An unobtrusive experimental manipulation was used to test the hypothesis that the mere presence of others can influence an individual's performance. A task was employed for which there were no clear performance criteria, and which was very unlikely to engender evaluation apprehension. Concludes that the mere presence of others is a sufficient…

Argues that certain distinctions drawn by philosophers and linguists concerning implication do not have behavioral consequences and, thus, are not appropriate constructs in a theory of the psychology of implication. The distinctions discussed are directly asserted versus implied meanings and logical versus pragmatic implications. (Editor)

An experiment was conducted to test the proposition that rewards undermine or enhance intrinsic interest in a task to the extent that individuals interpret their behavior as being motivated by the reward. It was predicted that when subjects were denied the opportunity to develop and confirm this attribution, rewards would not produce an…

Begins by discussing a number of problems in applying a levels-of-processing approach to memory as proposed in the late 1960s and then revised in 1972 by Craik and Lockhart, suggests that some of the basic assumptions are false, and argues for information-processing models devised to study working memory and reading, which aim to explore the…

Examines the limitations of several theories of developmental psychology, most notably Kohlberg's stage theory of moral development, and concludes that developmental theory has not given adequate expression to the concerns and experience of women. Argues for an expanded view of adulthood that would result from the integration of the "feminine…

Perspective ability is the ability to represent how objects look relative to each other from another person's viewpoint. This ability involves two different but interrelated skills: multiple classification and perspective-taking. The intent here was to devise a training program designed to study the causes of transition from one stage of…

Two experiments were conducted with Chinese subjects to investigate whether phonemic similarity affected the visual information processing of Chinese characters. The first experiment used a short-term retention paradigm and the second, a sentence judgment task. Results were discussed with respect to the issues of orthographical differences and of…

Three word-identification experiments suggest that a model derived from experiments with pseudowords can be applied successfully to word identification. The data derived from the experiments confirm the role of higher order verbal units in word identification and suggest the structural components of a verbal-mediation theory of reading. (Editor/RK)

This research tested the hypothesis that grouping has adverse effects on the recall of tactual shapes but facilitates the recall of tactual letters on the assumption that this depends on different processes. A further question was the relation of grouping to letter recall span (set-size).

The aim of this study was to examine pattern difficulty as a general factor influencing orientation errors, and to explore psychological differentiation and task perception as variables accounting for cross-cultural differences. Samples of 30 boys and 30 girls in Ghana and Scotland were tested. (Editor)

Six laboratory experiments on learned helplessness and depression in humans reported by Seligman and his colleagues were critically reviewed. A number of methodological and conceptual problems were discussed. Suggests that it is important for psychologists to scrutinize psychological theories in order to assess their conceptual clarity and…

The effects of recalling past successes on the deficits in learned helplessness and depression were examined and, for learned helplessness, compared with those of real success. Results suggest real success does not have its therapeutic effects by modifying attributions for failure toward external factors. (Editor)

The research reported here investigated the response of white suburban home owners to the initial integration of their previously all white neighborhood. The study was designed to examine the extent to which interracial contact occurs, the behavioral reactions of the residents to the integration of their area, and corresponding changes in their…

The question raised in this study was whether schizophrenics' recall deficit can be ameliorated if appropriate encoding behaviors are experimentally induced. (Editor)

In a study of the effects of instructions on reaction times to judgments of the truth or falsity of sentences, 40 undergraduates were provided computer-assisted instruction by either the "true" or "conversion" model and required to judge 64 sentences of all possible combinations of true or false, affirmative or negative, and expletive or…