Separate and combined effects of a cognitive map and a symbolic code in the learning of a modeled social skill (job interviewing).

Evaluated the incremental effects of a cognitive map (CM) and a symbolic code (SC) treatment (separately and in combination) relative to a standard modeling treatment (SMT) that generated equivalent demand characteristics. SMT in turn was compared to a no-treatment control condition (NT). Simulated job interviews were conducted 3 wks after treatment with 55 undergraduates who had been assigned to 1 of 4 treatments or NT. The Job Interview Rating Scale, knowledge scores, and speaking time were included in the measures of interviewing proficiency. Significant gains were attributable to CM on 4 of 6 social skills criteria. The SC and combination (CM plus SC) treatments produced significant improvement on all dependent variables. Evidence favoring SMT over NT was weak. Cost–benefit implications for the theoretically derived CM and SC treatments are discussed. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Treatment of general tension: Subjective and physiological effects of progressive relaxation.

Exp I found virtually no effects of type of no-treatment condition or demand/suggestion on the self-monitoring of daily tension percentage and severity among 43 overly tense undergraduates during a 4-wk baseline period. Ss given 4 subsequent sessions of progressive relaxation did report significant reductions in tension, which were maintained at a 7-mo follow-up. Exp II included 36 overly tense undergraduates and compared a no-treatment condition to groups given 9 sessions of relaxation with vs without muscle tension release. Counterdemand instructions were in effect for the 1st 7 sessions. Relaxation with tension release produced reductions in daily tension percentage significantly superior to no-treatment during the counterdemand period, whereas relaxation without tension release did not differ from either group. Treatment effects maintained at a 5-mo follow-up. No treatment effects were found on several during-session physiological measures, although Session 1 physiological reduction predicted improvement in tension percentage. Presence or absence of tension release significantly influenced the number of relaxation cycles necessary to produce reports of deep relaxation, frequency of practice, and successfulness of eliminating daily tension at follow-up. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reinforcing math with more math: Choosing special academic activities as a reward for academic performance.

Conducted 2 studies to assess the practical utility of using special academic activities to reinforce academic performance and to determine whether offering the child free choice of these special activities would further increase his or her performance. Results from Exp I with 48 4th graders and Exp II with 16 4th graders support the use of special academic activities as successful reinforcers of academic productivity, but gave only minimal support to choice as an effective reinforcer. There was some evidence, however, that if choice is to serve as a reinforcer, it may do so best when the activities made available to the child are of at least moderate interest. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's distributive justice reasoning: A standardized and objective scale.

A paired-comparisons measure of distributive justice development (DJS) was developed and validated in 3 studies. In Exp I, 104 children from kindergarten and 2nd and 4th grades were given the DJS and 2 Piagetian logical reasoning tasks. Age trends and a relation with logical reasoning were found. In Exp II, 66 1st, 3rd, and 5th graders were given the DJS and a measure of verbal ability. Age trends and a low relation with verbal ability were found. In Exp III, 88 1st, 3rd, and 5th graders from Kinshasa, Zaire, were given the DJS. The trends replicated those found in Exp II. Implications for distributive justice research are drawn. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Retrieving for rehearsal: An analysis of active rehearsal in children's memory.

Two experiments with 96 2nd graders and 24 6th graders explored the operation of retrieval processes in Ss' active rehearsal strategies. Both experiments used free-recall tasks, in which Ss were given instructions in active rehearsal as well as supports that might facilitate the retrieval operation and thus enhance both rehearsal and recall performance. In Exp I, 2nd and 6th graders were given visual or auditory access to an 18-item stimulus-word list. Results show that, by providing 2nd graders with an opportunity to view previously presented words, rehearsal activity and recall increased substantially, whereas the performance of the 6th graders was not affected. In Exp II, presentation time and visual access to a similar 18-word list were manipulated for 2nd graders. Results show that the provision of extra time for an item enabled Ss to execute a more active rehearsal strategy. Extra time had only minimal effects on recall, except when it was combined with visual access to the items. Findings suggest that retrieval per se is not necessary for the beneficial effects of active rehearsal, if other procedures can be followed to permit the juxtaposition of several items in rehearsal. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of referential communication: Deciding that a message is uninformative.

Investigated whether young children typically attend to the age of the speaker when they lack knowledge of other communicative rules. Two experiments compared how children evaluate 3 types of uninformative messages (ambiguous, incomplete, inconsistent) and whether and why the speaker's age affects the evaluation of each. In Exp I, 22 1st and 22 4th graders played a referential communication game with either a peer or an adult speaker. In Exp II, 22 1st graders played the same referential communication game used in Exp I, but Ss who were interacting with the peer speaker were told that the speaker was very smart and Ss who were interacting with the adult speaker were told that the speaker was very stupid. Overall results indicate that incomplete messages were the easiest to evaluate and inconsistent messages were the most difficult. The evaluation of ambiguous messages was affected by the age of the S and the age of the speaker. Although older Ss attended solely to the quality of the message, 1st graders based their evaluations of ambiguous and inconsistent messages on the age of the speaker. Adult speakers' messages were evaluated more positively than peers' because the young Ss thought the adults were smart and therefore more likely to be good communicators. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of an elaborated goal on the persuasive writing of students with learning disabilities and their normally achieving peers.

