Response tempo and separable--integral responding: evidence for an integral-to-separable processing sequence in visual perception

Three experiments were conducted to examine the relation between response tempo and separable-integral responding. A restricted classification paradigm, in which similarity-based (integral) and dimensionally based (separable) classifications were pitted against one another, was used with the dimensions of length and density (all experiments) and size and brightness (Experiment 3). The subjects were college students (Experiments 1 and 2) and kindergarten, second-, and fifth-grade children (Experiment 3). In all three experiments, rapid responding was associated with fewer dimensional and more similarity responses than was slow responding. This result held when response tempo was simply measured (Experiments 1 and 3) and when it was manipulated by the experimenter (Experiment 2). The results were interpreted to be consistent with models of dimensional processing in which holistic, integral processing precedes analytic dimensional processing.     

On the primacy of the brain

It is well established that emotion is a product of complex interactions among the biological subsystems of the organism. The human nervous system must play a fundamental role in organizing and controlling the manifestation of these interactions. Since emotional disturbance is one of the major phenomena underlying maladaptive behavior, a solid understanding of its nature and mechanisms is essential for enhancing therapeutic practices. Although an increasing number of scholars now advocate the notion of the dependence of emotion on antecedent cognitive processes (e.g., Lazarus, 1982, 1984), and the relevance of both central and peripheral processes of the nervous system to emotional behavior (e.g., Panksepp, 1988; Pribram, 1984), Zajonc (1984) views emotion as independent of cognitive processes. This paper provides a critical evaluation of the basis of Zajonc’s (1984) argument from a neurobiological and psychotherapeutic point of view.     

Making choice a routine part of mealtimes for persons with profound mental retardation

Despite increased recognition of the importance of providing routine choice opportunities for persons with severe handicaps, this population continues to experience a typical lack of such opportunities. We evaluated a program for increasing the amount of choices made during routine mealtimes by persons with profound mental retardation and minimal communication skills. The choice provision program, involving systematic presentation of alternative food and drink items in a step-wise fashion during the course of the meal, was implemented with three persons in a residential facility. Results indicated that after implementation of the choice program, all three participants made consistently more choices concerning the foods and beverages they consumed relative to baseline. The choice provision program was conducted without extending the amount of time typically allotted to mealtime within the residential setting. Results are discussed in regard to additional research needed to continue developing means of assisting persons with profound mental retardation to exert control over meaningful events in their lives.     

Reading with and without eye movements: reply to Just, Carpenter, and Woolley

Just, Carpenter, and Woolley propose that measures of single-word processing times, such as gaze durations during normal reading or durations of reader-controlled exposures, can be used both for developing theories of comprehension and for determining the course of new reading technologies. We argue that better understanding of comprehension processes does not necessarily follow from observed correlations between text variables and eye-fixation parameters. Further, recent rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) research suggests that eye fixation data obtained from studies of normal reading might have little practical value in optimizing the readability of RSVP displays and other means of text presentation.     

Chronic effects of electrical stimulation of muscle on the fractionated components of audio response time

Six male volunteer subjects underwent five weeks (15 sessions) of electrical stimulation (ES) of the triceps brachii muscle (medial head), participated in a pretest, and five weekly post-treatment performance tests of an elbow extension task. Response time (RSP) was electronically fractionated into the two components of reaction time (RT): premotor reaction time (PMT) and motor reaction time (MT): and movement time (MVT) for 45 degrees of elbow extension. Acceleration characteristics of the movement were quantified via a piezoelectric accelerometer mounted on a specially-built mechanism that allowed the desired motion in a transverse plane. Statistical analysis did not indicate significant treatment effects on the criterion measures, however, a significant linear trend for MT and significant linear and quadratic trends for MVT were indicated. Neuromuscular adaptation to the passage of electric current through nerve and muscle tissue was indicated by a significant quadratic trend and significant differences between all weekly accumulative (treatment) voltages. An unexpected significant negative correlation between PMT and MT was considered cause for further study. The particular technique of ES administration, although it produced consistant changes in RSP components (Ward and Grabiner 1981) was not as effective as methods described by other investigators for increased human performance.     

An Assessment of the Psychometric Adequacy of the British Adaptation of the Career Development Inventory

The concept of 'vocational maturity' is defined, and the development of methods for assessing it is briefly outlined. The adaptation of one such measure - Super's Career Development Inventory - is described, and some results are reported from a study designed to assess the psychometric adequacy of this adaptation. These showed the measure to be reliable enough for use with groups but not with individuals. Scores were found to be more highly related to concomitant variables than to direct measures of vocational maturity, though this may have been due to the poor quality of some of the latter. The convergent validity of the measure was supported, but the discriminant validity was not. The implications of these results for using the measure, and particularly the need for further development work, are briefly considered. It is suggested that such work will also need to address the utility of the construct itself for Britain in the 1980s.     

Effects of household sex composition on the salience of one's gender in the spontaneous self-concept

It was hypothesized that being a boy or a girl becomes more salient in a child's self-concept to the extent the other sex numerically predominates in the child's household. This prediction was based upon an information-processing, distinctiveness postulate that a person contemplating a complex stimulus (such as the self) selectively notices and encodes its more distinctive, information-rich aspects. The spontaneous self-concept elicited by nondirective “Tell us about yourself” interviews of 560 school children were scored for spontaneous mention of one's gender. As predicted, boys spontaneously mentioned their maleness more often when they came from households where females were in the majority; girls mentioned their femaleness more often when from households with male majorities; boys mentioned their maleness more often when from father-absent than from father-present homes. Incidental findings are that gender is more salient in the negation self-concept (“Tell us what you are not”) than in the affirmation self-concept (“Tell us about yourself”) especially for girls and that gender becomes increasingly salient as the child grows older.     

Central progesterone induces female sexual behavior in estrogen-primed intact males rats

Progesterone induced high levels of female lordotic behavior in 10 of 17 intact, estrogen-primed male rats when it was applied directly to the medial preoptic-anterior hypothalamic area. All 17 males previously had shown lordosis when the serotonergic antagonist methysergide was applied to the same central sites. Few males responded to systemic progesterone and none to intracralial cholesterol. Intradiencephalic Metycaine, a local anesthetic, induced lordosis in eight male that previously had responded to central progesterone. These data indicate that estrogen and progesterone act synergistically to induce lordosis in male rats when progesterone is administered directly to sensitive brain sites.     

Laterality differences and practice effects under central backward masking conditions

Two experiments were conducted to examine laterality differences and practice effects under various central backward masking conditions. Critical stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was determined for subjects on 3 consecutive days using single letters as target stimuli (TS) and a pattern masking stimulus (MS). There was a right visual field (RVF) advantage on Day 1 but no difference between the visual fields on following days. The decline in the RVF advantage appeared to be dependent upon prior experience with laterally located letters, to be independent of initial experience with a particular set of letters, and to be more pronounced for females than for males. In addition, large improvements in performance were found, particularly between the first and second testing sessions. These practice effects were discussed in terms of the possible development of strategies for enhancing TS features or attenuating MS features.