Neutral Questions Research Articles

THE EFFECTS OF INTERVIEW SITUATION AND TOPICAL FOCUS ON INTERVIEWEE VERBAL FLUENCY

This study examined the effects of a interview situation and topical focus on interviewee's verbal fluency. The hypotheses were as follows: 1. An interviewee's verbal behavior in an embarrassing topic, in contrast to the interviewee's verbal behavior in a neutral topic, is associated with a longer reaction time, more unfilled pauses, more filled pauses, more speech disturbances and less verbal productivity. 2. In a neutral topic, an interviewee will speak more fluently, i. e., with shorter reaction time, fewer unfilled pauses, fewer filled pauses, fewer speech disturbances and greater verbal productivity when in the face-to-face condition than in the screen condition. In an embarrassing topic, an interviewee will speak more fluently when in the screen condition than in the face-to-face condition.The subjects were ninety-two male university students. This study manipulated interview situations (face-to-face condition and screen condition) and topical focus (neutral topic and embarrassing topic) in a 2×2 factorial design. Subjects were randomly assigned to each of the four experimental groups. They were interviewed one by one by male confederates who were also university students. Each subject was interviewed in one of two conditions: one with a screen separating an interviewer and an interviewee and one without a screen. The interview consisted of neutral questions in the area of occupation and embarrassing questions in the area of sexual matters.The results generally supported hypothesis 1. Hypothesis 2 was partially confirmed. The results showed that the interaction between the interview situation and the topical focus was significant only in the verbal productivity. It was demonstrated that in the embarrassing topic the interviewee was more verbally productive when in the screen condition than in the conventional face-to-face condition.

THE IMPACT OF PATIENT EDUCATION ON CHRONICALLY ILL CHILDREN

An investigation of the impact of patient education on chronically ill children to ascertain if a child's comprehension of illness is accelerated in relation to Piaget's stages of development has not been attempted previously. We have evaluated various aspects of a child's comprehension of illness from established (≥ 6 visits) patients attending the M.S.U. Pediatric Endocrinology, Oncology, and Nephrology clinics. Children without chronic disease attending a general pediatric clinic served as controls. Age groups of 5-9 and 10-14 years were studied. A single questionnaire-interview was administered to each child separately by one interviewer. Seventeen questions were asked in 3 different categories: general medically related (9); specific disease (4); and non-medical or neutral (4). Responses were recorded and later scored by both the interviewer and an independent evaluator using an established coding scale. Ninety-one children were interviewed. Children within both age groups scored higher on neutral questions than either the medically related or specific disease questions. Within each age group, chronically ill children did not differ from controls on mean scores of medically related questions. Comparing the two age groups, significantly higher mean scores on medically related questions were identified from the older children in each clinic except for Oncology clinic. Patient education does not appear to accelerate a chronically ill child's comprehension of illness.

Reliability and validity of an interval measure of vocal stress.

The reliability and validity of Psychological Stress Evaluator (PSE) output and frequency modulation suppression as an inaudible vocal measure of stress-arousal was further explored, using a new interval scoring method. 'Yes' answers to 6 neutral questions were obtained from 106 volunteers 2 weeks before, the day before and one week after a stress-provoking event (oral comprehensive examinations for an MS degree). The data show excellent construct validity and good but not high internal consistency (0.77-0.81) and test-retest (0.72-0.74) reliability. Interrater reliability ranged from 0.94 to 0.98. Correlations of PSE output with other psychological and physiological measures (criterion-related validity) was very poor.

Psychophysiological assessment of statements about pain.

ABSTRACTA psychophysiological procedure was developed to study the interaction of physiological activity and verbal statements in pain patients. This procedure compared skin potential and heart rate changes occurring during designated baseline, anticipation, reception, processing, and responding stages of a question‐answer sequence, in 7 chronic pain patients and 7 non‐patient controls. Pain, emotional, and neutral type questions were randomly presented. It was found that the processing of pain questions produced significantly larger physiological changes in pain patients than in the non‐pain controls. Such differential psychophysiological responsivity may serve as a basis for the early recognition of chronic pain syndrome and the detection of malingering.

