Additivity of components of prismatic adaptation

Ss pointed with each hand at a light or at the unseen toe and looked in the direction of the unseen toe before, during, and after training one arm to point to a visual target which was progressively displaced to one side by a prism. Results show that a proprioceptive change in the trained arm is a universal component of the adaptation. When a change in the eye-head system occurs, it and the proprioceptive change in the arm sum to the total adaptation and it is accompanied by a predictable degree of intermanual transfer of the adaptation, as a felt-position theory of adaptation would predict. However, when there is no change in the eye-head system, the proprioceptive shift is not always sufficient to account for the total adaptive shift.     

The Role of Body Weight,Waist-to-Hip Ratio,and Breast Size in Judgments of Female Attractiveness

It was demonstrated by Singh and Young (1995)that morphological features such as overall body fatdistribution measured by waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) andbreast size, influence judgments of femaleattractiveness, age, and desirability for relationships. Thepresent study was a replication and extension of thatresearch, using both male and female participants. Theresults supported the general findings of the original study, and as predicted, the effect of breastsize on attractiveness judgments depended on overallbody fat and WHR. The significance of interactionswithin the different morphological features whichdetermine female attractiveness were noted. Overall,there were surprisingly few sex differences. Results arediscussed in terms of the socio-biological theoriescurrently popular in the literature.     

Responses to Music in a Dining Area1

Berlyne's theory of aesthetic response was tested in an ecologically valid setting by playing music in a university cafeteria. Four music conditions were employed representing low, high, and moderate complexity new age music, and moderate complexity mechanical organ music. Response measures were how readily diners cited the music as an aspect of the environment which they might like to change, and how much they liked the music. Liking for the new age extracts was consistent with Berlyne's theory, although liking for the moderate complexity mechanical organ music indicated that factors other than complexity may also determine musical preference. As dislike became more extreme, music became more salient as a feature of the environment that subjects might like to change.     

Attentional tracking and inhibition of return in dynamic displays

Seven experiments were conducted to replicate, and extend, a finding by Tipper, Driver, and Weaver (1991). They reported evidence for dynamic, object-centered inhibition of return (IOR)—that is, coding of inhibition following a peripheral cue in coordinates that move with the previously cued object, providing a dynamic bias against reattending to that object. The present experiments used a variation of Posner and Cohen’s (1984) spatial cuing paradigm. Subjects responded manually (simple reaction time) to a luminance increment in one of two peripheral boxes, one of which had previously been cued (brightened). Experiments 1, 2, and 5 replicated the standard (environmental) IOR effect when the display was stationary. IOR was more marked for right-side targets than for left-side targets and tended to be affected by the compatibility between response hand and (cued) target position. However, when the boxes moved around the display center (Experiments 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7), contrary to Tipper et al., there was no evidence of dynamic, object-centered IOR. Rather, there was strong evidence of attentive tracking of whatever box happened to move from left to right, irrespective of the direction of its motion (clockwise or counterclockwise) and whether it was more likely to contain the target than the other (right-to-left moving) box. There was a tendency for left-to-right tracking to be more marked with right-hand responses, pointing to the existence of a dynamic stimulus-response compatibility effect. The implications of the present findings for the role of attentive tracking and IOR in dynamic scenes are discussed.