmental analysis.

Learned helplessness is produced by successive failures and by feedback attributing failure to uncontrollable causes. Retarded children appear to encounter both causal factors frequently and may thus be susceptible to helplessness. To test this possibility, children of low (70), average (100), and high (130) IQ at 3 MA levels (5?, 7?, and 9? yrs) were administered a response-initiation measure, a puzzle-repetition measure of perseverance after failure, and a questionnaire designed to gauge attributions for failure. Teachers also rated Ss on a helplessness scale. Helplessness, as measured by the 2 questionnaires, declined with MA. On the 3 helplessness measures derived from Ss themselves, there was an IQ by MA interaction: The low-IQ group showed more helplessness relative to nonretarded children at the upper MA level than to nonretarded children at the 2 lower levels. Results, although qualified in some respects, are consistent with the view that helplessness can be learned over time by children who repeatedly fail to effect the outcomes that they desire and who learn to attribute failure to factors beyond their control. (31 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex and anxiety differences in eyelid conditioning.

Data concerning the relationship between eyelid conditioning performance and 2 S variables, Ss' sex, and scores on the MA scale, are examined. In studies employing standard procedures, high-anxiety Ss were superior to low-anxiety Ss in 23 of 27 comparisons, and females superior to males in 18 of 19 comparisons. In contrast, the direction of the differences was split approximately equally between high- and low-anxiety Ss and between males and females in studies in which conditioning was presented within the context of masking probability-learning task. (31 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning set acquisition in autistic children.

Compared the performance of 19 autistic 5-13 yr olds (mean MA: 4 yrs, 3 mo) on an object discrimination learning set task with that of MA and IQ matched control groups of normal and retarded Ss. All but 2 of the autistic Ss acquired a learning set. About 1/2 of the Ss in each control group also acquired a learning set. However, the mean number of problems to criterion was similar for both the autistic and control groups of Ss who acquired a learning set. It is suggested that the superior performance of autistic Ss on a task which is believed to be related to MA indicates that the MA of these children may be higher than that which is usually obtained with standard measuring techniques. Results provided somewhat equivocal evidence for a relation between MA, IQ, and learning set formation in the normal and retarded Ss. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Some relationships between GSR conditioning and judgments of anxiety.

"The aim of the present study was to investigate… the relationship between GSR conditioning and various clinical judgments of anxiety in a sample of psychiatric patients conditioned under presumably optimal procedures… . anxiety groups ranked on the basis of admission psychological data… were found to be significantly different in conditionability." This was not so with Ss ranked via the Taylor MA scale, and "anxiety groups revealed no significant differences in extinction." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relationship of anxiety (drive) and response competition in problem solving.

High (HA), medium (MA), and low (LA) anxiety groups (Taylor MA scale) were given Duncker's candle-box problem in either the boxes-full (BF) or boxes-empty (BE) condition. Relative to the BE (low-response competition) task, the BF (high-response competition) task impaired problem-solving performance in the HA (p     

Anxiety and the variability of word associates.

15 Ss who scored high on the Taylor MA scale and 15 Ss who scored low on the MA scale were given a word associate task. The highly anxious Ss tended to have sets of word associates lower in intersubject variability than the nonanxious Ss for stimulus words that elicited sets of word associates that are low in variability. Highly anxious Ss tended to give sets of word associates higher in intersubject variability than nonanxious Ss for stimulus words that elicited sets of word associates that are high in intersubject variability. A 2nd experiment reports data indicating a relationship between inter- and intrasubject variability of word associates. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anxiety, induced muscular tension, and the statistical structure of binary response sequences.

60 high school age boys generated binary response sequences under 2 conditions—with induced muscular tension and without tension. ? the Ss scored high on the Taylor Manifest Anxiety (MA) scale, ? the Ss scored low on the Taylor MA scale. Each response sequence was subjected to a sequential redundancy analysis. The results indicate that highly anxious Ss tend to generate more random sequences than nonanxious Ss in the nontension condition. Tension tends to decrease the randomness of the sequences of the high-anxiety Ss and has little effect on the sequences of the low-anxiety Ss. These results are taken to support the hypothesis that anxiety response variability in a situation in which the set of responses elicited is relatively equal in response strength. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Empirical findings and theoretical problems in the use of anxiety scales.

Research suggests that: (a) the performance of high anxious Ss is detrimentally affected by threatening conditions; (b) as task complexity increases the disadvantage of high to low anxious Ss increases; (c) correlations between the Taylor MA scale and intellectual measures are inconsistent, whereas measures of test anxiety correlate negatively with intellectual measures; (d) little relationship has been found between measures of anxiety and physiological indices. The methodological problems thought to be responsible for inconsistent findings are discussed. (128-item bibliogr.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex and ethnic differences in the use of power.

