The need for closure and the spontaneous use of complex and simple cognitive structures

The authors performed 2 experiments that explored the causal role of need for closure in producing the use of simple structures. In particular, the authors gave the participants a cue that called for a complex or a simple solution on a cognitive complexity task. The authors created the participants' need for closure through the use of time pressure. The results of both experiments revealed that participants only generated complex solutions in the complex cue-no time pressure condition. The discussion is focused on the effects of need for closure in tasks calling for adaptive and spontaneous flexibility.     

The preference for symmetry in flower-naïve and not-so-naïve bumblebees

Truly flower-naïve bumblebees, with no prior rewarded experience for visits on any visual patterns outside the colony, were tested for their choice of bilaterally symmetric over asymmetric patterns in a radial-arm maze. No preference for symmetry was found. Prior training with rewarded black and white disks did, however, lead to a significant preference for symmetry. The preference was not specific to symmetry along the vertical axis: a preference for horizontal symmetry was found as well. The results challenge the notion that a preference for bilateral symmetry is unlearned. The preference for symmetry was the product of non-differential conditioning.     

Interval estimation for linear functions of medians in within-subjects and mixed designs

The currently available distribution-free confidence interval for a difference of medians in a within-subjects design requires an unrealistic assumption of identical distribution shapes. A confidence interval for a general linear function of medians is proposed for within-subjects designs that do not assume identical distribution shapes. The proposed method can be combined with a method for linear functions of independent medians to provide a confidence interval for a linear function of medians in mixed designs. Simulation results show that the proposed methods have good small-sample properties under a wide range of conditions. The proposed methods are illustrated with examples, and R functions that implement the new methods are provided.     

An alternating least squares algorithm for fitting the two- and three-way dedicom model and the idioscal model

The DEDICOM model is a model for representing asymmetric relations among a set of objects by means of a set of coordinates for the objects on a limited number of dimensions. The present paper offers an alternating least squares algorithm for fitting the DEDICOM model. The model can be generalized to represent any number of sets of relations among the same set of objects. An algorithm for fitting this three-way DEDICOM model is provided as well. Based on the algorithm for the three-way DEDICOM model an algorithm is developed for fitting the IDIOSCAL model in the least squares sense.The author is obliged to Jos ten Berge and Richard Harshman.     

Coloured overlays, text, and texture

In four studies children were asked to read aloud a passage of randomly ordered common words with and without a coloured sheet of plastic (overlay) placed upon the page. The children's rate of reading increased with the overlay, for some children more than for others. The children were also asked to undertake a test of texture segmentation in which targets consisting of a structured texture had to be distinguished from within a random background texture. The texture segmentation was improved when the overlay was used, again for some children more than for others. The improvement in texture segmentation was, in general, correlated with the improvement in rate of reading. Slower readers were generally poorer at texture segmentation. The implications for reading, for texture segmentation, and for clinical tests of vision are discussed.     

The making of the group therapist: The role of experiential learning

The purpose of this paper is to review the necessary components of a comprehensive group therapy program. The balancing between the didactic and the experiential portions, and an analysis of the selection criteria, along with the rationale for a particular sequencing of elements in the curriculum, are discussed. A line between supervision and personal therapy is drawn. The author describes the milieu necessary for a successful training program to evolve and makes suggestions for improvements. The various experiential aspects of training are presented and critically evaluated. The training situation is examined from the point of view of the faculty, the trainee and the patients involved. The author marshalls evidence indicating that personal group psychotherapy in a patient group is the preferred form for most trainees for the experiential part of the program. The paper concludes that the sharing and cohesiveness of training philosophies and methods by the faculty is a prerequisite to the success of any training program.     

A clinical interview for parents of high-risk infants: Concept and applications

The birth and hospitalization of a preterm infant are stressful and emotionally demanding experiences for parents. The Clinical Interview for Parents of High-Risk Infants (CLIP) is a semistruc tured clinical interview that may be used as a one-time assessment or as a cornerstone for ongoing psychosocial work with parents. The interview assesses early parental adaptation and alerts the clinician to areas of concern as identified by the parents. The interview enables parents to consolidate emotionally their experiences relative to the infant's high-risk status. The CLIP has utility both for planning psychosocial care in the intensive care nursery, and for discharge preparation. The rationale underlying the design of the CLIP is presented, the interview is described, and clinical applications are discussed.     

