Effects of anxiety, threat, and racial environment on task performance of Negro college students.

This study dealt with the effect on Negro efficiency of variations in degree of stress and in the race of other persons in the task situation. 115 Negro students at Fisk University performed individually a digit-letter substitution task in the presence of an administrator and a confederate posing as another S, both of whom were either white or Negro. In addition, Ss were told to expect either mild or strong nonavoidance electric shocks while working. The main findings, that (a) performance was better in White-Mild Threat than in Negro-Mild Threat, and (b) Strong Threat, as compared with Mild Threat, was more detrimental to performance in the White condition than in the Negro condition, are consistent with the hypothesis of an inverted U shaped relationship between arousal and performance. In addition, there was evidence of an inverted U shaped function between Manifest Anxiety scale scores and 1st trial performance in the White condition. The results have implications for interpreting various types of Negro performance including scores on intellectual tests in racially mixed environments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Some effects of shared threat and prejudice in racially mixed groups.

"The purpose of this experiment was to test the relationship between shared threat and the expression of prejudice hypothesized by Feshbach and Singer (1957). 48 Ss, varying with respect to anti-Negro prejudice, were placed under conditions of shared threat or nonthreat, in task oriented cooperative work groups. A Negro confederate was a member in each group. It was found, as hypothesized, that under conditions of shared threat a reduction in the expression of prejudice occurs in terms of direct evaluation of the Negro by other group members." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An analysis and evaluation of test and item bias in the prediction context.

Presents a perspective on test and item bias in predicting the performance of individuals in majority and minority groups. It is suggested that a difference between groups in the slope of the regression of the criterion on a test used for prediction represents bias that can frequently be corrected. Given a criterion with adequate measurement properties, the selection of items with essentially equivalent discrimination indices is expected to produce approximately parallel slopes. Accordingly, items having different discrimination indices are themselves biased. Intercept bias, on the other hand, is essentially not under the control of the test constructor. It is argued that the goal of producing a test without intercept bias is an unreasonable one. These problems are illustrated by factor models of intercept bias. It is concluded that relative differences in item-difficulty levels from group to group, given items with adequate discrimination indices, should not be labeled as bias. Such items are not automatic candidates for discard. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Clinical assumptions about WISC subtest score and test behavior relationships.

Administered the WISC to 40 white and 38 Negro 8-yr-old boys. The E and an O independently scored the S's behavior for attention, energy level, social skill, task persistence, and concern about performance. 13 clinical psychologists completed a questionnaire ranking behaviors considered important to performance on each of the WISC subtests. 15 hypotheses resulted, 8 involving attention and none involving concern about performance. Analysis of scores and ratings produced 8 significant relationships, 3 involving concern about performance. Emphasis on attention was found to be greatly overestimated. 16 correlations were significant for race and socioeconomic status. "Results indicate that (a) most of the clinically assumed relationships do not exist, and (b) the importance of test behavior to performance may vary among groups of children and tasks." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Racial and ethnic bias in psychological tests: Divergent implications of two definitions of test bias.

Examines the 2 most widely accepted definitions of unfair test bias. A. Cleary in 1968 defined unfair test bias in terms of consistent under- or overprediction of actual performance levels of minority or majority groups. R. L. Thorndike's 1971 definition holds that a test is unfairly biased whenever the difference between the minority and majority groups is greater on the test than on actual performance. These 2 definitions, which superficially appear to be similar, are shown to be very different in their implications for minority selection. It is demonstrated that whenever test validity is less than perfect and mean majority criterion performance is higher than that of the minority group, Thorndike's definition leads to acceptance of a larger percentage of minority group members than does the Cleary definition. A review and reanalysis of published research on test bias suggests that most conventional test usages are unbiased by Cleary's definition but unfair by Thorndike's criteria. Advantages and disadvantages of both concepts of unfair test bias are discussed. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of stimulus similarity and response criterion on successive discrimination reversal learning.

In a study with 30 naive domestic pigeons, 2 levels of stimulus similarity and 2 levels of criterion were factorially combined in a free-operant, successive presentation of stimuli, successive discrimination reversal (SDR) involving chromatic stimuli. Both variables were found to have significant effects on SDR performance. Groups having the less rigorous criterion showed either no improvement or a deterioration in performance, depending on discrimination difficulty. Transfer to a line-angle discrimination revealed no differences between SDR groups and an original-learning control group in time to criterion required to learn this problem. All SDR groups were superior to the control group on the reversal of this problem, but there were no differences between SDR groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Praise and blame as incentives.

