The detection of anisochrony in monaural and interaural sound sequences

Nakao and Axelrod (1976) and van Noorden (1975) showed that the threshold for discriminating an anisochronous duple rhythm (a series of clicks with a temporal offset on every other one) from an isochronous rhythm (no offset) is poorer when the clicks are presented alternately to the two ears than when they are presented to the same ears. Van Noorden reported that the difference between the thresholds in the alternating and nonalternating conditions varied with the tempo of the sequence. Nakao and Axelrod found invariance of this threshold difference with sequence speed. According to our quantification of temporal processing of interaural sequences, the latter result should be expected. We carried out five psychophysical experiments to establish interaural and monaural discrimination between isochronous and anisochronous rhythms. Across experiments, base time intervals of 60–720 msec were spanned. The main result was that we replicated the poorer discrimination for interaural sequences. This deterioration in discrimination was the same for all sequence speeds. It was also the case that the thresholds were almost constant up to a sound repetition rate of about 3 per second, but increased linearly with slower rates. This result supports evidence in the literature that temporal processing of sequences faster than about 3–4 sounds per second differs from temporal processing of slower sequences.     

The emergence of interest in the ethics of psychological research with humans

We describe the growth of interest in the ethics of research with human participants based on articles abstracted in Psychological Abstracts and PsycLIT. Interest was low and variable until 1974, after which there was a marked increase in the number of articles published. We explain this emergence of ethical interest in terms of the social climate of concern for human rights in the 1960s and 1970s, the 1973 revision of the American Psychological Association's ethical principles, and the development of federal regulation of research with human participants.     

Parent reports of child behavior problems: Bias in participation

This paper compares the characteristics of 274 children whose parents agreed to provide information about their children's functioning in research with children whose parents did not. Parents had provided permission for child participation in school-approved research. Measures included self-, peer, teacher, and parent ratings. Parents of minority children were less likely to participate than parents of nonminority children. Among nonminorities, children of parent participants were viewed as more socially skilled and liked by their peers; teachers rated them as having less attention problems, less depression, and better academic skills than children of nonparticipating parents. Among minorities, no differences emerged. Implications for research involving the use of parent ratings are discussed.Portions of this paper were presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Research in Child and Adolescent Psychopathology, Sarasota, Florida, February 1992. The authors appreciate the efforts of Shari Wasserstein in assisting with the organization of the data. The authors also appreciate the helpful comments of two anonymous reviewers.     

The Reliability and Validity of the ‘Rejection of Christianity Scale’ among Northern Irish Students

The present aim was to examine the reliability and validity of the ‘Rejection of Christianity Scale’ (Greer & Francis, 1992) among a sample of Northern Irish undergraduate students. A slightly modified version of the ‘Rejection of Christianity Scale’ was administered alongside questions of religiousness and practice. Among a sample of 217 Northern Irish undergraduate students, support was found for the reliability and unidimen‐sionality of the ‘Rejection of Christianity Scale’. The construct validity of the scale was demonstrated with males displaying more signs of rejecting Christianity than females. Furthermore, higher scores on the ‘Rejection of Christianity Scale’ were significantly associated with lower levels of self‐reported religiousness, and lower frequency of church attendance. Limitations of the present study are presented and a further possible modification of the ‘Rejection of Christianity Scale’ is presented.     

Maya Angelou's Inaugural Poem

Maya Angelou's performance of her poem On the Pulse of Morning at the inauguration of William Jefferson Clinton as 42nd President of the United States on January 20, 1993, was compared with other poetry and prose performances. Measurements of her pause frequency, pause location, pause duration, phrase length, speech rate, articulation rate, and percentage of pause time all uniquely characterized her performance. Printed versions of Angelou's inaugural poem were also analyzed. Inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, spacing, and line and stanza breaks, along with additions, omissions, and sequence changes of words and phrases, were found. The poem performed possesses a richness unpredictable from either the extant literature on poetry readings or from Angelou's own printed pages.     

Atypical development of language and social communication in toddlers with Williams syndrome

Williams syndrome (WS) is a genetic disorder which results in an uneven cognitive profile. Despite superior language compared to other syndromes in the phenotypic outcome, toddlers with WS are as delayed in their language onset and early linguistic development as are toddlers with other syndromes. The cause of this delay in WS is as yet unknown. In a series of experiments, we examined whether atypical socio‐interactive precursors to language could contribute to the explanation of the late language onset and atypical developmental pathways observed in WS. Experiment 1 showed that despite superficially good social skills, toddlers with WS were only proficient at dyadic interaction. They were impaired in triadic interaction, essential for the referential uses of language, and showed none of the correlations between socio‐interactive markers and language seen in the typical controls. Experiment 2 focused on the comprehension and production of referential pointing. Again, the WS group was impaired, despite vocabulary levels higher than those of typically developing controls. Finally, Experiment 3 examined fine motor skills. The WS lack of pointing could not be explained in terms of motor impairments, since the WS toddlers were proficient at fine motor control, such as the pincer grip. Overall, our data indicate that the early stages of WS language follow an atypical pathway. The findings challenge the frequent claims in the literature that individuals with Williams syndrome have preserved linguistic and social skills.     

Distinctions Among Stigmatized Groups1

This research investigated how individuals classify and distinguish among stigmatized groups. In Study 1, participants sorted 54 stigmas based on perceived similarity and then provided evaluations. Cluster analysis revealed 7 stigma clusters, including physical disability, mental disability, economically disadvantaged, social deviants, physical appearance, sexual identity, and racial identity. Multidimensional scaling showed that the stigmas differed on dimensions of social undesirability, controllability, and general pity. In Study 2, participants provided evaluation ratings of stigmas across 6 situations. Results confirmed the validity of the 7‐cluster solution.     

Sentence context modulates visual word recognition and translation in bilinguals

The influence of sentence context constraint on subsequent processing of concrete and abstract cognates and noncognates was tested in three experiments. Target words were preceded by a predictive, high constraint sentence context, by a congruent, low constraint sentence context, or were presented in isolation. Dutch-English bilinguals performed lexical decision in their second language (L2), or translated target words in forward (from L1 to L2) or in backward (from L2 to L1) direction. After reading a high constraint sentence context, cognate and concreteness effects disappeared in lexical decision and strongly decreased in both translation tasks. In contrast, low constraint sentences did not influence cognate and concreteness effects. These results suggest that semantically rich sentences modulate cross-language interaction during word recognition and word translation.