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Picture and word recall was examined in conjunction with list organization. 60 subjects studied a list of 30 items, either words or their pictorial equivalents. The 30 words/pictures, members of five conceptual categories, each represented by six exemplars, were presented either blocked by category or in a random order. While pictures were recalled better than words and a standard blocked-random effect was observed, the interaction indicated that the recall advantage of a blocked presentation was restricted to the word lists. A similar pattern emerged for clustering. These findings are discussed in terms of limitations upon the pictorial superiority effect.

The response times of 17 introverts and 24 extroverts to red and blue stimulus lights were compared. While no differences were found between the groups, introverts responded faster to the presentation of the red stimulus light than the blue one.

Theories of the rest-related phenomena of reminiscence and warm-up decrement regard them as independent, being due to different factors. In this study it was found that rest following massed practice of a continuous task increased performance (reminiscence) and rest following massed practice of a discrete task lowered performance (warm-up decrement). The near-zero correlation found between the phenomena indicates that they are indeed independent and task-specific. Implications of the findings for the prediction of the effect of rest, and the fact that much motor learning and performance is task-specific, is discussed.

Social facilitation theory states that an audience functions as a conditioned stimulus for generalized drive and that this drive effect is learned through classical conditioning. In the present study an attempt was made to classically condition an aversive drive to an audience by having a subject fail a task in front of an audience. A sample of 72 subjects (12 per group) took part in a 3 × 2 factorial design. Half of the subjects were exposed to failure in front of an audience on a first task. These subjects then performed a second complex motor task in front of the same audience who were described as either experts on this second task or as students who were interested in the task (non-expert audience). No differences in performance were found between those groups that had failed a first task and those that had not. However, significant differences in performance were found between the no-audience control, non-expert audience, and expert audience conditions.

Rotary pursuit performance (time on target) and reminiscence data were collected for 113 androgynous and feminine men and women under massed or distributed practice conditions. On the final (eighth) block of practice men performed better than women under conditions of massed practice; while no sex differences were found under distributed practice conditions. Under distributed practice conditions androgynous women performed better than feminine women. In addition, men performed better over-all than women, and subjects in the distributed practice condition performed better than subjects in the massed practice condition. Reminiscence data indicated that under massed practice feminine women obtained larger scores than did feminine men and androgynous women. For women sex-role as well as practice condition influenced performance and reminiscence.