Instrumentation for an electrocutaneous communication device

The device described is a prototype that uses spatiotemporal resolution for electrocutaneous stimulation. Signals initiated through a keyboard activate a matrix of four electrodes that may be applied to the fingers, forearm, abdomen, back, or other parts of the integument. The instrumentation described includes a pulse generator, the active time and delay time controls, the control of the total length of a pulse train, and the constant-current generators whose output is fed into the electrodes. This device may be used as an interface with an alphanumeric device (e.g., a calculator or computer) and as a basic instrument in research investigating the spatial and temporal resolving capacities of the skin senses.     

A fully automated two-way locomotor training apparatus

A fully automated two-way locomotor training apparatus is described. The device employs two bilevel chambers that are separated by a length of straight alley. The rat is dropped from the distinctively cued upper level of one chamber onto the grid floor of its lower level. To escape shock, the rat must leave this lower level, traverse the alley segment, and jump into the upper level of the opposite compartment. Although the animal is required to traverse the same alley in two directions, its terminal response always carries it into a distinctive goal region where shock never occurs. A brief experiment is described that was designed to assess the effectiveness of this device in the acquisition and extinction of a locomotor escape response with rats.     

Body-scaled affordances in sensory substitution

The research field on sensory substitution devices has strong implications for theoretical work on perceptual consciousness. One of these implications concerns the extent to which the devices allow distal attribution. The present study applies a classic empirical approach on the perception of affordances to the field of sensory substitution. The reported experiment considers the perception of the stair-climbing affordance. Participants judged the climbability of steps apprehended through a vibrotactile sensory substitution device. If measured with standard metric units, climbability judgments of tall and short participants differed, but if measured in units of leg length, judgments did not differ. These results are similar to paradigmatic results in regular visual perception. We conclude that our sensory substitution device allows the perception of affordances. More generally, we argue that the theory of affordances may enrich theoretical debates concerning sensory substitution to a larger extent than has hitherto been the case.     

Dominance of gait cycle duration in casual walking

In gait research, casual walking has been considered to be walking at a casual speed. However, it is unclear that walking speed is the most stable factor in casual walking compared to other factors such as cycle duration and stride length. Although walking speed can be calculated from cycle duration and stride length, it is not necessarily the case that these parameters are "stable" in the same manner. We therefore conducted an experiment to determine which of these three parameters is most stable, regarding walking speed as cycle speed and using the coefficient of variation across gait cycles as index of stability. Ten participants were invited to walk in their own casual manner, once a week for a period of four weeks. Cycle duration was measured by means of a foot switch attached to the right heel. To measure the moving distance, participants towed a distance meter. Stride length and cycle speed were measured using this device. Over the four-week period, cycle duration and stride length were stable, whereas cycle speed was the most variable parameter. Furthermore, in the results for each single day, the cycle duration was significantly more stable than the other parameters. These results suggest that, when we walk casually, cycle duration is the dominant factor, rather than stride length or walking speed.     

Prototype awareness enhancing and monitoring device for trichotillomania

Trichotillomania is an impairing condition that involves repetitive hair pulling. Habit reversal therapy is helpful for many persons with this disorder. Unfortunately, habit reversal therapy is not helpful for everyone and maintenance of gains is often problematic. Successful habit reversal therapy requires the individual to be aware of hair pulling and handling. Unfortunately, most people with trichotillomania report that much of their plucking occurs outside of awareness. Monitoring of trichotillomania behaviors is also problematic. The present project involved a pilot study of a prototype awareness enhancing and monitoring device aimed at increasing the effectiveness of habit reversal therapy. The device included a watch, bracelet, magnetic necklace, and a pager that was hard-wired for remote activation of a vibrating alert when hair pulling behaviors occurred. Following structured diagnostic assessment, three female participants were randomly assigned to be initially observed for varied lengths of time without the device followed by observation with the device in place. The results indicated a marked reduction in trichotillomania behaviors when the device was in place. Semi-structured interviews revealed that the device was very effective in enhancing awareness and monitoring of trichotillomania related behaviors and enthusiastic acceptance of the device was provided by all participants.     

The sausage machine: A new two-stage parsing model

It is proposed that the human sentence parsing device assigns phrase structure to word strings in two steps. The first stage parser assigns lexical and phrasal nodes to substrings of roughly six words. The second stage parser then adds higher nodes to link these phrasal packages together into a complete phrase marker.This model of the parser is compared with ATN models, and with the two-stage models of Kimball (1973) and Fodor, Bever and Garrett (1974). Our assumption that the units which are shunted from the first stage to the second stage are defined by their length, rather than by their syntactic type, explains the effects of constituent length on perceptual complexity in center embedded sentences and in sentences of the kind that fall under Kimball's principle of Right Association. The particular division of labor between the two parsing units allows us to explain, without appeal to any ad hoc parsing strategies, why the parser makes certain ‘shortsighted’ errors even though, in general, it is able to make intelligent use of all the information that is available to it.     

