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Visuoperceptual processes in brain damaged patients on the digit symbol substitution test.

Alcoholic Korsakoff patients, patients with right hemisphere damage, and chronic alcoholics are impaired on the digit symbol substitution task (DSST) of the WAIS. To determine whether these deficits were related to psychomotor or visuoperceptive factors, several tasks and modifications of the DSST were administered to these three patient populations. While it was evident that psychomotor retardation contributed to the patients' poor performance, impairments in visuoperceptive processing were also found to be involved in the DSST performance of the three patient groups. It was concluded that while a psychomotor factor is the crucial variable in the performance of intact normal subjects, any of a number of visual processing variables (e.g., visual scanning, contour formation and organization) must be considered in assessing the deficits of brain damaged patients.

Aged

Pictorial superiority effect.

Pictures generally show superior recognition relative to their verbal labels. This experiment was designed to link this pictorial superiority effect to sensory or meaning codes associated with the two types of symbols. Paired-associate stimuli consisted of simple pictures or of their labels, with list items selected either from the same conceptual category or from different conceptual categories. In addition, schematic or visual similarity among the pictures was either high or low. At two rates of presentation equal amounts of conceptual interference were produced for pictures and their labels. High schematic similarity eliminated the pictorial superiority effects at the slow rate and completely reversed it at the fast rate. These results suggest that the meaning representations for simple pictures and their labels may be identical, and that the pictorial superiority effect is related to the qualitative superiority of the sensory codes for pictures.

Concept Formation

Effects of stimulus familiarity on the rehearsal strategies transfer mechanism in retarded and nonretarded individuals.

The possibility that the familiarity value of stimuli might be a component of the rehearsal strategies mechanism in Ellis' (1970) multiprocess theory of short-term memory was investigated. Retarded and nonretarded subjects of equal CA were given either PA pretraining of nonsense pictures with colors or were presented with nonsense pictures alone. They were then compared in their performance on either an experimenter- or subject-paced serial memory task in which the nonsense pictures were employed as stimuli. It was expected that pretraining would increase the familiarity value of nonsense stimuli for nonretarded and, to a lesser extent, retarded subjects, facilitating transfer of information from primary to secondary memory in both groups. Although predictions about the effects of pretraining on retention were not substantiated, the results of the experiment did support the hypothesis that a production deficiency in active encoding can account for the poor secondary memory of mentally retarded subjects.

Achievement

Associative symmetry in the PA learning of retarded and nonrerarded children.

Mentally retarded and nonretarded children learned pairs of pictures in a single-function order (A and B terms of each pair were in the same position throughout) or in a double-function order (all items were re-paired and served as A and B terms). Associative symmetry was demonstrated by all groups when the lists were presented single-function; forward asymmetry was demonstrated when the list was presented double-function. When categorized pairs were presented double-function, items that were correctly associated by category produced symmetry; items that were correctly associated but not by category produced forward asymmetry. The possible influence of single vs. multiple associations on associative symmetry was discussed.

Child

Sentence mediation and stimulus blocking in free recall.

In a two-phasing training study, EMR adolescents were initially provided with sentences linking each pair of 2 words in a 20-word list to be free recalled. In a second phase, subjects were required to create and verbalize their own sentences. This sentence-mediation condition was compared with (a) one in which items were presented in the same fixed pairs from trial-to-trial, but without sentences and (b) a group that received items in changing pairs. Results indicated superiority of both sentence-mediation and fixed-pairs treatments in comparison to the changing-pairs condition on both correct recall and subjective organization. Sentences did not facilitate recall more than did consistent ordering. The results were discussed in the context of the growing evidence that providing input structure can remediate organization deficits in retarded persons.

Adolescent

Cognitive processes and academic achievement in EMR adolescents.

Twelve cognitive process variables were investigated as predictors of reading and arithmetic achievement and studied for internal structure, with 115 EMR adolescent subjects. Stepwise regression and factor analyses were employed to study prediction and structure, respectively. Memory variables were the most important predictors of reading. They were also involved in arithmetic but to a lesser extent. The data suggested that the ability to generate and utilize strategies facilitating the recall of unstructured material as well as the capacity to be sensitive to strategy-relevant structure embedded in stimuli were important prerequisites for the acquisition of reading skills. An oddity task, measuring the ability to maintain the same relational focus for successive applications to new stimulus material, was found to be most pertinent for predicting arithmetic computational skills.

