Orientation-invariant transfer of training in the identification of rotated natural objects

The effects of stimulus orientation on naming were examined in two experiments in which subjects identified line drawings of natural objects following practice with the objects at the same or different orientations. Half the rotated objects were viewed in the orientation that matched the earlier presentations, and half were viewed at an orientation that mismatched the earlier presentations. Systematic effects of orientation on naming time were found during the early presentations. These effects were reduced during later presentations, and the size of this reduction did not depend on the orientation in which the object had been seen originally. The results are consistent with a dual-systems model of object identification in which initially large effects of disorientation are the result of a normalization process such as mental rotation, and in which attenuation of the effects is due to a shift from the normalization system to a feature/part-based     

The role of observer attitudes in judgments of blame in cases of wife assault

This study examines the importance of observer characteristics in determining blame in cases of wife assault. Four independent variables (observer's attitudes toward sex roles, observer sex and age, and victim behavior) were assessed for their influence on the blaming judgments of 128 participants. Subjects completed a questionnaire that contained demographic items and six wife assault vignettes that varied in level of victim provocation (low or high). Questions about blame of the husband and wife followed each vignette. An attitudes toward women scale (AWS-B) was then administered. The main hypothesis, that subjects with traditional attitudes would blame the victim more and the perpetrator less for the assault than their egalitarian counterparts, was supported, as was the prediction of an interaction between provocation and AWS-B. The results are discussed in light of the role of observer attitudes in attribution models.     

Naming consistency in Alzheimer''s disease

Although lexical semantic deficits are postulated to play a prominent role in the anomia of Alzheimer's disease, it is unclear whether the primary disturbance is one of lexical access or one of lexical semantic loss. Response consistency on a naming task is one means of evaluating the underlying source of naming impairment. Access dysfunction usually implies variable word-finding difficulty, while a theory of lexical loss predicts that many word names would be consistently unavailable. Nineteen Alzheimer's disease patients were administered a visual confrontation naming task (the Boston Naming Test) on two occasions 6 months apart. Eighty percent of errors occurred consistently at both times; only 20% of errors occurred on only one occasion. Response consistency occurred significantly more often than expected under the assumption of no response consistency. Findings support the hypothesis that anomia in Alzheimer's disease is in part due to a loss of lexical semantic information.     

Role of spatial location in integration of pictorial information across saccades

Identification of a fixated object in a visual display is facilitated by integrating information from a preview of that object in the periphery with information extracted on the subsequent foveal fixation (Pollatsek, Rayner, & Collins, 1984). These experiments investigated the extent to which this integration is dependent on the spatial location of the information remaining constant. Two preview objects were presented in the periphery; Ss fixated that region and named a single target object that appeared in the same spatial location in which one of the two preview objects had been presented. Of primary interest was the facilitative effect when a preview object was identical to the target object as a function of whether they were in the same spatial location. The major finding was that although there was a small effect of switching, there was still a substantial preview benefit even when the location of the identical object switched. In addition, the switching effect did not interact with the level of identity between the preview and target. There was also a preview benefit in conditions in which there were no eye movements and the preview and target objects were at least 5 degrees apart. Thus, the data indicate that the process object identification is relatively insensitive to location information and that object information and location information are coded fairly independently.     

Acquisition of spatial knowledge under conditions of temporospatial discontinuity in young and elderly adults

Summary Young and elderly adults acquired route information from a sequence of slides depicting a walk through an actual environment. The accuracy of their distance knowledge after viewing the slides was compared for a normal presentation and a presentation with temporospatial discontinuity. No differences between age groups were noted under normal presentation conditions, but young adults were more accurate under conditions of temporospatial discontinuity. Results were interpreted in terms of an age-related decrement in the operational capacity of working memory. They were also viewed as supportive of a constructivist-representational theory of spatial learning.This research was conducted while the senior author served as Principal Investigator for National Institute on Aging Grant No. 1 ROI AG05169, Aging and Spatial Cognition, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA     

African American women's sexual satisfaction as a dimension of their sex roles

African American women's sexual satisfaction in heterosexual relationships was examined as a dimension of their sex roles. Responses to questions about sexual behaviors and interactions they preferred in primary relationships were selected from a larger study of a stratified random sample of 126 African American women. Three factors were identified: sexual responsiveness, sexual expression, and sexual interest and enthusiasm. The factors are described as profiles that may enhance or limit women's male-female sexual relationships. The implications of African American women's sexual satisfaction as an important dimension to understand in today's AIDS related sexual climate is discussed within a socio-cultural context.A modified version of this paper was presented at the American Anthropological Association, November 1987, Chicago, Illinois. The research was funded by The Center for Prevention and Control of Rape, NIMH Grant, R01 MH33603 and through a Research Scientist Career Development Award to the first author, K01 MH00269.     

Effects of foveal processing difficulty on the perceptual span in reading: implications for attention and eye movement control

Two experiments were conducted to examine the effects of foveal processing difficulty on the perceptual span in reading. Subjects read sentences while their eye movements were recorded. By changing the text contingent on the reader's current point of fixation, foveal processing difficulty and the availability of parafoveal word information were independently manipulated. In Experiment 1, foveal processing difficulty was manipulated by lexical frequency, and in Experiment 2 foveal difficulty was manipulated by syntactic complexity. In both experiments, less parafoveal information was acquired when processing in the fovea was difficult. We conclude that the perceptual span is variable and attentionally constrained. We also discuss the implications of the results for current models of the relation between covert visual-spatial attention and eye movement control in reading.     

Group Wrongs and Guilt Feelings

Can it ever be appropriate to feel guilt just because one's group has acted badly? Some say no, citing supposed features of guilt feelings as such. If one understands group action according to my plural subject account of groups, however, one can argue for the appropriateness of feeling guilt just because one's group has acted badly - a feeling that often occurs. In so arguing I sketch the plural subject account of groups, group intentions and group actions: for a group to intend (in the relevant sense) is for its members to be jointly committed to intend that such-and-such as a body. Individual group members need not be directly involved in the formation of the intention in order to participate in such a joint commitment. The core concept of joint commitment is in an important way holistic, not being reducible to a set of personal commitments over which each party holds sway. Parties to a group intention so understood can reasonably see the resulting action as "ours" as opposed to "theirs" and thus appropriately respond to the action's badness with a feeling of guilt, even when they themselves are morally innocent in the matter. I label the feeling in question a feeling of "membership guilt." A number of standard philosophical claims about the nature of guilt feelings are thrown into question by my argument.     

Object identification without foveal vision: Evidence from an artificial scotoma paradigm

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the degree to which foveal information is necessary for object identification. To explore this question, we used an artificial moving scotoma paradigm to eliminate a region of a currently viewed display in real time as a function of eye position. Subjects examined linear arrays of four line drawings of objects while their eye movements were recorded. Immediately following each array, a test probe was presented to test the degree to which the subject had identified those objects. Three conditions were compared, one in which a central foveal scotoma was created, one in which an extrafoveal scotoma was created, and a control condition in which the scotoma was absent. The main result was that identification accuracy was very good, but eye-movement behavior was disrupted when a foveal scotoma was present. These results suggest that foveal information is not necessary but is beneficial for perceptual encoding during object identification; the loss of foveal information can be overcome as long as compensatory extrafoveal processing is possible.