33 articles spanning 50 yrs. of research on the effects of praise and blame on the performance of school children are reviewed. Praise generally acts as a facilitator to performance, though often it is indistinguishable from practice effect. The single exception in recent years is the decrement in performance from praised underachievers. Exceptions to the generally decremental effect of blame on the performance of children are underachieving children, very bright adolescents, and Negro children working under Negro examiners. The problem of subject-reinforcement history is presented as a major contributor to the confusion in the literature, and the use of functional designs is suggested as a solution. (40 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of level, review, and sequence of inserted questions on text processing.

129 college students read a text containing one verbatim, paraphrase, or inference postquestion inserted after each paragraph. 81 controls read the text without the inserted questions. Results indicate that inference questions were superior to paraphrase questions, which were, in turn, superior to verbatim questions on test performance. Paraphrase and inference question groups exhibited superior recall of questioned material when compared with the control groups. However, only a group that received the correct answers to the inference postquestions during a review session demonstrated superior performance on criterion test items pertaining to nonquestioned material. The findings are discussed in terms of a "levels of processing" analysis. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On so-called test bias.

Notes that when 2 groups differ in criterion performance and on a selection test, the use of the regression equation derived on the higher group tends to overestimate the mean performance of the lower group and the equation based on the lower group tends to underestimate the mean performance of the higher group. This "unfairness" is reduced somewhat by using an equation based on the groups combined. To avoid this "bias" in selection, various definitions of fairness have led to nonregression models. The present article proposes a multiple regression model which renders estimates fair in the sense that group means are accurately predicted, hence "mean-fair." This model is discussed in detail and examples of its use are presented. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychotherapy with the first Negro male on one southern university campus: A case study.

Describes the incidents, attitudes, and problems confronting the 1st Negro male since Reconstruction to attend a southern university. Of particular importance in producing stress were pressures from both white and Negro groups. White students produced stress through their hostility, while militant Negro groups created difficulty by their attempts at capitalizing his role. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Biased test items and differential validity.

Tested some effects of one type of biased test items through the use of a simple psychometric model. Particular emphasis was placed on the magnitude of the difference in majority and minority group validity coefficients, and it was hypothesized that ability distributions for minority and majority (White) groups are identical, but tests are biased. An example was tested to illustrate the consequences of a profoundly biased test, but only a small difference in validity coefficients was found. The probability of detecting this difference in a standard differential validity study or by the aggregation method of J. E. Hunter et al (see record 1979-22609-001) is near the alpha level of the significance test. Thus, it cannot be assumed that minority and majority group validity coefficients will differ when a test is biased. The effects of subtest reliability on bias are discussed. Even though the test can predict criterion performance as well for minorities as for majorities, it may be inappropriate to compare the 2 types of scores. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of evidence relating to effects of desegregation on the intellectual performance of Negroes.

"This is a review of evidence regarding the effects of educational desegregation on the scholastic achievement of Negroes. It focuses on the problem of identifying the important situational determinants of Negro performance in the racially mixed classroom. Only a few studies have dealt directly with this problem, so that much of the evidence… is only inferential. Included are reports on the academic progress of Negro children attending integrated schools, evidence on aspects of the minority child's experience in desegregation that presumably affect his motivation to learn, relevant research on the behavioral effects of psychological stress, and finally, a series of experiments on Negro productivity in biracial settings." In desegregated school situations "there appear to be a variety of favorable and detrimental influences on Negro performance." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ammonia inhibits neural cell adhesion molecule polysialylation in Chinese hamster ovary and small cell lung cancer cells

Contrasts between implicit and explicit knowledge in the serial reaction time (SJRT) paradigm have been challenged because they have depended on a single dissociation; intact implicit knowledge in the absence of corresponding explicit knowledge. In the SRT task, subjects respond with a corresponding keypress to a cue that appears in one of four locations. The cue follows a repeating sequence of locations, and subjects can exhibit knowledge of the repeating sequence through increasingly rapid performance (an implicit test) or by being able to recognize the sequence (an explicit test). In our study, amnesic patients were given extensive SRT training. Their implicit and explicit test performance was compared to the performance of control subjects who memorized the training sequence. Compared with control subjects, amnesic patients exhibited superior performance on the implicit task and impaired performance on the explicit task. This crossover interaction suggests that implicit and explicit knowledge of the embedded sequence are separate and encapsulated and that they presumably depend on different brain systems.     