Differential-boundary operators and associated neutral functional differential questions

Differential-boundary operators and associated neutral functional differential questions

Some psychological determinants of electrodermal responses to deception

This study explores some of the psychological determinants of electrodermal responses to deception. There were four groups of 24 subjects, consisting of normal males and females, and personality-disordered males and females. The deceptive paradigms used consisted of three guilty knowledge card tasks that differed in the nature of the stimuli used and in procedural instructions. There was also a general question task involving five neutral questions and two emotive moral questions. After each task self-report analogue scales were administered in order to record the subjects' reactions to each task and the type of countermeasure they had used. The subjects also completed the Eysenck Personality Inventory, the Gough Socialization Scale and the Arrow-Dot test. Detectability on card tasks was found to relate to the following: procedural instructions, countermeasure strategies, involvement in the task, the extent to which the critical items are processed into memory, and lack of confidence in one's ability to beat the machine. Personality factors of Introversion, Neuroticism and Ego control had some significant correlations with differential responsivity but this was not consistent across subject samples or tasks. Differential responsivity to questions raising moral issues did not relate significantly to whether or not the subject admitted or denied such behaviour.

Neutral stress, emphatic stress, and sentence intonation in Advanced Standard Copenhagen Danish

The relationship between stress and fundamental frequency in short declarative and syntactically unmarked interrogative sentences, both with emphasis for contrast in various positions, is investigated and compared to prosodically neutral statements and questions on the basis of recordings by four speakers. Emphasis for contrast has a radical influence on the course of fundamental frequency, to the extent that the stress group which contains the stressed syllable of the emphasized word and its neighbours tonally reduce to one stress group. The influence from emphasis seems to reach farther on marked (non-declarative) than on unmarked (declarative) contours. Durational differences between utterances with and without emphasis for contrast are small, consisting mainly in a slight lengthening of the emphasized stress group, a lengthening which is to some extent counterbalanced by a shortening of the preceding stress group, if any.

Conjugate lateral eye movements of “repressors” and “sensitizers” under threat and non-threat conditions

Investigated the relationship between repression-sensitization and conjugate lateral eye movement (CLEM) tendencies under ego-threat and control conditions. Fifty-one right-handed college males were separated into repressors, sensitizers, or a middle group and were interviewed under a condition intended to produce ego-threat or a neutral condition. Bland and mildly intimate questions were asked of all Ss. Contrary to expectation, repression-sensitization and threat condition were unrelated to eye movement direction. A significant increase in left eye movement was found in response to mildly intimate questions, compared to neutral questions. Results are discussed with reference to earlier research on CLEM and to the cerebral hemispheric dominance theory of the effect.

ICBM - a solution to the problem of informed consent.

The expanding complexity of diagnostic and therapeutic modalities has made informed consent for surgical procedures somewhat of an enigma. While the use of generalities in the explanation of the benefits and hazards of operation provides no evidence of understanding of the specifics, it is impossible to cover all aspects of each part of the consent, and may at times be medically unwise to give too much detail. Preprinted consent forms go partway toward alleviation of these problems, but nowhere do they confirm the patient's understanding of their content, and they do not provide for individual differences in cognition or desired level of detail. We have developed an interactive language which allows programming by physicians of a structured series of questions and answers. The correct responses to these detailed queries, explanations concerning incorrect responses, and choices for neutral questions concerning desired level of understanding are chained to produce individualized consent forms which provide evidence of the patient's comprehension and allow preoperative education as well. This is a preliminary step toward resolution of the problems of informed consent.

Neurotic anxiety, pronoun usage and stress.

The use of the pronoun "I" when a speaker refers to his own actions, thoughts, or emotions is appropriate. Omission of the pronoun or the use of "you" or "it" may be taken as an indicant of psychological distantiation. This study examines the effects of stress and neurotic anxiety on pronoun usage. Forty-five male and female undergraduate Ss enrolled at Virginia Commonwealth University were selected randomly from 172 volunteers assessed for neurotic anxiety level as measured by the Maudsley Personality Inventory and Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale. Treatment consisted of asking 20 emotionally charged questions, 10 of which were neutral baseline questions and the other 10 were either negative, neutral, or positive in stress. Responses were tape recorded and transcribed. It was found that negative stress interacting with medium level anxiety neurotics significantly increased distantiation above baseline levels. A hypothesis to explain the results was offered.

Test anxiety, GSR and academic achievement.

To determine the relationship between a self-report measure of test anxiety and GSRs recorded during an actual course examination, GSRs were obtained from 57 Ss on two separate occasions; the first involving neutral questions and the second, psychology examination questions. A low-reactive and a high-reactive group were identified on the basis of GSR responses to the neutral questions. During the actual examination situation, the GSRs of the low-reactive group were raised but still remained small in comparison to the GSRs of the high-reactive group. In the low-reactive group, Ss high in test anxiety responded with significantly larger GSRs than Ss low in test anxiety.