Adult Ss Research Articles

Cognitive process in auditory concept acquisition

A comparison of the performance of 15 adult Ss who were required to verbalize hypotheses and to make category responses during concept acquisition to that of 15 Ss who made only category responses indicated that verbalization does not greatly influence the acquisition process. Tests of stationarity for the acquisition process support an all-or-nothing model of concept acquisition. A win-stay, lose-shift strategy of hypothesis testing prevailed, regardless of the complexity of the hypothesis under consideration. It was found that, in the absence of cues as to the nature of the solution concept, Ss typically first considered simple one-attribute hypotheses and then moved on to more complex two- and three-attribute hypotheses.

Verbal problem solving as related to cerebral damage.

An instrument, called the Word Finding Test, was devised to evaluate ability in discerning the meaning of a nonsense word through appreciation of its verbal context. This test consisted of 20 items and each item was made up of five sentences. In each sentence a nonsense word was used in place of an actual word which fit the context of all sentences for that item. S's task was to guess the meaning of the nonsense word, if possible, in each item. The test was administered to groups (males and females) of control Ss as well as to a group of normally functioning control Ss. Ss with cerebral lesions, who had also taken the test, were matched individually with Ss in each of the control groups on the basis of age, sex, and education. The results indicated that groups with cerebral damage consistently performed worse than their matched control groups. In total, 66 (94%) of the 70 brain-damaged Ss earned lower scores than did their matched controls. These findings indicated that the Word Finding Test appears to be especially sensitive to cerebral damage in adult Ss and suggest that problem-solving abilities, even in a verbal context, may be seriously deficient in persons with cerebral lesions.

The role of gradients of binocular disparity in Gibson’s theory of space perception

Adult Ss made distance bisection judgments over a surface on which the packing density of the texture elements was progressively increased along the Ss’ line of sight from one end of the surface to the other. Distance judgments were significantly different under monocular and binocular conditions of vision; however, with binocular vision, Ss did not detect the deformation in the texture on the surface. This result does not support predictions derived from Gibson, Purdy, and Lawrence (1955) concerning the role of gradients of binocular disparity in Gibson’s psychophysical theory of space perception.

Acquisition and Generalization of Conditioned Reward Value

Adult Ss performed a simple spinwheel task to examine 3 questions about effects of associating neutral stimuli with positive or negative events. Data support earlier studies by demonstrating that such associations result in changes in the verbal evaluation of the previously neutral stimulus, as well as changes in Ss' use of those stimuli as cues for solving other problems. More important, however, the effects are not transient and generalize to various kinds of situations. Finally, a discussion concerns the observation that the mere anticipation of an associated positive or negative event is as effective in developing conditioned reward value as is the actual experience of that association.

A CASE FOR THE USE OF MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS IN CONCEPT GROUPING, DOMINANCE LEVEL, AND SEX AS RELATED TO VERBAL RECALL.

Effect of concept grouping (A), dominance level (B), and sex (C) on immediate venbal recall was investigated using a univariate and a multivariate analysis of covariance (ANCOV and MANCOV) respectively, with digit span as a concomitant variable. 138 adult Ss, 56 males and 82 females, participated in this experiment. The MANCOV in 23 factorial design showed A, C, and A x B as significant beyond the .05 level. The covariate effect was also significant. The confounding of the variance due to the neglect of sex effecbs and the lack of appropriate analytic technique in t.he previous studies using concept forma4ion materials are proposed to account for the differences in results.

Changes in the constitution of the wais intelligence pattern with advancing age

Abstract Two experimental groups of elderly Ss (60-69 years n = 99, and 70-89 years n = 65) were each separately matched with young adult Ss with respect to WAIS scaled score totals. In both of the experimental groups the scores in the Information, Comprehension and Vocabulary subtests were found to be significantly higher than in the young control group, but the Performance subtest scores were (with one minor exception) all significantly higher in the control. Similarities, Arithmetic and Digit Span exhibited no significant differenas. This trend is shown to be independent of the total score. This pattern of subtest scores is related to the findings of other studies, and also to the distribution of roles in the majority of cultural structures.

Effect of stimulus order on verbal and nonverbal visual-auditory association.