Fourth- and sixth-grade students with and without learning disabilities (LD) wrote persuasive essays about controversial topics under 2 different conditions. Students in the general goal condition were asked to write a letter to persuade an audience to agree with their position. Students in the elaborated goal condition were given the same general goal plus explicit subgoals based on the elements of argumentative discourse. Sixth-grade students in the elaborated goal condition produced more persuasive essays and included a greater number of argumentative elements in their essays than did either 6th graders in the general goal condition or 4th graders in both goal conditions. In addition, students with LD wrote less persuasively than did their normally achieving peers. Implications for the study of argumentative writing are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Covert visual orienting across the lifespan.

Three groups of 20 K–5th graders, 20 college students, and 20 older adults (mean age 72.8 yrs) were tested. The S's task was the speeded discrimination of "X" from "O", but of primary interest was the effect of a location cue that appeared prior to the target. Both an abrupt stimulus cue and a voluntary information cue were studied using response time measures. Eye movements were monitored to control for differences in the ability to maintain fixation. Exp 1 showed that in comparison with young adults, children were less able to sustain orienting over time, and senior adults required more time to use the cue. Exp 2 (using K–1st graders, 4th–5th graders, 20 college students, and 20 older adults) tested the relation between stimulus and information cues when they both occurred prior to a given target. All age groups were able to use information cues in the presence of conflicting stimulus cues, but young adults were better able to do so than either children or senior adults. Results are interpreted as support for the view that separate mechanisms underlie stimulus-based versus information-based spatial orienting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Factors influencing rule discovery in children.

Reports on 2 studies using the Esper paradigm to determine development of rule application and discovery capabilities. This paradigm employs both learning and generalization phases. In Exp I with 48 3rd and 4th graders, it was determined that Ss could learn and generalize when rule and structure were provided, but there was little evidence of rule discovery. In Exp II with 48 different 3rd and 4th graders, memory and attention manipulations were added. Both manipulations facilitated learning, but only attention facilitated rule discovery. In both studies 4th graders performed better than 3rd graders on generalization but not learning. The relationship between performance on the Esper and Raven Coloured Progressive Matrices (given to all Ss), although inconsistent, when covaried out removed the significant grade but not experimental effects. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When discounting fails: Conditions under which individuals use discredited information in making a judgment.

Investigated in 2 experiments the conditions that promote successful discounting of knowledge in making a judgment. 122 (Exp I) and 155 (Exp II) undergraduate students first learned a set of arguments describing a person. Later, they were told to use a subset of these arguments to judge the person. This was done in 1 of 2 ways. Half of the Ss received instructions specifying the subset of arguments that were actually to be used in the judgment. For the other half, the supplementary subset was specified; that is, they were told which of the arguments were to be ignored. As a result, in the latter condition the to-be-ignored arguments were salient, whereas in the former condition the to-be-used arguments were salient. Results of both experiments indicate that discounting was most successful when the to-be-ignored arguments were salient. Orthogonally to the salience manipulation, the experiments varied the extent to which the arguments were integrated before discounting. Exp II demonstrated that discounting fails when arguments are represented in an integrative rather than a discrete manner. Implications of these findings for theories of discounting are discussed. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental change in judging important and critical elements of stories.

Conducted 2 experiments with 54 2nd, 4th, and 6th graders and 15 undergraduates (Exp I) and 45 2nd and 4th graders (Exp II) to examine children's understanding (metacognitive awareness) that in a simple story the following parts are most important or essential for comprehending it: what precipitates the character's action (initiating event), what the character did (action), and what follows the character's action (consequence). Ss' judgments of simple stories showed that 2nd graders seldom selected this sequence, but 4th, 5th, and 6th graders and adults did so under a variety of conditions. In addition there was a modest relation between recall of the stories and older children's (5th graders) judgments of them. (9 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prior knowledge and the desire for information.

Conducted 2 experiments to test D. Berlyne's theory that the desire for knowledge increases with the degree of conceptual conflict, and that new information serves to reduce the conflict. In Exp. I, 38 6th graders rated the extent to which they wished to explore 155 items of information. They also indicated their knowledge of these items. It was found that Ss wished mostly to experience those things about which they had a moderate amount of prior knowledge. In Exp. II, 43 11th graders indicated the extent of agreement with 24 controversial issues, and were then offered further information on each of the items. When Ss had no set attitude towards statements, they were less likely to reject additional information and more likely to accept the opportunity to receive general rather than biased information. Both studies support the authors' hypothesis that new information is sought when there is some prior knowledge and when conceptual conflict exists. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lexical ambiguity and children's word recognition.