Internal consistency and reliability of alternate short forms of the college women's assertion sample: Clinical and research implications

Assertive behavior is most often assessed with self-report or role-play measures. The latter modality is preferred because it provides for the sampling of the structure of behavior and for the consideration of the situational context. MacDonald (1978) has developed such an assessment device but it is limited by the length of time for administration and scoring. Two studies were conducted to reconstruct reliable alternate short forms. The first study describes the selection of items and demonstrates the internal consistency of the alternate forms. The second study demonstrates the alternate form and retest reliability and provides normative statistics. We conclude that reliable alternate short forms have been constructed to be used in research in clinical applications.This research was supported by the Marie Wilson Howells Fund.Alternate short forms of the CWAS may be obtained from the first author.     

Emergence of drawing devices for total and partial occlusion: a longitudinal study

The developmental emergence of two drawing devices was investigated in young children: the use of omission (ie not drawing any of a hidden object) to depict total occlusion and the use of hidden line elimination (HLE, ie deleting only that part of an object that is hidden from view) to depict partial occlusion in a three-dimensional scene. Three groups of school children (5, 6, and 7 years old) were tested individually with two tasks four times over a 2-year period. One task called for the omission device (to draw a cup with its handle not in view) and the other for the HLE device (to draw one ball behind and partially occluded by another). The stimuli in each task were presented in pairs, with one member of the pair showing the occluded scene and the other a canonical or not-occluded scene. Changes in the strategies used by the children to indicate the visual differences within the pairs were recorded over the four testing sessions. Children were found to use the omission device more readily with the cup task than the HLE device with the ball task. There was an age-related trend in every task in the use of the drawing device appropriate to that task. For those who did not use the drawing device appropriate for a perspective drawing, there was a tendency for each age group to favour a particular strategy for representation. The advantage of using a longitudinal design to chart the developmental trend of the emergence of these two drawing devices is discussed.     

Liquid level detector with automatic refill and depletion indicator

An electromechanical device is described that provides the means for measuring the amount of water consumption from a storage device and for an automatic refill system. The instrument uses three sensing electrodes located in the storage bottle to drive a solid-state Darlington circuit, which, in conjunction with two liquid solenoid valves, controls the operation of the system.     

Involuntary Rotations of a Steering Device Induced by Voluntary Rotations of the Head and Maintained Eccentric Head Positions

In a series of 4 experiments, the authors examined involuntary rotations of a steering device (handlebar or wheel) that were associated with periodic head rotations and eccentric head positions. Periodic head rotations resulted in isodirectional involuntary rotations of a horizontally arranged steering device of very small amplitude. When the orientation of a steering wheel was changed to vertical and to a backward tilt, the involuntary rotations were in the opposite direction. That pattern of results is consistent with the assumption that small movements of the shoulder girdle, which are associated with head turns and which cannot be prevented by mechanical immobilization of the shoulder, are propagated to the wheel, but is not consistent with previous suggestions that involuntary rotations of a steering device can result from the action of the tonic neck reflex. Effects that correspond to the pattern of the tonic neck reflex were found only when a spring-centered handlebar was held in an eccentric position; maintenance of the eccentric position was facilitated when the participant's head was turned in the opposite direction. The findings strongly suggest that head movements can result in involuntary movements of a steering device via different mechanisms.     

Involuntary Rotations of a Steering Device Induced by Voluntary Rotations of the Head and Maintained Eccentric Head Positions

In a series of 4 experiments, the authors examined involuntary rotations of a steering device (handlebar or wheel) that were associated with periodic head rotations and eccentric head positions. Periodic head rotations resulted in isodirectional involuntary rotations of a horizontally arranged steering device of very small amplitude. When the orientation of a steering wheel was changed to vertical and to a backward tilt, the involuntary rotations were in the opposite direction. That pattern of results is consistent with the assumption that small movements of the shoulder girdle, which are associated with head turns and which cannot be prevented by mechanical immobilization of the shoulder, are propagated to the wheel, but is not consistent with previous suggestions that involuntary rotations of a steering device can result from the action of the tonic neck reflex. Effects that correspond to the pattern of the tonic neck reflex were found only when a spring-centered handlebar was held in an eccentric position; maintenance of the eccentric position was facilitated when the participant's head was turned in the opposite direction. The findings strongly suggest that head movements can result in involuntary movements of a steering device via different mechanisms.     