The acquisition of visual-auditory associations was studied in 96 adult Ss to assess the effect of order of stimulus presentation and differences between verbal and nonverbal stimuli. Associations involving verbal sounds were learned more easily than those involving nonverbal sounds when the sounds were presented at the same time or following visual stimuli, but the associative task was relatively difficult when verbal sounds preceded verbal visual stimuli. Associations involving nonverbal visual stimuli were learned more easily than those involving verbal stimuli when visual stimuli followed auditory stimuli.

THE YOUNG CHILD'S COMPREHENSION OF TIME CONNECTIVES

In a recent study, Olds (1968) showed that 7-11-year-old children have difficulty in responding with appropriate behavior to commands incorporating certain logical connectors. Of the 11 connectors studied, before was the only time expression for which a significant difference in performance was obtained. It also appears to be the only time connective presented in two linguistic orders illustrating both temporal and nontemporal order. Clark and Clark (1968) tested recall of the paradigm given in table 1. Adult Ss recalled sentences most easily if they were presented in order of temporal occurrence (1, 2, and 3 versus 4, 5, and 6). Linguistic order of the clauses was not an important variable. The purpose of this study was to investigate difficulty of the Clark and Clark paradigm for young children and to identify the variables which might account for any differences obtained. Twenty kindergarten and 20 second-grade Ss from a local middleclass school district were tested individually in 10-minute sessions. The children were white monolinguals; equal numbers of boys and girls participated. Subjects were directed to move markers on a four-column bent abacus in response to commands recorded on Language Master tape cards. The colors of the movable markers (red, yellow, green, and black) were randomly ordered on the rods of the abacus, with the restriction that four different colors be in each row. All Ss were pretested on color identification.

Effects of angle, sex, and cue on adults' perception of the horizontal.

This study required adult Ss to draw a line to indicate the water level on drawings of tilted glasses. It was a repetition of the Rebelsky (1964) work on horizontality with the addition of a cue-noncue variable. Women, being more field-dependent than men, were expected to make greater use of the additional line cue. The field dependency hypothesis was not substantiated. Results further indicated significant differences associated with S's sex, the angle of tilt, and a direction by cue interaction. Differences in techniques of scoring and data analysis which precluded precise comparisons of studies using these stimuli were noted.

Serial order effects in auditory discrimination by oddity and matching to sample

The oddity method and several matching-to-sample procedures were used for frequency and intensity discrimination by adult Ss. For all sequence tasks involving three choices, the Ss employed a decision strategy which resulted in a pattern of correctness that differed from the pattern of discriminability among the choice sounds. It was concluded that the use of signal detection theory for analysis of results had added an important dimension to the study, and it was recommended that this method of analysis be used in further attempts to relate sequential processes to various forms of verbal impairment.

The processing of tachistoscopic displays as a function of effective stimulus duration

Eight adult Ss were instructed to identify the elements of a 2 × 2 stimulus matrix, tachistoscopically presented to them for 15 msec. After a variable interval ranging from 0 to 105 msec, a masking stimulus followed. The masking stimulus was either a homogeneous blank field or a patterned noise field. Main findings were: masking by a patterned noise field appeared to be a more effective means of controlling the effective stimulus duration than masking by a blank field. Corrections for guessing were applied to the raw performance scores. The estimated number of elements processed appeared to follow a non-linear function of the effective stimulus duration, providing evidence for the existence of preattentive analysers ( Neisser, 1967). The same rate of information processing was found as that given by Sperling (1963). No evidence was obtained that information regarding an element's identity was treated in another way than information about an element's position in the display as was suggested by Liss (1968).

Multiple probable situation: A study of a five one-armed bandit problem

Decision making of 14 adult Ss in a multiple-probable situation analogous to a gambling situation was studied. On each of 250 trials, S selected one of five probable alternatives. Occurrences of each alternative, Πi, were:.00,.125,.25,.25, and.50. The results indicate that (1) slight overshooting occurred to the most probable alternative, and undershooting to the less probable alternatives, (2) learning to select the most probable alternative resulted from Ss’ experiences in the situation, (3) significant effects of different sizes of trial sequences were noted, and (4) significant relationships between repetition of responses on Trial n + 1, if Πi occurred on Trial n, with total number of probable alternatives selected and total number of reinforcements significant.