Conducted 2 experiments to examine the word recognition processes of 2nd, 4th, and 6th graders. In Exp I, 72 Ss named target words that were primed by words that had more than 1 meaning. Targets were related either to the more or less frequent sense of the ambiguous prime or were unrelated to it. Findings indicate that older Ss were more likely than younger Ss to restrict processing of ambiguous words to the most frequent meaning. While younger Ss showed approximately equal facilitation for words related to either meaning, regardless of each one's relative frequency, 6th graders apparently retrieved only the most frequent meaning. Exp II, with 36 Ss, was similar to Exp I but included neutral primes and varied the interval between presentation of prime and target. Results show that all groups showed automatic retrieval of both meanings of the ambiguous word. For 6th graders, however, this retrieval was followed by a 2nd stage, in which attention was allocated to the more frequent meaning, maintaining it, while the less frequent meaning was inhibited. Overall data indicate that older children use meaning frequency to narrow the amount of information kept active following word recognition. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Longitudinal and cross-cultural validation of the belief-discrepancy reasoning construct.

Conducted 2 studies to validate the construct of belief-discrepancy reasoning, or the judgments people make about others who disagree with them. In Study 1, 83 1st, 4th, 7th, and 10th graders were assessed and then retested 1 yr later. Assessment was conducted with an objective, standardized forced-choice scale of belief discrepancy. Ss heard a recording of a dilemma as well as a peer's solution, one that contradicted the S's. Longitudinal trends were significant. The trends supported a 4-stage sequence of level 0 (not understanding that one can judge a disagreeing other), Level 1 (intolerance toward the other), Level 2 (total open-mindedness toward the other), and Level 3 (a willingness to judge the other as good or bad with more information about the other's belief). There was a faster rate of growth for the children (Grades 1 and 4) than for the adolescents (Grades 7 and 10). In Study 2, 34 4th and 7th graders from Kinshasa, Zaire were administered a belief-discrepancy scale. There were significant differences between the grades favoring the 7th graders. Implications for belief-discrepancy reasoning development are discussed. Results support the theory that the intolerance construct is developmental and has stagelike features. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memorization processes involved in performance on the Visual-Sequential Memory subtest of the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities.

Two studies investigated memory processes involved in performance on the Visual-Sequential Memory subtest of the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities. In the 1st study, 64 2nd and 4th graders were administered this subtest under standard conditions. Ss were designated as either "labelers" or "nonlabelers" according to whether they used a stimulus labeling strategy to aid recall. Differences in performance between 2nd and 4th graders could be accounted for almost entirely in terms of the greater number of labelers in the 4th grade. In the 2nd study, labelers and nonlabelers from Exp I at each grade level were formally trained to use a labeling strategy. The training resulted in improved performance for all Ss. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mood effects on attitude judgments: Independent effects of mood before and after message elaboration.

Investigated the independent effects of induced mood on the encoding of persuasive messages and on the assessment of attitude judgments. In Exp 1, positive or negative mood was induced either before the encoding of a counterattitudinal message or before the assessment of attitude judgments. When mood was induced before message presentation, Ss in a bad mood were more persuaded by strong than by weak arguments, whereas Ss in a good mood were equally persuaded by strong and by weak arguments. When Ss encoded the message in a neutral mood, however, the advantage of strong over weak arguments was more pronounced when Ss were in a good rather than in a bad mood at the time of attitude assessment. In Exp 2, Ss exposed to a counterattitudinal message composed of either strong or weak arguments formed either a global evaluation or a detailed representation of the message. Positive, negative, or neutral mood was then induced. Ss in a good mood were most likely and Ss in a negative mood least likely to base their reported attitudes on global evaluations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Transfer from conceptual rule problems to a truth-table-sorting task.

Tested the proposal that during conceptual rule learning, Ss encode the stimulus population into 4 stimulus subclasses which are analogous to the categories of a logical truth table. In Exp I (n = 48), 1st and 2nd graders were given 2 or 4 conceptual problems to solve, the number of rules within the series of problems being either 1 or 2 (conjunction or inclusive disjunction). 2 groups were included to control the effects of warm-up and generalized learning sets. Analysis of errors made on the sorting task showed the number of rules that define solution to be a reliable source of variation. Exp II with 48 1st and 2nd graders and 48 undergraduates was similar to Exp I. Number of rules and the interaction of number of rules and age of S were significant variables. Results are taken as support for the stimulus-encoding hypothesis in modified form. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Arousal as a necessary condition for attitude change following induced compliance.

In a 2?×?3 design, 63 university students were induced to write counterattitudinal essays under either high- or low-choice conditions. All Ss were led to believe that a pill, which they had just taken in the context of a separate experiment, was a placebo. In reality, Ss were given a pill that contained either 30 mg of phenobarbital (tranquilizer condition), 5 mg of amphetamine (amphetamine condition), or milk powder (placebo condition). In this last condition, the results yielded the usual dissonance effect: High choice produced more attitude change in the direction of the essay than low choice. When Ss were given a tranquilizer, this effect was virtually eliminated; when Ss were given amphetamine, attitude change increased under high choice and was exhibited for the 1st time under low choice. These results are consistent with the notion that attitude change is in the service of reducing arousal and with the idea that arousal from other sources can be misattributed to attitude-discrepant behavior. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)