The role of spatial frequency in the processing of hierarchically organized stimuli

Can spatial frequency differences between local and global forms account for differences in the way different levels of structure are analyzed? We examined this question by having subjects identify local or global forms of hierarchical stimuli that had beencontrast balanced. Contrast balancing eliminates low spatial frequencies, so that both local and global forms must be identified on the basis of high spatial frequency information. Response times (RTs) to global (but not local) forms were slowed for contrast-balanced stimuli, suggesting that low spatial frequencies mediate the global RT advantage typically found. In contrast, interference between local and global forms was little affected by contrast balancing or by shifts of attention between local and global forms, suggesting that it does not result from inhibitory interactions between spatial frequency channels or from temporal precedence of low versus high spatial frequency information. Finally, shifts of attention between local and global forms were also little affected by contrast balancing, suggesting that they were not based on spatial frequency.     

D. W. Winnicott,transitional objects and the creation of the divine

Religious expressions and religious behaviours are often considered to be mainly mental or spiritual phenomena, to a large degree divorced from or threatened by physical or material forms that may accompany their expression. This paper asks whether the diminution of the material or the condemnation of idols, icons and religious art loses sight of possible benefits that involvement with these forms of material divinity has for believers. Using the concept of transitional objects and transitional phenomena developed by D. W. Winnicott, a mid-twentieth-century psychoanalyst, I argue that idols, icons and religious art often represent transitional objects that form psychological bridges, intermediaries or anticipated “transitions” from humans to unseen divinities who require materialisation in some form to be maintained actively in the believer’s mind. In the process of creating or designing these material forms, the forms themselves often come to be considered “divine”. Illustrations are provided.     

An appraisal of the validity of the factor loadings employed in the construction of the primary social attitude scales

In this article the authors examine the effect of including alternate test forms in a factor matrix upon the validity of the resultant factor loadings, finding that in this particular instance the effect is negligible. Comparisons of the factor loadings derived from matrices in which only one of the alternate test forms is included with those in which both forms are included reveal practically no difference in the magnitude of either the original or rotated factor loadings, or in that of the computed communalities.     

Social control of form diversity and the emergence of new forms in children's blockbuilding

The blockbuilding behavior of three preschool girls was analyzed in terms of the forms manifest in any completed block construction, and found to contain few different forms in baseline sessions. Social reinforcement, given contingent on the production of any form not previously constructed within the current session (i.e., every first appearance of any form within a session was reinforced but no subsequent appearances of that form within that session were), increased the number of different forms built per sessions. Social reinforcement, given for all second and later appearances within the session, decreased the number of different forms built per session. Furthermore, it was found that new forms (forms never seen before in the child's total prior sequence of blockbuilding sessions) emerged at higher rates during periods of reinforcement of different forms (first appearances) than during periods of baseline or reinforcement of same forms (second and later appearances).     

A study of the effect of structural information and familiarity in form perception

Two experiments were carried out to investigate the influence of structural information and familiarity on the processing of visual forms. Pairs of “well” structured and nameable and “poorly” structured and non-nameable fragmented forms were employed as stimuli. The effects of structure and familiarity were assessed by manipulating the visual hemifield of presentation and the task. In Experiment 1 stimuli were judged as being either in the same orientation or mirror-reversed, a task that does not require high-level semantic information to be processed. Experiment 2 required physically identical forms to be matched, which may use either physical or name information. In Experiment 1 “same” judgements were equivalent for both types of stimuli, and “different' judgements were longer for the “poorly” structured (non-nameable) forms. In Experiment 2 there was little overall difference between “well” and “poorly” structured forms, though response times to “well” structured (nameable) forms were slowed for right-visual-field presentations. It is suggested that familiarity may not be sufficient to provide a perceptual advantage for nameable forms, as the advantage for nameable stimuli was confined to “same” judgements in Experiment 1 and response times were shorter for non-nameable stimuli in Experiment 2. Rather, performance depends upon factors such as the computation of global shape (due to structural properties of collinearity and closure) and on the use of different kinds or representations (physical versus name) in matching.     