Achievement

Age, rate and instructional conditions: empirical support against the pacing variable.

The present study was an attempt to determine if the pacing effect was an artifact of the confounding of presentation rate and total learning time. Two presentation rates were factorially varied with three instructional conditions for two different age groups in a paired-associate and free-recall task. The results of the study replicated the pacing effect when learning time was deliberately confounded. When total learning time was equated for the presentation rates the pacing effect was not replicated, demonstrating that pacing is an artifact. It was suggested that the total time principle, not pacing, was the viable explanatory concept. The results of the manipulation of instructional conditions suggest that it is inappropriate to assume that a set of instructions will result in equivalent performance for both young and old samples.

Adolescent

Processing of interactive and noninteractive pictures in PA learning by retarded persons.

Retarded persons, at two MA levels, were exposed to a list of paired-associates (PAs) in which the stimulus terms were picture compounds of one animate and one inanimate object. One-half of the subjects in each MA group learned the associations with the stimulus components presented in meaningful interaction, and half learned the associations with the components depicted in noninteraction. Stimulus interaction facilitated list acquisition by the higher MA but not by the lower MA subjects. Transfer tests following PA learning indicated that the interactive stimulus components had been processed as units by the higher MA subjects, suggesting that these individuals may have spontaneously elaborated the interactive-stimulus components.

Cognition

Verbal learning dysfunction with combined centre median and amygdala lesions.

Stereotaxic lesions in either or both amygdala did not impair verbal learning ability (presented by ear as a paired-associates test). Centre median lesions alone did not impair this form of learning; however, when combined with a left amygdala lesion a significant decrease in scores occurred which persisted for up to two years after operation. The data support a hypothesis that medial thalamic structures have alerting functions in learning mechanisms.

Amygdala

The effects of experimentally induced changes in self-concept on associative learning.

It has been hypothesized that self-concept influences ability to learn. This experiment systematically manipulated the self-concepts of learners regarding their abilities to learn a foreign language and measured their subsequent learning of a synthetic foreign language vocabulary list. Eleven Ss were randomly assigned to each of three groups: self-concept raised, self-concept lowered, control. Ss were college freshman who were not enrolled in a foreign language course or had not previously taken more than one semester of a foreign language. Self-concepts were measured as self-description of ability to learn a foreign language. Self-concepts were raised or lowered by providing false scores on a foreign language aptitude test. Learning was measured as performance on a paired-associates task utilizing random shapes and CVCs. Ss with lowered self-concepts learned more slowly than control Ss or Ss with raised self-concepts.

Achievement

Rekitting the Wechsler Paired-Associate Task: the Waterford Index.

The Waterford Index provides a new scoring system for the Wechsler paired-associate task. Item performances across successive trials were coded so as to reflect the psychological phenomena of learning, forgetting and item effects (N = 50). The Index describes two rules for differentiating between cases of cognitive impairment and non-impairment. Rule 1 contrasts the respective contributions of learning and forgetting. Rule 2 takes account of cases characterized by a high proportion of correct responses. Against a criterion index based on performances on other psychological tests of organic dysfunction, the Waterford Index yielded higher predictive efficiencies than associated with other Wechsler indices, intelligence, and age.

Adult

Extroversion and reminiscence following a frustrating paired-associate task.

Two experiments were reported relating extroversion to reminiscence following a frustrating paired-associate (PA) task. In the first experiment a group of 30 male and female college students was randomly assigned to one of two tasks in which they learned a PA list of high or low stimulus similarity. All PA lists were mixed lists composed of half solvable and half unsolvable (randomized) stimulus-response items. Recall for solvable items was tested immediately, 15 min, and 30 min after criterion was reached. Results indicated a significant difference between high and low stimulus similarity with superior recall for low similarity. The predicted reminiscence effect for high stimulus similarity recall was present but not significant. Comparison of recall scores for extroverts and introverts indicated a significant difference in recall favoring the introverts. The second experiment made a similar test of recall for two groups of S s that had been established as extreme extroverts or introverts (N = 8 in each group). The superiority of recall for introverts was replicated, and a reminiscence effect was found for the extroverts. Results were discussed in relation to Eysenck's formulation and previous conflicting results.

Extraversion, Psychological