MacLaboratory for psychology: General experimental psychology with Apple’s Macintosh

Every student at Drexel University is required, on admission, to purchase a Macintosh computer. Consequently, there is an understandable demand to effectively utilize this resource in the undergraduate curriculum. We have developed what amounts to a series of “take-home” programs that convert the Macintosh into a number of “pieces” of experimental psychology equipment. Providing each student with a personal psychology “MacLaboratory” has apparent pedagogical and practical benefits, from creative hands-on experience to ease of independent research. This paper summarizes details of the program to date, its development process, supporting materials, and our experience when every student has a personal computer.     

Accurate millisecond timing on Apple’s Macintosh using Drexel’s MilliTimer

Many of the timed functions that concern psychologists, such as perceptual presentations and reaction time, are sensitive to a maximum variability in display timing caused by screen-refresh characteristics. For the Apple Macintosh, the screen operating speed is 60 Hz, which translates to an average of 8.33-msec variability. For microcomputers other than the Macintosh, a variety of hardware and software modifications to generate millisecond timing have become standard (e.g., Reed, 1979). Other than Reed College’s (1985) implementation in Rascal, which requires the Rascal development language, there has been no method of which we were aware to synchronize experimental timing with display presentation on the Macintosh. This limitation in the usefulness of the Macintosh as an otherwise excellent research tool can be overcome using Drexel University’s MilliTimer. The assembler code which follows should be considered in the public domain and can be readily adapted to any of the Macintosh-based languages.     

Millisecond timing on the Apple Macintosh: Updating Drexel’s MilliTimer

In 1986, we published inBehavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers a small library of assembler code for the public domain that permitted accurate millisecond timing for Apple’s Macintosh computer. That version of MilliTimer used the Versatile Interface Adapter chip’s Timer 1 (VIA T1), which is part of the standard Macintosh hardware configuration. The VIA T1, however, is also used by the Sound Manager, and thus the use of sound and accurate millisecond timing were incompatible. We offer for the public domain a new version labeled MilliTimer 2.2, which permits psychologists and other researchers to use the full capabilities of the Macintosh. MilliTimer 2.2 is compatible with popular teaching, research, and clinical tools such as Hyper-Card and MacLaboratory. MilliTimer 2.2 employs the Macintosh Time Manager, which is a part of the Macintosh operating system and is supported by Apple for the 512KE, Plus, SE, and Macintosh II machines. MilliTimer 2.2 is hardware-independent and automatically self-corrects for other operating system activities that also use the Time Manager. The self-correcting function is limited, however, and can result in a nonaccumulating error averaging about ?3 msec. To preserve compatibility with earlier machines that do not contain the Time Manager, a simple mode parameter allows MilliTimer 2.2 to use the older, more accurate timing method.     

A conflict between van Inwagen’s metaontology and his ontology

Peter van Inwagen has in recent decades made significant and influential contributions to metaphysics. In his Material Beings he advanced a novel ontology according to which chairs and other medium-sized dry goods don’t really exist. He went on to make important contributions to metaontology. Parts of his Ontology, Identity, and Modality and Existence: Essays in Ontology defend a broadly Quinean conception of existence questions and how to address them. I argue that the metaontology articulated in those later works is in fact inconsistent with his defense of his ontology advanced in his earlier work.

     

An evaluation of the relationship between Gray’s revised RST and Eysenck’s PEN: Distinguishing BIS and FFFS in Carver and White’s BIS/BAS scales

Recent revisions of Gray’s reinforcement sensitivity theory (RST) have important implications for self-report measures of approach and avoidance behaviours and how Gray’s model relates to other personality models. In this paper, we examine the revised RST by comparing Carver and White’s (1994) original one-factor solution of the BIS scale with two alternative two-factor solutions separating BIS-Anxiety and FFFS-Fear. We also examine the relationships between Eysenck’s PEN and revised RST factors. Two hundred and twelve participants completed Carver and White’s BIS/BAS scales and Eysenck’s Personality Questionnaire-Revised. Confirmatory factor analyses of the original BIS scale showed that the hypothesized two-factor model of BIS-Anxiety and FFFS-Fear was the best fit to these data. Associations between the revised RST and Eysenck’s PEN were examined using path analysis. In line with theoretical predictions, Psychoticism was related to revised BIS-Anxiety and BAS, Neuroticism to revised BIS-Anxiety and FFFS-Fear, and extraversion to BAS and FFFS-Fear. Distinctions between BAS subscales and their associations to BIS, N and P were made in terms of past, present and future focus. Possible explanations for mixed findings in the literature and implications for future research are discussed.     

God meets Satan’s Apple: the paradox of creation

It is now the majority view amongst philosophers and theologians that any world could have been better. This places the choice of which world to create into an especially challenging class of decision problems: those that are discontinuous in the limit. I argue that combining some weak, plausible norms governing this type of problem with a creator who has the attributes of the god of classical theism results in a paradox: no world is possible. After exploring some ways out of the paradox, I conclude that the classical theist should accept Marilyn Adams’s view that no norms (of morality or of rationality) apply to gods.     