On the processing of regular and irregular forms of verbs and nouns: evidence from neuropsychology

Following acquired brain damage, a native English speaking patient (AW) encountered problems accessing phonology in speech production, while her ability to access word meaning appeared to be intact. In a series of tasks, AW was presented either with a verb, and was asked to produce its past tense or past participle (walk --> "walked"), or with a noun, and was asked to produce its plural (glove --> "gloves"). A stark dissociation was found: while AW responded accurately with regular forms of verbs (walked) and nouns (gloves), performance was significantly less accurate with irregular forms (found; children). The appearance of a selective deficit for irregular forms in conditions of impaired lexical access is in line with dual-mechanism accounts, which proposes that irregular forms are specified in the lexicon whereas regular forms are computed via rule-based mechanisms. In contrast, AW's data are problematic for connectionist accounts that do not posit separate mechanisms for processing regular and irregular forms, including the connectionist model recently proposed by Joanisse and Seidenberg (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 96 (1999) 7592) which successfully simulated a variety of earlier neuropsychological findings. Analyses of AW's responses shed light on further details of the representation and processing of regular and irregular inflected forms.     

Influence of physical and semantic information in a categorisation task of fragmented forms.

Two experiments were carried out to investigate the influence of structural and semantic information in the categorisation of visual forms. In experiment 1 the stimuli were pairs of 'well structured' or 'poorly structured' fragmented forms differing in structural properties including convexity, collinearity, and closure of the elements, and in their 'nameability'. The influence of structural and semantic information was tested by means of a task involving the presentation to both visual hemifields separately of stimuli having within-category physical similarity. For well structured forms, subjects were asked to judge if two sequentially presented forms belonged to the same semantic category. For poorly structured forms, subjects were required to decide if two stimuli belonged to the same previously learnt category of forms. For the two types of stimuli, one category was composed of physically similar items, and the other was composed of physically dissimilar items. The results show a marked advantage for the category composed of physically similar forms when the stimuli are well structured but no differences between the two categories when the stimuli are poorly structured. This suggests a facilitation in the computation of global shape information for forms having collinear and closed elements. The only effect of semantic information was a tendency towards a right visual field advantage for same-category pairs of well structured forms. The pattern of results for well structured fragmented forms (experiment 1) and forms in which fragments had been joined in order to complete the contour (experiment 2) were similar, suggesting that structured incomplete forms can be processed in the same way as forms having a continuous contour. Hypotheses about the organisational processes of forms are proposed in the discussion.     

The disappearance of real and subjective contours

The disappearance characteristics of luminous designs were studied in three experiments. The stimuli were geometric forms set off by either real or subjective contours. Subjective-contour forms fragmented more often and in a manner qualitatively different from that of forms created with real contours. Previewing a real-contour form increased the subsequent fragmentation of that form, but no adaptation effects were noted among forms created with subjective contours, and there was no cross-contour adaptation. These results are interpreted as inconsistent with the position that subjective contours result from the partial activation of feature-analyzer mechanisms in the visual system.     

Interactive versus Ipsative Measurement of Career Interest

Measurement of interests via the self-report type of inventory takes either of two forms—the interactive or “free-response” variety, or the ipsative or “forced-choice” variety. There are many differences between the two forms but little empirical evidence concerning the validity of one as compared to the other. This study is an investigation of the difference in concurrent validity between an interactive and an ipsative form of a short career preference inventory for college males, using several of the scales on the Strong Vocational Interest Blank as criteria. The results indicate that despite the theoretical and practical differences in the two forms, neither holds any substantial advantage in statistical validity.     

Preschool children's comprehension and production of directive forms

Thirty preschool children, 10 each at the 3-,4-, and 5-year-old levels, participated in two structured tasks designed to assess both comprehension and production of a full range of directive forms. In contrast to previous reports, the results indicated no significant differences in directive comprehension or production as a function of age; children in all age groups demonstrated the ability to understand and verbally encode the intent of most types of directive forms. However, the two most implicit forms, Question Directives and Hints, were complied with significantly less frequently than the more explicit forms, and were uused less often in the production task. The present findings indicate the importance of analyzing directive forms along a continuum of explicitness rather than dichotomizing them as direct versus indirect. Finally, the results are interpreted as providing indirect support for the general notion that mastery of some implicit forms may be achieved later than the acquisition of more explicit forms.     

