Classroom experiments on the effects of different noise sources and sound levels on long‐term recall and recognition in children

A total of 1358 children aged 12–14 years participated in ten noise experiments in their ordinary classrooms and were tested for recall and recognition of a text exactly one week later. Single and combined noise sources were presented for 15 min at 66 dBA L_eq (equivalent noise level). Single source presentations of aircraft and road traffic noise were also presented at 55 dBA L_eq. Data were analysed between subjects since the first within‐subjects analysis revealed a noise after‐effect or a asymmetric transfer effect. Overall, there was a strong noise effect on recall, and a smaller, but significant effect on recognition. In the single‐source studies, aircraft and road traffic noise impaired recall at both noise levels. Train noise and verbal noise did not affect recognition or recall. Some of the pairwise combinations of aircraft noise with train or road traffic, with one or the other as the dominant source, interfered with recall and recognition. Item difficulty, item position and ability did not interact with the noise effect. Arousal, distraction, perceived effort, and perceived difficulty in reading and learning did not mediate the effects on recall and recognition. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Factors Affecting Universal Precautions Compliance

This study characterizes levels of self-reported compliance with Universal Precautions (UP) among health care workers (HCWs) at risk of bloodborne exposure. A convenience survey was conducted of 1135 health care workers, expected to be at high risk for transmission of bloodborne pathogens. Using a cross-sectional design and a theoretical model by Gershon et al. (1995) data were analyzed with logistic regression. Factors associated with at least one of the two measures of HCW compliance with UP included longer tenure in one's job, increased knowledge of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) transmission, a conservative attitude toward risky behaviors, a perception of a strong organizational safety climate, and having had some training in the use of personal protective equipment. Knowledge of factors associated with compliance helps to explain why health care workers sometimes exhibit poor compliance despite the real occupational hazard posed by exposure to bloodborne pathogens.     

The Duty to Take Rescue Precautions

There is much philosophical literature on the duty to rescue. Individuals who encounter and could save, at relatively little cost to themselves, a person at risk of losing life or limb are morally obligated to do so. Yet little has been said about the other side of the issue. There are cases in which the need for rescue could have been reasonably avoided by the rescuee. We argue for a duty to take rescue precautions, providing an account of the circumstances in which it arises. This novel duty has important implications for public policy. We apply it to the situation of some of the uninsured in the United States. Given the US clinician's duty to provide emergency care to all people regardless of ability to pay, some of the uninsured have a moral duty to purchase health insurance. We defend the duty against objections, including the possibility that a right to rescue can be waived, thus undermining a duty to take rescue precautions, that the duty of many professionals is voluntarily incurred, and that a distinction between actively assumed and passively assumed risks matters morally.     

Further experiments on probability-matching in the pigeon

In a discrete-trials, two-key choice situation, probability-learning by pigeons was studied under a variety of training conditions. Matching was found in simultaneous and in successive problems, but a spatial problem produced only maximizing. In the simultaneous problem, noncorrection produced maximizing, while correction produced matching. Guidance produced maximizing when the animals were required to earn each opportunity for choice by pecking a center key on FR-5, but matching when the center key was not used. In a discrete-trials one-key situation, with latency as the measure, frequency and probability of reinforcement were varied independently. Differences in probability produced differences in latency of response, but differences in frequency did not.     

Methodological considerations in experiments on imagery acuity

We examine the possible reasons why the results of our recent study on imagery acuity differed from those of an attempted replication by Intons-Peterson and White. Comparison of the two studies suggests that the differences in results are likely to be due to differences in procedures for giving imagery instructions and measuring the fields of resolution, and not to the presence or absence of experimenter bias. Accordingly, we discuss the importance of using skilled and practiced experimenters when conducting imagery acuity experiments. In addition, we address issues raised by Banks concerning the identification of particular levels of functional equivalence in imagery and perception.     

Programme for experiments on thinking

In remembering, items are used in the form in which they are alleged to have been perceived at some time in the past. In thinking, however, evidence is given and the essential character of the process is to move beyond this evidence, but in line with it, to something for which so far, no exact or complete perceptual basis is claimed.

From an experimental point of view the best approach is to consider thinking as a high level skill, and to design experiments in the light of what has been discovered during recent years about the learning, practice and achievements of skill on a psycho-motor level.

When this is done, it turns out that the thinking process can usefully be considered as one in which gaps are filled up in accord with specific evidence provided. The fundamental gap-filling processes are either of interpolation or of extrapolation.

In the present paper the methodology proposed is developed and illustrated in a preliminary manner.     

Further experiments on movement masking

Voluntary attention to one of two static objects in the peripheral field of one eye makes this object more liable to masking by a moving object in the corresponding area of the field of the other eye (Experiment 1).

Positive after images (and probably negative after images) are subject to (binocular) movement masking (Experiment 2).

Movement masking can occur in the field of either eye, but with the displays so far tried the inhibitory influence of a moving object is less in the field of the eye to which it is shown than in the field of the other eye (Experiment 3).     