Teaching Research Methods to MFT Master’s Students: A Comparison between Scientist-Practitioner and Research-Informed Approaches

The current study compares a traditional “scientist-practitioner” and a “research-informed” approach utilizing a sample of students from a COAMFTE accredited master’s program. Students were enrolled in a research methods course with either a “scientist-practitioner” or a “research-informed” focus. Results from both self assessment of core competencies, as well as basic research knowledge, found that both course types led to significant improvements; however neither course emerged as more significant than the other. Implications for best practices in teaching research methods in MFT training programs are discussed.     

Retinal rivalry and Troxler’s effect: A correlation

Retinal rivalry and Troxler disappearances were measured in 30 Ss. Correlations suggesting a significant relationship between the two phenomena are reported. Tentative interpretation of the data are presented.     

Rawls’s Ideal Theory: A Clarification and Defense

Res Publica - In recent work in political philosophy there has been much discussion of two approaches to theorizing about justice that have come to be called ‘ideal theory’ and...     

Some differences between Kant’s and Husserl’s conceptions of transcendental philosophy

This article compares the differences between Kant’s and Husserl’s conceptions of the “transcendental.” It argues that, for Kant, the term “transcendental” stands for what is otherwise called “metaphysical,” i.e. non-empirical knowledge. As opposed to his predecessors, who had believed that such non-empirical knowledge was possible for meta-physical, i.e. transcendent objects, Kant’s contribution was to show how there can be non-empirical (a priori) knowledge not about transcendent objects, but about the necessary conditions for the experience of natural, non-transcendent objects. Hence the transcendental for Kant ends up connoting a philosophy that claims to show how subjective forms of intuition and thinking have objective validity for all objects as appearances. By contrast, Husserl’s phenomenological philosophy takes a different set of problems for its starting point. His quest is to avoid the uncertainty of empirical knowledge about all kinds of objects that present themselves to us as something other than, something transcendent to, consciousness. Transcendental or reliable knowledge is made possible through the phenomenological reduction that focuses strictly on consciousness as immediately self-given to itself—reflection upon “pure” consciousness. The contents of such consciousness are not the same for everyone and at every time, so they are not necessary and invariant in the way that Kant’s pure forms of subjectivity are. Since Husserl however also claims that the all objects, as intentional objects, are constituted in and for consciousness, an investigation into the structures of pure subjectivity can also be called “transcendental” in a further sense of showing the genesis of our knowledge of objects that are transcendent to consciousness. Moreover, since Husserl’s philosophical interest is precisely upon the structures of that consciousness, he also concentrates on necessary conditions for the constitution of these objects in his philosophical work. Hence, there ends up being a great deal of overlap between his own transcendental project and Kant’s in spite of the differences in what each of them means by the term “transcendental.”

Posterior parietal cortex: An interface between attention and learning?

The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) of rats has most recently been defined based on patterns of thalamic and cortical connectivity. The anatomical characteristics of this area suggest that it may be homologous to the PPC of primates and contribute to similar functions. This review summarizes evidence for and against a role for the rat PPC in attention and working memory and evaluates how the function of the rat PPC compares to that of primates on these dimensions. Theories of how the rat PPC contributes to behavior are presented, including the notion that PPC may serve as an interface between attention and learning. Finally, several avenues for future research are considered.     

Critical Poisson’s ratio between toughness and brittleness

We have a new understanding on a unified fracture criterion based on two kinds of strain energy density. A definite expression which is a function of Poisson’s ratio to describe a crucial parameter in the unified fracture criterion is derived. The critical value of Poisson’s ratio between brittle and ductile materials can be derived as 2/7 which is verified by experimental data. Besides, the effect of Poisson’s ratio on the fracture loci in stress spaces is studied using unified fracture criterion. It is found that the decrease in Poisson’s ratio increases the asymmetry of fracture loci between tensile stress states and compressive stress states in principal stress spaces and between Lode parameters are 1 and ?1 in deviatoric-stress spaces. In addition, stress triaxiality has a great effect on the fracture behaviour with different Poisson’s ratios.     

Frege’s Anti-Psychologism about Logic : the Relationship between Logic and Judgment

Philosophia - Frege is an anti-psychologist about logic who takes logic to be sharply distinguished from psychology. However, Frege also takes judgment, which seems to be a subject of psychology,...     

