Showing papers in "The Psychological Monographs in 1966"

Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement.

Abstract: The effects of reward or reinforcement on preceding behavior depend in part on whether the person perceives the reward as contingent on his own behavior or independent of it. Acquisition and performance differ in situations perceived as determined by skill versus chance. Persons may also differ in generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. This report summarizes several experiments which define group differences in behavior when Ss perceive reinforcement as contingent on their behavior versus chance or experimenter control. The report also describes the development of tests of individual differences in a generalized belief in internal-external control and provides reliability, discriminant validity and normative data for 1 test, along with a description of the results of several studies of construct validity.

Short-term memory in the mentally retarded: an application of the dichotic listening technique.

Abstract: A series of experiments was conducted to investigate short-term memory in mental retardates with the dichotic listening technique as i~tiated by Broadbent (1958). The primary purpose of these experiments was to discern whether or not short-term memory capacity and/or strategy of encoding information could account for some of the differences between retardates and normals. Four groups of 15 2s each were used for the three major experiments. The groups included: two groups of retardates, one organic (group 0) and one cultural-familial (group F) in nature, matched in mental age and digit-span with a group of normal controls (group NMA). The fourth group, matched in chronological age with the two mentally retarded groups, served as a second normal control (group NCA). In the first experiment dichotic series of 2, 3, 4 and 5 pairs of numbers were presented to the 2s at the rate of one pair every half-second. This experiment demonstrated that the effective' short-term memory capacity of both retarded groups is much less than that of a comparable chronological-age control, but does not differ greatly from group iv. ID1A. The evidence also indicated that the retardates were SUbject to a faster rate of information decay in that part of immediate memory which has been termed S-system by Broadbent. The second experiment held the length of dichotic series constant at 3 pairs of numbers, but varied the rate of presentation as follows: I pair per quarter-second, I pair per half-second, 1 pair per second, and I pair per 2 seconds. This experiment demonstrated a marked degree of flexibility by the normals (both N¥ill and NCA) in their adaptation of different strategies of recall to the various rates of informational input. Such flexibility was not found in the retardates. Experiment III similarly tested the immediate recall of series 3 pairs in length, but held the rate of presentation constant at I pair per half-second. In this experiment, ~owever, each pair of items presented together consisted of a letter of the alphabet and a digit, and the side on which the letter was presented varied haphazardly from pair to pair. For the retarded §s (both groups 0 and F) recall was more successful when § was instructed to recall the items of one type and then the items of the other type than when instructed to report the items heard on one side and then those heard on the other. Normal §s (NCA and NMA) recalled equally well in both conditions. In conclusion, the evidence indicated that short-term memory capacity was indeed an important difference between v. retardates and group NCA. This deficit in apparent capacity, however, was probably enhanced by the retardates' lack of flexibility in the search for and use of appropriate recall strategies, and their manifestation of difficulty with ambiguous types of strategies. Though capacity. was essentially the same for groups 0, F and NMA, the two retarded groups also fell below NMA Ss in their ability to ... adopt a flexible mode of behavior, and to utilize more ambiguous strategies. The differences between groups NMA and NCA, on the other hand, were indicative of the degree to which both memoric capacity and ability to make use of useful strategies develops in normal individuals over time.

Transfer of response in visual recognition situations as a function of frequency variables.

Abstract: : A series of 6 experiments investigated the principles required to account quantitatively for responses of human Ss to new combinations of cues following discrimination learning. In the training phase of each experiment, Ss learned to make identifying responses (numerical labels) to sets of stimuli (pairs of nonsense syllables) under a paired-associate procedure. After a fixed number of acquisition trials Ss were tested on stimulus compounds involving new combinations of the training cues. In all experiments a substantial proportion of variance in the test data was accounted for by a model embodying the additive rule and the probability matching rule of stimulus sampling theory. In cases when training had been conducted under standard discrimination paradigms, responses to test compounds were quite well accounted for by this model without auxiliary principles. Ss exhibited preferences for low ambiguity cues in test compounds only when this preference had been differentially reinforced during training. Under a variety of circumstances, predictions from the stimulus sampling model could be improved by the addition of a 'relative novelty' principle, stating that, other things being equal, Ss tend to sample from test compounds the cues that had occurred least frequently during previous training.

Intellectual abilities of symbolic and semantic judgment.

Abstract: : Two studies approached the problem of describing judgmental processes from the standpoint of individual differences in terms of basic traits. Based upon Guilford's structure-of-intellect model, the factors of symbolic and semantic evaluation were hypothesized to exist as distinct from one another and also from factors represented in other domains of the model. Experimental tests were developed as measures of the hypothesized factors. Measures of reference factors were also employed to demonstrate the uniqueness of the hypothesized factors. The tests were administered to 2 samples of high-school students, scores were factor analyzed, and axes analytically rotated, resulting in the demonstration of the 12 hypothesized evaluation factors and all the reference factors as uncorrelated dimensions of intellectual ability. The conclusion is that the model has continued to lead fruitfully to undiscovered, differentiable intellectual aptitudes. (Author)