Hypothesized that women and Chicanos would make less internal and more external attributions for their own successful performance than would Anglo males. 40 Chicano male, 40 Chicano female, 40 Anglo male, and 40 Anglo female undergraduates participated as managers in an industrial simulation study. Ss were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 experimental conditions: designated powers vs unspecified powers, and supervision of male or female workers. Following the managerial task, Ss completed a questionnaire assessing their own performance and that of their workers. All Anglos devalued their workers as a function of controlling power and attributed workers' performance to external factors. All Ss tended to use their power to persuade workers. Males attempted to influence workers to a greater degree than did females. The predicted sex differences in terms of attribution were evident only among Anglos. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Instructions as discriminative stimuli in verbal conditioning and awareness.

This investigation was to study the effects of preconditioning instructions and type of reinforcer on level of awareness and extent of conditioning. Prior to a conditioning task, Ss in different experimental groups were given varying degrees of information concerning the nature of the reinforcement and the reinforcement contingency. In some groups of Ss the reinforcement consisted of E saying "good" while in other experimental groups the Ss received points as reinforcement. The results indicated that the degree of conditioning and level of awareness were partially dependent upon the amount of information in the preconditioning instruction. However, in experimental groups where only partial information was given, Ss who received points conditioned better than Ss who received "good" even though there were no differences in the level of awareness. The nature of the response class was also found to be an important variable that affected the level of conditioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Similarity of performance as influenced by interaction, self-esteem, and birth order.

"This study concerns the relationship between the amount of interaction between two persons in a group and the acquisition by one of the persons of an attribute of the other. It is hypothesized that the greater the interaction between the two, the more will one acquire an attribute of the other… . Twenty groups of six subjects each (all college students) were formed to carry out a word assembly task so arranged that one of the six would be the center of the interaction." The findings were that similarity to the performance of the central figure was noted for the groups in general. Even more so, the factors of degree of prior attraction to the central figure, degree of prior acquaintance among Ss, S's self-esteem, and S's order of birth in their family influence the experimental behavior. Low attraction, minimal prior acquaintance among Ss, higher self-esteem, and those born later in the sibling series facilitated S's performance in the task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Handedness and "automatization" cognitive style.

Evaluated the relation between "automatization" cognitive style and handedness, or degree of preferred-nonpreferred hand differentiation. 58 male undergraduates were tested on 8 cognitive tasks representing both automatized and nonautomatized abilities. After ipsatization of scores, 14 Ss were chosen as representing "strong automatization," and 14 Ss as "weak automatizers." All Ss were given 6 tests of manual performance using both preferred and nonpreferred hands. No differences were found between strong and weak automatizers in the degree of differentiation between overall preferred and nonpreferred hand performance. Explanations for these findings and the possible role of automatization cognitive style in hand differentiation in young children are discussed. (French summary) (15 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differences in visual perception and in visual-motor functioning between psychotic and nonpsychotic children.

The study explored the applicable scope of Bender's theory of a "maturational lag" in functional childhood psychosis. Tests of visual perception, visual-motor performance, and a clinical evaluation of presence of CNS deviations consistent with Bender's criteria for childhood schizophrenia were performed on 39 psychotic and 57 nonpsychotic 8-12-year-old boys. Results revealed no differences in accuracy or variability of perceptual and visual-motor behavior when appropriate controls for large group differences in MA functioning were instituted. No difference in test performance was found between psychotic Ss with and without CNS deviations. With MA level constant, the difference in incidence of CNS deviations between psychotics and nonpsychotics was nonsignificant. The results were interpreted as not supporting Bender's organic theory. (19 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Two operations for "ratios" and "differences" of distances on the mental map.

Ss judged "ratios of distances" between pairs of U.S. cities. Results fit the theory that Ss used two comparison processes as instructed. A ratio scale of distances between cities was constructed from the 2 rank orders. From this scale, an interval scale of the city locations on an east-west continuum was derived. This scale agrees with the subtractive model fit to "ratios" and "differences" of easterliness and westerliness, and it also agrees with multidimensional scaling of judged distances between cities. These findings are consistent with the theory that Ss use subtraction when instructed to judge either "ratios" or "differences," but that they can use both ratio and difference operations when the stimuli (in this case, distances) constitute a ratio scale on the subjective continuum. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The hysteria and psychasthenia constructs as an alternative to manifest anxiety and conflict-free ego functions.

128 hysteric, psychasthenic, and control Ss selected with the Hysteria and Psychasthenia scales of the MMPI, were employed to duplicate the performances of the "conflict-free" cognitive styles of leveling and sharpening and scanning under anxiety arousal. Psychas-thenics performed like sharpeners and scanners on the Embedded Figures (EFT) and Stroop Color-Word tests, while hysterics performed like levelers. Duplication of the performance of "conflict-free" cognitive styles by anxiety-based personality defenses and the superior performance of the psychasthenic or "high-anxious" group on the complex EFT suggested modifications in the positions of R. Gardner on cognitive styles and J. Taylor on the MA scale. (23 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)