Pavlov’s position toward konorski and miller’s distinction between pavlovian and motor conditioning paradigms

Two Warsaw medical students, Jerzy Konorski and Stefan Miller, having read I. P. Pavlov’s works on conditional reflexes, informed him in a 1928 letter that they had discovered a new type of conditioning. A previously neutral stimulus preceded the passive lifting of a dog’s paw which then was followed by feeding; this stimulus then evoked the spontaneous raising of that paw. Pavlov responded informing them that their conditioning of motor responses expanded his theory of higher nervous activity, but that their conditioning paradigm—that they named CRII—did not differ fundamentally from the Pavlovian conditioning paradigm. The replication of the Warsaw experiment in Pavlov’s laboratory failed to provide unequivocal results. From 1931 to 1933, Konorski, working in Pavlov’s Leningrad laboratory, further explored the parameters of CRII. Pavlov insisted that the conditioning of motor movements differs from the conditioning of other sensory analyzers only in that, on the neural level, the motor analyzer is both afferent, that is, perceptive, and efferent, that is, responsive. Konorski was not convinced, and he subsequently maintained that the two conditioning paradigms were fundamentally different.     

Updating an object’s orientation and location during nonvisual navigation: A comparison between two processing modes

In the present study, we compared the effects of two processing modes on the updating of the location and orientation of a previously viewed object in space during a guided walk without vision. In Experiment 1, in order to measure the error for initial perception of object’s orientation, 12 subjects rotated a miniature model until it matched the memorized orientation of its counterpart object in space. In Experiment 2, they attempted either to keep track of the object continuously (in the object-centered [OC] task) or to estimate the object’s perspective only at the terminal vantage point given the trajectory they walked (in the trajectory-centered [TC] task). Subjects indicated the location of the object by facing it, and then rotated the model in order to indicate its orientation from the new vantage point. Results showed that, with respect to the TC mode, the OC mode induced a slowdown of the subjects’ self-paced locomotion velocity for both linear and angular movements, and a decrease of the latencies as well as smaller absolute errors for the orientation-of-the-object response. Mean signed errors on object’s orientation were equivalent for both processing modes, suggesting that the latter induced different allocations of processing resources on a common representation of space updated by “path integration.”     

Sense of identity in advanced Alzheimer’s dementia: A cognitive dissociation between sameness and selfhood?

We looked at whether sense of identity persists in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and if its profile remains the same between two examinations. A specifically designed protocol was administered to 16 AD patients in the mild to severe stages of dementia and to 16 matched healthy controls, both living in the same institution. We showed that sense of identity was broadly preserved in AD patients. The patterns of their responses were similar to those of controls, and remained consistent over a two-week period. However, some qualitative characteristics of sense of identity in AD patients differed significantly from those of controls, suggesting that AD patients may not be able to update their self-knowledge, probably because of their episodic memory deficit. These results are discussed in the light of both current models of the self and philosophical concepts such as sameness and selfhood.     

A vicious or auspicious cycle: The reciprocal relation between harsh parental discipline and children’s self-regulation

Children’s ability to exercise self-regulation is a key predictor of academic, behavioural, and life outcomes, but the developmental dynamics of children’s self-regulation are not adequately understood. We investigated how children’s self-regulation skills and harsh parental discipline reciprocally predict each other across 12,474 children at ages three, five, and seven in the U.K. (Millennium Cohort Study). Cross-lagged structural equation models indicated that high initial levels of harsh parental discipline predicted lower subsequent self-regulation, which then reciprocally predicted higher levels of harsh parental discipline. Conversely, high initial levels of child self-regulation predicted lower subsequent harsh parental discipline. Implications for policy and interventions are discussed.     

Images of Women’s Sexuality in Advertisements: A Content Analysis of Black- and White-Oriented Women’s and Men’s Magazines

This article represents an analysis of the sexual images of women in magazine advertisements. I examined advertisements in Black- and White-oriented, mens and womens magazines to compare the images of womens sexuality that are constructed for each specific audience. Over 600 images of women were analyzed based on seven dimensions, including function/role, relative function/authority, physical/body position, relative size/height, character traits, body view, and physical characteristics. The images of womens sexuality vary depending on the race of the intended audience and the race of the women in the advertisements. Advertisements for White audiences portray women in roles and with characteristics that suggest dependency and submissiveness, whereas advertisements for Black audiences portray women as independent and dominant. I also found that White women are objectified much more than Black women are.     

Dōgen’s Idea of Buddha-Nature: Dynamism and Non-Referentiality

Busshō, one of the central fascicles of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō, is dedicated to the problematic of Buddha-nature, the understanding of which in Dōgen’s thought is fairly different from previous Buddhist philosophy, but concordant with his views on reality, time and person. The article will present a close reading of several passages of the fascicle with comment in order to argue that Dōgen’s understanding of Buddha-nature is not something that entities have, but a mode of how they are, neither in itself nor for us, but in the total world-process. The relation between totality and particularity is not hierarchical, nor one of opposition, but conceived of a matter of perspective, which, as Dōgen shows, is both mediated and circumscribed by language. As a result, we can see that particularity of being is precisely what makes the totality of being accessible to every existent, not an obstacle to be overcome.