A console for the interactive on-line administration of psychological tests

A computer controlled console for on-line psychological testing of psychiatric patients is described. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and the Kelly Role Construct Repertory Test are computer administered using three visual, one auditory, and two response modes. Test data are analyzed, interpreted, and incorporated into a program-written psychological report. Benefits and other applications from such a system are noted.     

An IBM XT-compatible,computer-based,slide-projector laboratory

In the present paper, we describe the software and hardware of an on-line, visual-memory laboratory running under Turbo Pascal on an IBM PC XT-compatible computer. The display system includes one Kodak random access projector and four standard Kodak carousel projectors, all equipped with tachistoscopic shutters and luminance-control devices. The response system consists of eight 16-key response boxes. The laboratory can be used for any experiment in which 35-mm slides are to be used as stimuli, and in which precise display times, stimulus luminances, and reaction times are required. The laboratory is particularly well suited to picture-perception and picture-memory experiments.     

The use of microprocessors in a timeshared computer facility for research,development, and teaching

The use of microprocessors in a timeshared computer facility at the Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh, is described for applications in research, development, and teaching. Modes of usage are described, as are the advantages of microprocessor interfaces for on-line experimentation.     

A new approach to on-line,run-time program logic and error debugging using hardware implementation

What is believed to be a somewhat different approach to rapid program debugging has been devised in which: (1) execution of the programmer’s logical thinking is automatically debugged by the computer at run time and (2) status errors of any type may be fed back into the computer, which subsequently outputs the immediate steps leading to that error. Debugging is carried out by the computer on an instruction-by-instruction basis, on-line, with all or selected interrupts serviced. A hardware-software implementation package for the PDP-8 is described, which could be adapted to other computers as well.     

A microcomputer-based tracking task for examination of the spatial and temporal organization of perceptual motor skill

A microcomputer-based tracking task is described in detail. The program that controls this task was written in Pascal and 6502 assembler language and was designed to run on an Apple IIe computer. The program was designed to allow the experimenter to vary such parameters as the velocity of the stimulus signal. In addition, several indicants of performance are recorded simultaneously and are averaged over selected time intervals during each trial. The paper also illustrates the applications of this particular computer program in the study of motor control and learning.     

A self-contained microcomputer system for psychological testing

This paper describes a newly available microcomputer system for the on-line administration, scoring, and interpretation of psychological tests. User response to the system is reported. Results of a validity study of the system’s Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory interpretative program are presented.     

All about EVE: The Early Vision Emulation software

EVE, theEarly VisionEmulation software, is a set of computer programs designed to compute models of early visual processing. EVE may be used with a wide variety of models concerning spatial detection and discrimination, motion analysis, and issues of spatial sampling. EVE is modular and flexible. It runs under the UNIX operating system, and is device-independent. We describe the implementation of the EVE software and discuss how it may be applied to several visual models.     

Generalizing the Apple-Psych system

Each upgrade of computer hardware usually requires the development of new programming systems for psychological experimentation. Developing new software means learning a new system and unlearning an old one. To minimize this problem, a set of subroutine calls, derived from the Apple Psych system, can be implemented with different dialects of Pascal on different microcomputers.     

The mini and micro as intelligent terminals

A PDP-8 has been linked by the telephone to an IBM 370 using the conventional OS/8 and CMS operating systems. Data acquired in on-line experiments are transferred, and analysis programs and batch jobs are submitted, directly from the PDP-8 disk to CMS. A subset of the system is used on an Intercept Jr. microcomputer when the PDP-8 is not free.     

Design decisions in a Pascal-based operant conditioning system

FREDL, a Pascal-based system for control of operant experiments, has been implemented on the IBM PC computer. In the foreground, recurring operations, such as decrementing counters that serve as local clocks, are controlled by a dictionary specifying automatic properties of user defined variables, and random logic is implemented by a user-written Pascal overlay. In the background, the remainder of the program controls communication with the user, output of data to disk, and production of cumulative records.     