Specificity of training for motor skill under physical fatigue

The purpose of the present study was to test the specificity of training principle from exercise physiology in the context of motor skill acquisition. Thirty-six college females were randomly assigned to either an experimental or a control group and both groups received 54 practice trials on a ladder climb task over four consecutive days (3,18,18 and 15 trials/day, respectively). The control group practiced under conditions of heavy interpolated fatigue on the first 3 days with day 3 representing the heavy-fatigue criterion conditions, while the experimental group did the same except for day 2 when a vowel-cancelling task was substituted for the fatigue task. On day 4 both groups practiced under the second criterion of non-fatigue conditions. Fatigue was induced by a step-up task so that a minimum HR of 180 beats/min was attained prior to each ladder trial. The results supported the specificity hypothesis that practicing a gross motor task under conditions of heavy-fatigue would facilitate performance of that task under criterion heavy-fatigue conditions. For the second criterion of non-fatigue practice, the data appeared to support the specificity principle but the rigorous test of the differences did not reach statistical significance. The overall evidence supports the position that regards heavy physical fatigue as a variable that can cause changes in the nature of certain motor skills so that the specificity of training principle becomes applicable.     

Sensitization and prejudice.

Slides were shown to two groups of Ss, selected previously for high and low ethnocentrism. Half of the Ss in each group were shown a critical slide picturing a Negro attacking a white man with a knife, the other half were shown a similar slide picturing a white man attacking a Negro with a knife. Recall measures of picture content were then taken. An analysis of the results revealed that the superior recall of the critical pictures attributed to those high in prejudice, when congruous material is presented, was attributed to sensitization. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A demonstration of bias in estimates of Negro ability.

Estimates of the probable performance of classmates on a forthcoming examination, made in a mixed white and Negro junior high school class, demonstrated a bias or systematic error, significant at the .01 level in the estimates of the white children of their Negro classmates, expecting them to do worse than they actually did. This finding is in line with expectations of most current social psychology; however, the effect is not of sufficient strength to be depended upon in all instances. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Frequency of the Rorschach human-movement response in Negro and White emotionally disturbed children.

The study was concerned with testing the following hypotheses: (a) Emotionally disturbed, young Negro children produce more human-movement (M) responses on the Rorschach than do comparable white children; (b) emotionally disturbed Negro children show a decrease in M production as they approach adolescence, whereas comparable white children increase M production as they approach adolescence. The Ss, 197 Negro and 196 white emotionally disturbed children 5-17 yr. were administered a standard test battery which included the Rorschach. Results corroborated the hypotheses for Negro males. In addition, a significant increase in M production among emotionally disturbed Negro males 7-9 yr. was found. Implications of the findings and specific suggestions for further research were discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Unspoken knowledge: Implicit learning of structured human dance movement.

The sequencing of dance movements may be thought of as a grammar. We investigate implicit learning of regularities that govern sequences of unfamiliar, discrete dance movements. It was hypothesized that observers without prior experience with contemporary dance would be able to learn regularities that underpin structured human movement. Thirty-one adults were assigned to either an exposure or a control group. Exposure consisted of 22 grammatical 3-, 4-, and 5-movement sequences presented twice in random order; sequence duration ranged from 9 to 19 s. In a test phase, exposure and control groups identified previously unseen sequences as grammatical or ungrammatical, and rated confidence of judgment. The exposure group selected significantly more new grammatical sequences in the test phase than the control group. In addition, for the exposure group, the zero correlation criterion, wherein no relation between confidence and accuracy indicates unconscious knowledge, was satisfied. Through exposure, novice observers can learn a grammar that governs the sequencing of dance movements. This has implications for implicit learning of long sequences, working memory, and the development of expectations through exposure to contemporary dance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A comparison of counseled and noncounseled industrial school students.

A group of 69 industrial school students counseled by Veterans Administration counselors were compared with 468 non-counseled students. The two groups were similar in age, education, test performance, and number of courses taken. The two criterion measures—persistence in school and course grades—failed to indicate any differences between the two groups. These negative results are compared with the results of other studies reporting significant effects that were attributed to counseling. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Influence of metacognitive knowledge and aptitude on problem solving.

The author investigated whether high levels of metacognitive knowledge about problem solving could compensate for low overall aptitude. To test this hypothesis, a 2 (high–low aptitude)?×?2 (high–low metacognitive ability) design was used to analyze children's problem-solving performance. Processing differences between ability groups were determined through an analysis of "think aloud" protocols. Protocols were analyzed at two levels: (a) grouping of subroutines that function as heuristic processes and (b) grouping of subroutines that function as strategies. Regardless of aptitude, higher metacognitive children performed better than the lower metacognitive children. Higher metacognitive ability groups were more likely to rely on hypothetico-deductive (if–then propositions) and evaluation (check the adequacy of a hypothesis) strategies than was the lower metacognitive group. The results are discussed in terms of the independence of metacognition and general academic aptitude. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)