Forms of social awareness and helping

People encounter situations from different forms of awareness; that is, they can attend to different focal topics (e.g., self, other person, or other person's situation) from different perspectives (e.g., the self's viewpoint, the other person's viewpoint). Two studies assessed whether brief interactions would produce different forms of social awareness, whether the form of awareness would persist to a subsequent interaction, and whether it would influence helping in that encounter. Pedestrians on a city sidewalk were induced to become self-focused (experimenter took their picture), become other-focused (they took experimenter's picture), or empathically adopt the perspective of another person (they advised experimenter where to take a picture). In Study 1, subjects were interviewed after leaving the experimenter. First- and third-person pronoun use and self-ratings suggested that subjects had different forms of awareness. In Study 2, pedestrians participated in one of the same three interaction conditions or a control noninteraction condition and subsequently encountered a confederate in need of help. Subjects in the self-focused and empathic condition helped more than subjects in the other-focused or control condition. Results suggest that forms of awareness created in a brief interaction do persist to subsequent interactions and influence helping. Other variables may influence helping by altering forms of social awareness.     

Nationalism, Patriotism, and Cosmopolitanism in an Age of Globalization

A major issue in political philosophy is the extent to which one or another version of nationalism or, by contrast, cosmopolitanism, is morally justified. Nationalism, like cosmopolitanism, may be understood as a position on the status and responsibilities of nation states, but the terms may also be used to designate attitudes appropriate to those positions. One problem in political philosophy is to distinguish and appraise various forms of nationalism and cosmopolitanism; a related problem is how to understand the relation of patriotism to each. Nationalists may tend to be patriots, but need not be; patriots may tend to be nationalists, but need not be. Like nationalism, patriotism may also be considered in propositional forms or in related attitudinal forms; but unlike nationalism and cosmopolitanism, patriotism can exist in the form of an emotion: roughly, love of one’s country. This paper characterizes nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and patriotism in both forms and argues for a conception of patriotism on which it is both distinct from nationalism and compatible with certain kinds of cosmopolitanism. It also suggests that, in qualified forms, nationalism and cosmopolitanism may overlap in what they require of their proponents.     

A note on the parallel processing of single-featured forms

Single-featured forms (vertical and horizontal lines) were presented to Ss both successively and simultaneously, the same form being presented one, two, or four times. Hit rates (HRs)for both simultaneous and successive presentations of two and four forms exceed the single-form HR. The HR for four successively presented forms (1F4) exceeds the four simultaneous form (4F) HR. The HR increases in the simultaneous conditions were not found in a previous study using single-featured forms. The discrepant results of the two studies indicate that energy level of stimulus presentation and confusability among forms affect the magnitude of HR increase in the simultaneous conditions. The finding of a greater 1F4 HR than 4F agreed with previous findings, indicating that with single-featured stimulus forms, Ss do not process simultaneous displays in parallel.     

Implicit identification of irrelevant local objects interacts with global/local processing of hierarchical stimuli

This work aimed at studying interactions between automatic object identification and global/local perceptual processing. We designed a paradigm in which participants were presented with pairs of hierarchically organized items, composed of global forms made up of local forms. Both global and local forms could represent either objects or non-objects. Subjects were instructed to detect whether the two hierarchical items composing a pair were identical or different. In a dissimilar pair, items differed at one level (target level), the other level, made of similar forms on both sides, was irrelevant to perform the task. We hypothesized that the automatic identification of object could affect the global precedence principle defined by Navon. In agreement with our hypothesis, we found that when the irrelevant level was made of objects, the global precedence effect was reversed. In contrast, the irrelevant level had no effect when the target level included only objects, or when the irrelevant level was made of non-object, the global precedence principle was being preserved in these cases. This interaction is compatible with the existence of two distinct processes working in parallel, namely automatic identification and structural analysis, that could either interfere or act together for the detection of differences.     

