Posthypnotic amnesia has been systematically investigated in the past and subsequently alluded to as either role enacted behavior or evidence for an altered state of consciousness. Recall and recognition have been tested during posthypnotic amnesia and as in normal memory functioning, recognition performance has been found to be usually superior to recall performance. In order to gain further understanding of the circumstances which facilitate amnesic behavior, an experiment was carried out which was designed to vary the usual manner in which recall and recognition memory are observed during posthypnotic amnesia.

This study attempted to replicate and extend the study of Doherty, Mynatt, Tweney, and Schiavo (1979), which introduced what is here called the Bayesian conditionals selection paradigm. The present study used this paradigm (and a script similar to that used by Doherty et al.) to explore confirmation bias and related errors that can appear in both search and integration in probability revision. Despite selection differences and weak manipulations, this study provided information relevant to four important questions. First, by asking participants to estimate the values of the conditional probabilities they did not learn, this study was able to examine the use of "intuitive conditionals". This study found evidence that participants used intuitive conditionals and that their intuitive conditionals were affected by the size of the actual conditionals. Second, by examining both phases in the same study, this study became the first to look for inter-phase interactions. A strong correlation was found between the use of focal search strategies and focal integration strategies (r=.81, p

The present research was conducted in order to develop a method useful for measuring the meaning of symbolic material. Using this method an investigation was conducted to test the validity of several personality theories which ascribe meanings to select symbols. A summary of the major personality theories dealing with symbolic material was conducted . Each theory was briefly presented with a discussion of the methods employed to determine the meanings of symbols. A set of symbol theory considerations was presented which would suggest the necessary components of an objective investigation attempting to be a validity test of symbol meanings predictions.

The present study focused upon both behavioral and cognitive aspects of sympathetic responses in preschool children. Subjects, 36 boys and girls aged 33-75 months, were seen at their regular day care center. An attempt was made to promote comforting behavior through the use of a peer model both alone and accompanied by an adult's inductive statement regarding the consequences of a sympathetic response; a six year-old girl served as the sympathetic model and as an apparently injured victim in need of comforting. In addition, age- and sex-related relationships for the measures of social cognition, affective perspective-taking and knowledge of strategies for intervening when another person's plight invites sympathetic concern, were examined. The former measure employed a commonly used task presenting children with picture stories in which a target character's facial expression is not congruent with information provided by the story situation. Such stimuli have been thought to assess the ability to assume the emotional point of view of a particular person (empathic judgment), as opposed to the egocentric projection of one's own perspective onto another (projective judgment). Capacities for recognizing and explaining situationally consistent emotions (social comprehension and explanation of affect) and explaining the incongruent facial and situational cues (awareness of discrepancy) were also evaluated. The psychometric properties of these measures were a major concern; consequently, internal consistency reliability as well as age- and sex-related differences among item means, which were presumed to reflect differences in item difficulty, were examined for each component of both measures. Finally, relationships among all measures were examined.

Studies concerning tactile short-term memory (short-term memory or the sense of touch) have often been contradictory. Some of these studies support the existence of modality-specific tactile memory, a separate, independent storage system for tactile information. Other studies do not support such a system. Further, confusion has arisen regarding the tactile test materials, since many of them use common shapes which are easily labeled verbally. It is hypothesized that information which can be labeled is stored in material-specific verbal memory in the left hemisphere, while patterned or spatial information is stored in material-specific nonverbal memory in the right hemisphere. This paper reports two studies conducted to demonstrate both verbal and nonverbal material-specific memory using tactile test materials. The first experiment utilized the Seguin Formboard, which has wooden shapes that are easily labeled verbally. The test was administered to brain damaged patients and to normal controls. Results showed that the performance of the people with left hemisphere brain damage was significantly impaired relative to the normal controls. This was expected since verbal material is processed in the left hemisphere. People with damage in this area have difficulty naming objects and storing the names. The second experiment utilized wooden shapes that were presumed difficult to label. This test was again administered to brain damaged subjects as well us to normal controls. The results were not significant. This may have been because the test was too difficult or because it did not tap nonverbal spatial information. Thus, people with right hemisphere damage were expected to have difficulty processing this type of material. The right damaged group did tend to do more poorly than the other groups. It is not known if this difference would be significant were the test simplified, or if there were actually no group differences. The first study suggests that the Seguin Formboard, thought to be a nonverbal tactile memory test, is actually verbally mediated. The second study did not yield significant results, but suggests a line of further research into the area of nonverbal material-specific memory tested in the tactile modality. These experiments suggest the importance of carefully evaluating test materials to determine what abilities they actually measure in order to obtain a fine analysis of memory function.

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