Studies of social comparison choice have utilized a paradigm which fails to distinguish comparison motives from more general information search motives. In the present study subjects were either exposed to the standard social comparison manipulation or asked to determine the distribution of a set of unknown random variables arranged in rank order.…

A combination of information integration methodology and measures of retention was used to investigate how subjects differentially attend to and weight information in judgmental tasks. Subjects were shown sets of test scores for hypothetical students and were asked to rate the performance of each student or predict each student's performance on a…

The application of information integration concepts to judicial, political and moral judgments is discussed. The authors describe how the information integration theory can provide a unitary treatment of judgement on both conception and quantitative levels. The decision-making processes involved in the courtroom setting, political choice, and…

This study attempts to raise and answer the question as to whether lateral specialization of the brain could explain some of the differences in persons at different stages of intellectual development from birth to adulthood according to Piaget's theory of individual development via sequential, qualitatively different stages.…

This study examined the effect of reading ability and frequency of object association on picture-verification latency in a group of 40 fifth graders. Subjects received sets of two slides each, the first of which was a sentence in which the subject and object were in either frequent or infrequent association. When the children had read and had…

Mathematical models have been used extensively to describe the judgmental processes and strategies of individual decision makers, but rarely have the procedures been extended to describe the judgmental strategies of decision-making groups. The present study attempts to extend the procedures for the purposes of describing group decision-making…

The United States Department of Labor has revised the "Dictionary of Occupational Titles" in order to eliminate references to gender. Can language respond to official edicts, as well as to demands from feminists, and effect significant changes? This paper supports the position that language can and will change. The basis for such change depends on…

Author attempts to provide a careful analysis of Maier and Seligman's manuscript (AA 522 796) on learned helplessness with the hope that such a critique will produce a positive effect by clarifying issues of contention and pinpointing weaknesses in need of correction. (Author/RK)

Summarized are three research articles on the following topics: the role of pupil size in communication, educational aspects of hemispheric specialization, and the effects of maternal psychological stress on the fetus. (DB)

The relationship between the effects of morphological complexity and associative production frequency was investigated in two experiments on sentence verification. The purpose of the study was to investigate how morphologically derived words are represented in memory. (Author/RM)

Four experiments are reported in which relations of semantic distance to response latencies in similarity judgments, to reaction times in a same-different classification task, and to proximity of recall in a free recall task were investigated. (Author/RM)

Students have been taught to recall specific details, but often are unable to read critically or to grasp the main ideas. (JH)

An emphasis on learning to make positive comments on their peers' papers improved students' writing.

Contends that a student gains knowledge through the act of writing as she joins bits of information into a whole. Presents a model for scanning students' written material to determine the way ideas are related. Notes that the value of a piece of information depends on how the writer joins it with other information. (KC)