Semantics,experience and time

The computational hypothesis, with its inherent representationalism, and the dynamical hypothesis, with its apparent absence of representations and its commitment to continuous time, stand at an impasse. It is unclear how the dynamical stance can handle representational thought, or how computationalism can deal effectively with a tightly coupled, reciprocally causative agent–environment system in continuous transformation. Underlying this dilemma is the complex relation of mind to time, a relation encoded in the word experience. We must ask if any hypothesis describes a ‘device’ capable of experience? Yet what is an intelligence and its thought without experience? Is a computational device, whether supporting a symbolic processor or connectionist net, intrinsically condemned to a zero degree of experience? What is required of a dynamical device? It is argued here that ‘semantic’ intelligence and thought rests upon experience, fundamentally upon the invariance laws defined over time within conscious perception. The structure of experience is intrinsically unavailable to the computational device, limiting it to a ‘syntactic’ intelligence. An alternative conception of a device is offered, based on Bergson conjoined with Gibson, which supports the qualitative and structural aspects of experience and the semantic. It frames a dynamical model of perception and memory in which invariance laws are intrinsic, creates a deeper notion of situatedness, and supports a concept of semantically based, representative thought founded upon perception.     

The time-based word length effect and stimulus set specificity

The word length effect is the finding that short items are remembered better than long items on immediate serial recall tests. The time-based word length effect refers to this finding when the lists comprise items that vary only in pronunciation time. Three experiments compared recall of three different sets of disyllabic words that differed systematically only in spoken duration. One set showed a word length effect, one set showed no effect of word length, and the third showed a reverse word length effect, with long words recalled better than short. A new fourth set of words was created, and it also failed to yield a time-based word length effect. Because all four experiments used the same methodology and varied only the stimulus sets, it is argued that the time-based word length effect is not robust and as such poses problems for models based on the phonological loop.     

An unobtrusive measurement method of the horizontal gaze angle

A horizontal gaze angle measurement device is introduced. By combining a photoelectric viewing device to measure the horizontal eye angle with a similar head angle measurement device, it is possible to measure the horizontal gaze angle without using a headrest. After discussion of circuit diagrams and measurement principles, it is shown that the measurements made with the device yield a reasonable precision. The mean absolute measurement error is below 1°. This inexpensive and unobtrusive device covers a visual field of about 20° and can be used in parallel with many tasks. Further, data on the successful application of the device in a driving simulation setting are discussed.     

Length effect in reading and lexical decision: evidence from skilled readers and a developmental dyslexic participant

A number of experimental data have shown that naming latency increases with length for pseudo-words but not for frequent real words. Different interpretations have been proposed by current models of reading to account for such a length effect. The aim of the present study was to assess the impact of lexicality on length effect in both the reading and lexical decision tasks. For this purpose, skilled readers were asked to either name or make a lexical decision on words and pseudo-words differing in length from one to three syllables. Skilled readers' results show that length effect is modulated by lexicality in the reading task but no length effect was found in the lexical decision task. The tasks were further proposed to a well-compensated dyslexic participant who exhibited a visual attentional disorder in the absence of any associated phonological problems. A length effect on RTs was found for both words and pseudo-words in lexical decision but naming latencies were affected by length for the pseudo-words only. The present results largely conform to the predictions of the ACV98 model of reading. They are not compatible with the PDP models of reading and can only be partially accounted for by dual route models.     

Electronics for generating simultaneous random-dot cyclopean and monocular stimuli

We present a design for a versatile electronic device that produces simultaneous dynamic cyclopean (disparity) and monocular visual stimuli on standard monitors. These stimuli consist of dynamic random-dot cinematograms with the cyclopean and monocular components under real-time simultaneous but independent control. For example, one possible stimulus consists of a horizontal sinusoidal disparity grating moving upward in the frontal plane, made from randomdot fields that move to the right at an arbitrary speed. The device can be controlled by any microcomputer with serial input/output capability.     

The Validity of the Employment Interview: A Meta-Analysis

The interview is the most widely used personnel selection method, but has revealed low reliability and validity compared with other selection methods (Mayfield 1964; Ulrich and Trumbo 1965; Schmitt 1976; Arvey 1979). Thirty-one studies on the validity of the interview were meta-analyzed. The result was an average validity coefficient of .27. The estimated true validity of the interview was calculated to be .38. These values indicated that the interview has moderate validity as a personnel selection device. Six characteristics of the interview were also examined in relation to the validity of the interview: structure of the interview; number of interviewers; length of the interview; gender of the applicant pool; blue-collar/white-collar jobs; and use of college students versus job applicants. The six study characteristics accounted for 30.9% of the variance in the validity of the interview. Structure of the interview appeared to be the only characteristic that moderated the validity of the interview. The relationship of this study to other meta-analyses of the employment interview is discussed.