Vibrotactile frequency discrimination

Thresholds for vibrotactile discrimination of pulse interval were determined for pulse frequencies between 1 and 384 Hz. The results point to a temporal resolution significantly more accurate than that demonstrated in earlier studies. Although touch as a vibratory sensor is in general much inferior to audition, the present results show a striking resemblance to those obtained on auditory pitch. The neurophysiological implications for the tactile as well as for the auditory system are discussed.     

Relation of mobility-fixity to the interpretation of pictorial stimuli

A group of 61 students who had previously (in 1986) been classified by Hansson, Rydén, and Johnsson in terms of perceptual fixity-mobility using a "free" Rod-and-Frame Test, were investigated regarding their interpretations of a nonfigurative stimulus shown repetitively at short exposure-times, and their characterization of two pictures each portraying two soldiers in intensive interaction--one man apparently attacking the other in the first picture and apparently rescuing or taking care of the other man in the second. Mobile subjects on the free Rod-and-Frame Test reported a larger number of different interpretations of the nonfigurative stimulus and construed it more frequently in terms of human themes than did the fixed subjects; in rating the pictures of soldiers, they used more extreme and complex characteristics. It appeared that, when confronted with ambiguous stimuli, the mobile individual moves both "horizontally", as it were, along the surface of objective reality, and "vertically", from present to past realities, thus conjoining subjective-emotional and objective-analytic aspects of perception. This interpretation agrees with Werner's model of mobility-fixity which implies that the mobile individual operates on different developmental levels of perceptual functioning.     

Alcohol and unpleasant stimulation: subjective shock calibration and pain and discomfort perception

In an experiment 8 men participated in an alcohol and a sober condition in a rotated order. In both conditions subjects first calibrated a shock scale to a subjective criterion and then rated their subjective pain and total discomfort. Subjects calibrated the shock scale higher when intoxicated and rated the calibrated level equally painful in the sober and intoxicated conditions, but when intoxicated subjects actually rated the higher shock level as less uncomfortable. The shock scale was calibrated higher under intoxication not because subjects wanted to impress the experimenter but because less pain and discomfort was actually experienced.     

Ethical problems in register based medical research

The first main purpose of this paper is to identify and to distinguish between a number of problems and conflicts of interest in the area where medical personal registers are used in research, particularly when the registers are computerized. The second main purpose is to suggest and comment upon a method for solving or minimizing such conflicts of interest.     

Cross-cultural validity, reliability, and stimulus characteristics of the Lüscher Color Test

The Lüscher Color Test (LCT) was administered to 125 Canadian university students, 88 of whom were retested 21 days later. Sample and sex-specific color preferences were found as well as discrepancies between Lüscher's color-naming system and two widely used color-naming systems. Test-retest reliability estimates were low. It was concluded that the LCT suffers from major shortcomings and that research investigating the relationship between color preference and personality should follow alternate paths.     

The plausibility of the implausible: A critique of Snyder and Swann (1978)

Snyder and Swann (1978) advance an argument that individuals display a cognitive bias in testing hypotheses about the personal attributes of other people, i.e. they seek out information which is supportive of their hypothesis (hypothesis-confirming strategy). It is argued here that these authors confound the hypothesis a person might entertain (belief) with a hypothesis the person is asked to test (assigned task). The findings of two experimental studies in which task and belief were manipulated independently suggest that Snyder and Swann's (1978) results are due to the task manipulation and not to an hypothesis-confirming bias.     

Towards A Psychoanalytic Understanding Of War

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - Inspired by the Horneyan concept of a morality of evolution and applying the psychoanalytic method, I researched a body of scientific literature to...     

Fluency in L2: Read and Spontaneous Speech Pausing Patterns of Turkish,Swahili, Hausa and Arabic Speakers of English

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - Language learners’ actual speech performances constitute an essential aspect of studies on second language learning and teaching. Although there is...     

The Witness to Witness Program: Helping the Helpers in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic

The Witness to Witness Program (W2W), based on Weingarten’s witnessing model (2000, 2003, 2004), began in July 2018 and originally was established to support healthcare workers and attorneys (our partners) who were experiencing empathic distress working with people involved in various stages of the detention process. The W2W program evolved to offer four primary components: clinician listening sessions geared to deep understanding of the person’s story of their work and its challenges; an inventory of the person’s current internal and external resources both in the present and in the past; help with removal of barriers to those resources; and development of a personal toolkit to handle stress. Additional services available to partners and their organizations included psycho-educational webinars, facilitated peer support groups, and organizational consultations to foster trauma-sensitive and resilience-hardy work environments. In March, after lockdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic, W2W pivoted to focus on handouts and webinars addressing how to cope with distress and moral injury, maintaining resilience, coping with grief, and dealing with multiple losses caused by the pandemic. Disaster sparked collaboration and innovation. A train the trainer model was developed to reach more community health workers providing services to the Latinx community dealing with losses similar to those experienced by the clients they serve. W2W continues to create virtual communities of support. In doing so we practice doing reasonable hope together (Weingarten, Family Process, 2010, 49, 5).