A propositional analyst’s assistant

A system (PAN) that is designed to assist both the inexperienced and the experienced user in performing propositional analysis is described. The system is implemented in UCSD Pascal on the Apple II and Apple He microcomputers.     

A hierarchical LSI-11 system for real-time control,interevent time storage,and data analysis

A general-purpose laboratory computer system using two Digital Equipment Corporation LSI-11 s in a master-slave relationship is described. The implementation includes hardware to install an LSI-11 as a slave parallel processor, to provide special-purpose functions such as a real-time clock and a 4K FIFO interprocessor buffer, and to establish a bus that permits the use of inexpensive interfaces to experimental equipment. The slave processor generates a complete log of each input or output event. Data in the form of the time of each event are continuously passed through the FIFO to a foreground task in the main LSI-11, which in turn stores the raw data on a hard disk. A macro library allows the easy development of experimentcontrol programs. A library of FORTRAN routines provides a pointer-based conditional and iterative search facility that can sift out any specifiable event or set of events from the data records for subsequent analysis. This computer system provides the user with an inexpensive facility to run up to 32 simultaneous experiments with complete data logging in foreground while program development, analysis, and word processing are concurrently being done in background.     

Scoring and interpreting the MMPI with a desk-top calculator

The development of a hospital-based routine system for off-line scoring and interpreting the MMPI with a small desk-top computer (HP 9830) is described. Main features of the system include the use of optical mark reader (OMR) cards instead of ordinary answer sheets and a software monitoring system allowing operator-independent processing. In terms of flexibility, speed, and economy, the system compares favorably with other computer-based test systems.     

Fully automated psychiatric diagnosis: Some new possibilities

A fully automated psychiatric diagnostic system is outlined that would rely on picture-preference items rather than verbal ones and that would involve a tailored approach rather than conventional “brute-strength” testing. The conditions under which such a system can diagnose patients in a way that might arouse their interest and cooperation are discussed. These include a set of diagnostic categories (perhaps a subset from DSM-III), availability of a single-frame video disk unit allowing random access to each frame, a microprocessor system with a memory capacity of about 32,000 bytes, known base rates of the population of interest, and known probabilities of a particular response to the items for each diagnostic category. Some futuristic extensions of the proposed system are suggested.     

Personal computer software for teaching differential psychodiagnostics

The third edition of theDiagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 1980), outlines for the student what symptoms to consider when attempting to arrive at an accurate differential diagnosis of eight broad psychiatric categories. This paper describes a program developed to instruct a medical or graduate student in the science of such decision making.     

When do professional psychologists need professional programmers’ tools?

It is fairly straightforward to write a small program for a small computer, even using a relatively slow and unstructured language such as BASIC. However, current experiments in psychopharmacology require the system integration and data management services provided by large programs running on 256K microcomputers, and the efficient development of such programs requires the use of structured languages such as Pascal.     

Psychological androgyny and personality adjustment in college and psychiatric populations

In two separate studies, 106 female and 84 male undergraduates and 48 female and 48 male psychiatric inpatients were administered the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) and the Faschingbauer Abbreviated Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. The masculine, feminine, androgynous, and undifferentiated groups identified from the BSRI differed on a variety of personality scales in both normal and clinical populations. Androgynous females were significantly lower on the Depression (D) and Social Introversion (Si) scales than feminine females, and, in the college sample, were also lower on the Schizophrenia and Mania scales than masculine females. In the hospitalized male sample, this pattern was partially sustained, with androgynous and masculine subjects being significantly less deviant than feminine on the Si scale, and tending to score lower on the D scale. In the group of college males, androgynous males scored lower on the Si scale than feminine males. Hypotheses concerning the relationship of sex-role flexibility (androgyny) to mental health appear to be supported for females in both college and psychiatric populations by these results. These results also indicate that sex-role conformity may relate differently to personality development and psychological functioning for males and females.