Cooperativity, priming, and 3-D surface detection from optic flow

Three experiments were conducted to determine whether the mechanisms responsible for the detection of three-dimensional (3-D) surfaces from optic flow operate in a cooperative manner. The first experiment was conducted to determine whether a hysteresis effect occurs for 3-D surface detection from optic flow. The results of the first experiment demonstrated a hysteresis effect with lower thresholds occurring for decreasing texture density than for increasing texture density. The second experiment used a priming methodology to determine whether this form of cooperativity was based on preactivation of shear detectors or preactivation of 2-D motion detectors. The results suggest that only shear detectors were primed. The third experiment utilized a similar methodology to determine whether a surface representation would produce a priming effect. We found no evidence that the priming effect found in the second experiment was the result of preactivation of a generic representation of the test stimuli. The results of the experiments, considered together, suggest priming of the mechanisms responsible for recovering shear.     

A cheap telemetric system for analyzing gait.

This study presents a technique for gait analysis, developed for the assessment of footfall timing and speed. The system in question consists of a transmitter, a receiver, a conductive walkway and a PC with the appropriate software.The technique was first tested for accuracy and repeatability with known signals, and was validated with a group of 20 healthy male adults (mean age = 34 years, S.D. = 5.5). The results thus obtained were similar to those reported in the literature for corresponding groups. Then, measurements on 10 children suffering from cerebral palsy (spastic hemiplegia) were performed. Gait analysis was carried out just before surgery and one year post-operatively. The results confirm the validity of the technique for measurements on orthopedic patients and its efficiency for functional evaluation of gait improvement after surgery.     

EDP (electronic data processing)-oriented special documentation in neurology--extension to a computer epicrisis

The contribution describes a final neurological documentation system for in-patients that permits the computerized print-out of an epicrisis. The computer automatically summarizes the elementary findings and presents them as a number of important neurological syndromes. The structure of the documentation and the experience gained in the course of many years of routine application are described. The system has proved to be basically sound under the conditions existing at a university hospital and a specialized hospital for psychiatry and neurology and has proved applicable for a large proportion of the patients without major restrictions.     

The life events scale for students: Validation for use with British samples

The life events scale for students is a checklist measure of life events intended for use with undergraduate populations. The report describes the validation of the scale for use with British undergraduates. Ratings for the events on the scale were obtained from a sample of 191 undergraduates. A second analysis using a sample of 40 undergraduates showed that scores on the scale were predictive of elevated levels of psychopathology. Furthermore, this relationship was largely independent of negative affectivity or repression-sensitization. The Life Events Scale for Students provides a suitable measure for use in stress research using undergraduate populations.     

The Need for Closure and the Spontaneous Use of Complex and Simple Cognitive Structures

Abstract

The authors performed 2 experiments that explored the causal role of need for closure in producing the use of simple structures. In particular, the authors gave the participants a cue that called for a complex or a simple solution on a cognitive complexity task. The authors created the participants' need for closure through the use of time pressure. The results of both experiments revealed that participants only generated complex solutions in the complex cue-no time pressure condition. The discussion is focused on the effects of need for closure in tasks calling for adaptive and spontaneous flexibility.     

Stability of memory for colour in context.

Memory for colours presented in isolation was compared with that for colours presented as part of a clip-art image or as part of a non-meaningful, Mondrian-like image. The area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic for deciding that two colours, presented at different delay intervals, were the same or different provided an index of memory for colour. The provision of a context reduced the decay of memory, regardless of whether the context was meaningful (clip-art images) or non-meaningful (Mondrian-like images). The result was seen as a generalisation of the auditory phenomenon of profile analysis, in which memory for the amplitude of a single component of a complex sound is more stable than that for the component in isolation.     