重视非抗心律失常药物的致心律失常作用

抗心律失常药物的致心律失常作用近年来已得到心血管科医生的广泛关注,但在临床实践中观察,对于一些非抗心律失常药,如抗生素、精神类药物等,在发挥他们相应的药理效应同时,可引起心动过缓、心动过速、传导阻滞,甚至致命性心律失常,而其致心律失常效应往往没有引起关注,强化非心脏药物致心律失常作用的意识,了解其可能的机制及促发因素都是必要的.     

重视非抗心律失常药物的致心律失常作用

抗心律失常药物的致心律失常作用近年来已得到心血管科医生的广泛关注,但在临床实践中观察,对于一些非抗心律失常药,如抗生素、精神类药物等,在发挥他们相应的药理效应同时,可引起心动过缓、心动过速、传导阻滞,甚至致命性心律失常,而其致心律失常效应往往没有引起关注,强化非心脏药物致心律失常作用的意识,了解其可能的机制及促发因素都是必要的。     

Some experiments on figural effects in binocular rivalry

The four experiments in this paper were designed to investigate two questions. First, does a stimulus which is dominant in rivalry tend to make nearby stimuli seen by the same eye dominant also? The results suggest that it does not. Second, under what conditions do nearby stimuli, rivalling with opponents of equal strength, rival synchronously? The experiments show that con-tour-segments belonging to the same line, even when seen by different eyes, rival synchronously. Mere contiguity, however, does not lead to synchrony.     

Influences of current mood and noise sensitivity on judgments of noise annoyance

Noise annoyance is one of the most studied reactions to auditory events. Previous research has demonstrated that annoyance reactions may be mediated by individual characteristics such as personality, attitudes, and noise sensitivity (traits). Transient temporary states such as an individual's current mood have been studied to a lesser extent. The author studied annoyance reactions to an everyday noise in participants who either were slightly annoyed or in a neutral affective state. The results showed that current mood had an overall effect on judgments of annoyance and on a participant's preference for sound. In addition, a participant's current mood interacted with noise sensitivity. These results indicate that both individual noise sensitivity (traits) and transient moods (states) are important for human auditory perception and evaluation.     

Timing in choice experiments

In Experiment 1, pigeons chose between variable- and fixed-interval schedules. The timer for 1 schedule was reset by a reinforcement on that schedule or on either schedule. In both cases, the pigeons timed reinforcement on each schedule from trial onset. The data further suggest that their behavior reflects 2 independent processes: 1 deciding when a response should be emitted and responsible for the timing of the overall activity, and the other determining what this response should be and responsible for the allocation of behavior between the 2 response keys. Results from Experiment 2, which studied choice between 2 fixed-interval schedules, support those 2 conclusions. These results have implications for the study of operant choice in general.     

Connection experiments in neurobiology

Accounts of causal explanation are standard in philosophy of science. Less common are accounts of experimentation to investigate causal relations: detailed discussions of the specific kinds of experiments scientists design and run. Silva, Landreth, and Bickle’s (SLB) (Engineering the next revolution in neuroscience: the new science of experiment planning, Oxford University Press, New York, 2014) account of “connection experiments” derives directly from landmark experiments in “molecular and cellular cognition.” We start with its key components, and then using a detailed case study from recent social neuroscience we emphasize and extend three features of SLB’s account: (1) a division of distinct types of connection experiments, each providing a different type of evidence for a hypothesized causal relationship; (2) the typically downward-looking nature (in the sense of componentry) of the experimental search for mediating causes in mainstream neurobiology; and most importantly, (3) the centrality of multiple-experiment research programs, with each experiment designed such that if successful its results can be integrated with the others, toward the goal of confirming multiple-phenomena causal pathways. Our extension of SLB’s account complements existing philosophical work on experimentation in neurobiology.     

Effects of glide slope,noise intensity,and noise duration on the extrapolation of FM glides through noise

Listeners are quite adept at maintaining integrated perceptual events in environments that are frequently noisy. Three experiments were conducted to assess the mechanisms by which listeners maintain continuity for upward sinusoidal glides that are interrupted by a period of broadband noise. The first two experiments used stimulus complexes consisting of three parts: prenoise glide, broadband noise interval, and postnoise glide. For a given prenoise glide and noise interval, the subject’s task was to adjust the onset frequency of a same-slope postnoise glide so that, together with the prenoise glide and noise, the complex sounded as “smooth and continuous as possible.” The slope of the glides (1.67, 3.33, 5, and 6.67 Bark/sec) as well as the duration (50, 200, and 350 msec) and relative level of the interrupting noise (0, ?6, and ?12 dB S/N) were varied. For all but the shallowest glides, subjects consistently adjusted the offset portion of the glide to frequencies lower than predicted by accurate interpolation of the prenoise portion. Curiously, for the shallowest glides, subjects consistently selected postnoise glide onset-frequency values higher than predicted by accurate extrapolation of the prenoise glide. There was no effect of noise level on subjects’ adjustments in the first two experiments. The third experiment used a signal detection task to measure the phenomenal experience of continuity through the noise. Frequency glides were either present or absent during the noise for stimuli like those used in the first two experiments as well as for stimuli that had no prenoise or postnoise glides. Subjects were more likely to report the presence of glides in the noise when none occurred (false positives) when noise was shorter or of greater relative level and when glides were present adjacent to the noise.