Two-point discrimination: asymmetry in spatial discrimination on the two sides of the tongue, a preliminary report.

25 young adult Ss were used in a study of asymmetry in spatial discrimination on the two sides of the tongue. 10 two-point limen values were established on the left and right tongue margins of each S. Analysis showed statistical evidence of asymmetry in spatial discrimination ability in 14 of the 25 Ss, supporting the concept that “sensory sidedness” in the tactile sensory system may be a normal neurological phenomenon.

Feedback and sentence learning

The theoretical functions of external feedback in S-R and close-loop models of verbal learning are presented. Contradictory predictions from the models were tested with a 3 × 3 factorial experiment including three types of feedback and three amounts of rehearsal. Ninety adult Ss were tested individually and were required to learn 39 sentences verbatim. The results were: (a) Feedback facilitated learning when it followed wrong responses. (b) Feedback had no effect on learning following correct responses. (c) Feedback consisting of both the stimulus and the response was superior to no feedback, whereas feedback consisting of only the response did not differ from no feedback.

Intercorrelations among imagery tasks.

Intercorrelations were obtained for 9 measures of performance by 30 adult Ss in an attempt to assess any general ability reflected on those tasks involving visual imagery. Neither the direction nor the magnitude of the correlations gave strong support to the operation of such general ability.

Is There an Incentive Magnitude Effect on Adult Performance?

Four experiments ( ns = 40, 20, 46, 40) comparing the absolute and relative interpretations of the incentive magnitude effect utterly failed to show the effect with normal, community-dwelling, adult female Ss. Money was the incentive commodity used in both card-sorting and digit-symbol tasks, and it was paid both to the individual S and to S's women's club, and it was paid on both a per-task and per-unit-of-accomplishment basis. The limitations of both the incentive magnitude effect and of the methodology of these experiments are discussed.

Age differences in self-ratings of confidence.

The hypothesis of decreased self-confidence in later life was tested by comparing self-ratings of 18 elderly and young adult Ss ( Ns = 40, 18) with two questionnaires. When specific information was involved, old and young were similar with respect to confidence in the correctness of response. When judgments about oneself were involved, the older Ss indicated more self-confidence than the young, not less. The relation between age and confidence seems to be a matter of context.

The utilization by children and adults of binary propositional thinking in concept learning

An analysis of conjunctive concepts based on two binary stimulus dimensions reveals that the relationship between the individual relevant stimuli and classification is one of implication. In the case of irrelevant dimensions a tautologous relationship exists. An experiment was designed to test Piaget's contention that adult Ss can utilize such relationships in problem solving, while children have difficulty in this area. Two groups of children and two groups of adults learned a conjunctive concept. Prior to concept learning half of the Ss were given the opportunity to establish the logical relationships which existed between the individual dimensions and the classification. These Ss learned the concept with significantly fewer errors than the remaining Ss. The adults were relatively more efficient in the utilization of the logical relationships than the children. During the preconcept learning period interesting differences appeared in the search strategy of adult and child Ss, differences not encompassed by Piagetian theory.

Short-term memory in children: Keeping track of variables with few or many states

Does ability to remember the most recent state of a variable (e.g., that dog was the last animal seen) depend on whether the variable has few or many states? When adult Ss are tested in a keeping-track task, the answer to the question is negative, consistent with expectations from Miller's argument that the capacity of short-term memory (STM) is better described in terms of “chunks” than in terms of “bits” of information. The present study tested the hypothesis that number of states is an important variable determining the retention of young children. The prediction follows from a consideration of the role played by rehearsal in the STM of children and adults. The obtained data are consistent with the prediction and show that retention is dependent on number of states with 4-year-old children as Ss.

The influence of texture density gradients on judgments of length

Adult Ss judged the relative lengths of pairs of surfaces viewed successively under restricted monocular conditions. Artificial deformations in the gradients of texture density derived from one surface in each pair had a significant influence on judged length. Surfaces on which the packing density of the texture units progressively increased toward the horizon were judged as longer than surfaces of equal physical dimensions but with evenly spaced texture elements.