Aging is associated with increased Weber ratios for caffeine, but not for sucrose

To investigate whether age-associated changes in the human taste system are quality-specific, we compared young and elderly subjects' suprathreshold discrimination abilities for caffeine and sucrose. The method of constant stimuli was used to obtain just noticeable differences and Weber ratios. The elderly generated larger Weber ratios than did the young for both the medium and high concentrations of caffeine, but not for the low concentration. For example, a 74% increase in .005 M caffeine was required to obtain a perceptible difference for the elderly, whereas a 34% increase produced a perceptible difference for the young. The Weber ratios for sucrose did not differ for the two age groups. The results of this study indicate that age-associated changes in the taste system are quality-specific.     

The clinical pain acceptance Q-sort: a tool for assessment and facilitation of pain acceptance

The topic of pain acceptance can be clinically difficult to raise in a respectful way. This article introduces a method of managing the topic of pain acceptance in daily clinical practice: The clinical pain acceptance Q-sort. The Q-sort procedure comprises 13 small cards with printed statements concerning pain acceptance on the one side, score numbers on the other side. The procedure involves the patient handling and prioritizing the statements in a personally meaningful order. Both quantitative and qualitative use of the tool is possible. The method has a three-fold outcome: (1) topics of pain acceptance are presented in a multi-faceted way for the chronic pain patient, (2) an approximate assessment of the level of pain acceptance issues is offered to the clinician, and (3) good opportunities for a therapeutic discussion on pain acceptance are made available. The clinical pain acceptance Q-sort procedure may positively contribute to daily clinical work with pain acceptance in a straightforward way. The method provides options for assessment of pain acceptance, for better understanding of the patient, and for clinical training in psychological pain management.     

Combining Prototypes: A Selective Modification Model

We propose a model that accounts for how people construct prototypes for composite concepts out of prototypes for simple concepts. The first component of the model is a prototype representation for simple, noun concepts, such as fruit, which specifies: (1) the relevant attributes of the concepts, (2) the possible values of each attribute, (3) the salience of each value, and (4) the diagnosticity of each attribute. The second component of the model specifies procedures for modifying simple prototypes so that they represent new, composite concepts. The procedure for adjectival modification, as when red modifies fruit, consists of selecting the relevant attribute(s) in the noun concept (color), boosting the diagnosticity of that attribute, and increasing the salience of the value named by the adjective (red). The procedure for adverbial modification, as in very red fruit, consists of multiplication-by-o-scalar of the salience of the relevant value (red). The outcome of these procedures is a new prototype representation. The third component of the model is tversky's (1977) contrast rule for determining the similarity between a representation for a prototype and one for an instance. The model is shown to be consistent with previous findings about prototypes in general, as well as with specific findings about typicality judgments for adjective-noun conjunctions. Four new experiments provide further detailed support for the model.     

Clustering Qualitative Data Based on Binary Equivalence Relations: Neighborhood Search Heuristics for the Clique Partitioning Problem

The clique partitioning problem (CPP) requires the establishment of an equivalence relation for the vertices of a graph such that the sum of the edge costs associated with the relation is minimized. The CPP has important applications for the social sciences because it provides a framework for clustering objects measured on a collection of nominal or ordinal attributes. In such instances, the CPP incorporates edge costs obtained from an aggregation of binary equivalence relations among the attributes. We review existing theory and methods for the CPP and propose two versions of a new neighborhood search algorithm for efficient solution. The first version (NS-R) uses a relocation algorithm in the search for improved solutions, whereas the second (NS-TS) uses an embedded tabu search routine. The new algorithms are compared to simulated annealing (SA) and tabu search (TS) algorithms from the CPP literature. Although the heuristics yielded comparable results for some test problems, the neighborhood search algorithms generally yielded the best performances for large and difficult instances of the CPP.     

Examining change in maximal reliability for multiple‐component measuring instruments

A method for examining change in maximal reliability for pre‐specified sets of congeneric measures when developing a multi‐component instrument is outlined. The approach is applicable for purposes of estimation and testing of gain or loss in the maximal reliability coefficient as a consequence of adding or dropping one or more measures from a homogeneous composite with uncorrelated errors, as well as when one is concerned with optimal component choice for highest increase or correspondingly smallest drop in maximal reliability. The method is compared with a procedure for ascertaining change in unweighted sum score reliability, and implications for instrument construction and revision are discussed. The approach is illustrated with a numerical example.