Perception of rotated forms: a theory of information types

The present article proposes a theory of form perception in an attempt to understand puzzling problems in mental rotation and in perception of forms rotated in the frontal-parallel plane. According to the theory, it is critical to distinguish four types of information. They result from the orthogonal combination of two binary distinctions: information can be orientation-free or orientation-bound, elementary or conjunctive. The theory provides an explanation as to when and why mental rotation has to be performed. If two forms can be discriminated only on the basis of conjunctive orientation-bound information, mental rotation or some other functionally equivalent strategy is required. Mental rotation is unnecessary if the forms differ in either type of orientation-free information, provided that the difference is actually encoded as such. This explanation along with the proposed distinctions among the four types of information was supported by two mental rotation experiments and three visual search experiments.     

Mental retardation and perception of global motion

We have found that mildly mentally retarded adults are impaired in their perception of global stereoscopic forms (Fox & Oross, 1988) in ways that cannot be attributed to peripheral visual deficits or failures to comprehend. To assess the generality of that result, we measured the ability of mentally retarded adults to perceive kinematographic forms. Mentally retarded and nonretarded adults were presented with a two-choice, forced-choice detection task requiring the location of a target's spatial position. The discriminability of the forms was varied by systematic reductions in both element density and temporal correlation. We found that, relative to nonretarded adults, mentally retarded adults exhibited large qualitative deficits in their ability to discriminate these kinematographic forms when either density or correlation was reduced. After considering a number of alternative interpretations of these data based on factors such as peripheral visual impairment and a failure to attend, we could find none more compelling than a perceptual interpretation, which posits a deficit within the short-range motion system.     

An evaluation of the types of attention that maintain problem behavior

Although previous research indicates that certain types of attention (i.e., statements related to behavior, tickles) may be differentially reinforcing, only one or two forms of attention are typically provided contingent on problem behavior during the attention condition in experimental functional analyses. In the present investigation, various forms of attention were provided contingent on problem behavior to identify the influence of each form of attention. Results indicated that the attention forms affected problem behavior differently; these outcomes are discussed in terms of their implications for assessment and treatment.     

Locus of the effect of a distinguishing feature in a memory search task

Subjects memorized one to four 8- or 16-sided random forms in a memory search task. The positive set forms ("yes" response) differed in number of sides from the negative set forms ("no" response) for the different set (DS) group, but this distinguishing feature was not available to the same set (SS) group. Mean reaction time increased as a linear function of log(2) of the positive set size for both groups, but the increase was greater for the SS than the DS group, suggesting that memory search rather than an encoding stage of information processing was influenced by the availability of a distinguishing feature. In a transfer task which followed, new forms were introduced in which the positive and negative set forms differed in number of sides for both groups. In this task, the two groups did not differ in memory search, but in encoding. It was proposed that (a) availability of a distinguishing feature influences search time because the information specifying the number of sides of the set of memorized forms can be used to influence the speed with which individual forms are examined in memory; (b) previous experience with a distinguishing feature influences encoding because the DS group had learned to extract the information specifying the set of memorized forms (not the information specifying individual forms) more efficiently than the SS group.     

Revision of the sentence completion test for ego development

New forms of the Washington University Sentence Completion Test are presented, revised to be closely comparable for men and women. The two pages of each form are usable as alternate 18-item forms. All stems on the new forms have a manual derived for women, for men, or for both. Order of items on the new forms is designed to maximize cooperation and to insure independent answers on the several stems. Data taken from several diverse samples using the previous forms show the median item validity (correlation of item rating with total protocol rating) slightly higher for women (about .50) than for men (about .46). However, the difference is wholly accounted for by difference in the variance of the samples. First-person stems and impersonal ones are about equally valid for women, but impersonal ones appear to be more valid for men. More impersonal stems are included on the new forms.