Visual Elaboration Scale as a measure of imagery

We studied the correlation of one measure of imagery ability, the Visual Elaboration Scale, with two others, absorption of image and effort required to form a mental image. Significant correlations were obtained between the Visual Elaboration Scale and the other scales, with the exception of Absorption for women.     

The association between intelligence level and brain volume measures: a negative finding

Ratings of pre-morbid intelligence level, derived from the hospital charts of 26 chronic schizophrenics, were correlated with the post-mortem brain volume measures of cortex, white matter, central grey matter, and ventricles. Contrary to hypothesis, no significant correlations were found.     

INDIVIDUAL AND SITUATIONAL CORRELATES OF WHISTLE-BLOWING

Although popular interest in whistle-blowing continues to increase, little is known about why some employees who observe wrongdoing report it, while others do not. In the present study, we analyze archival survey data from individuals who observed wrongdoing in any of 22 organizations. Results are generally consistent with predictions based on a model of whistle-blowing as a type of prosocial behavior. Whistle-blowing was more likely when observers of wrongdoing (1) held professional positions, (2) had more positive reactions to their work, (3) had longer service, (4) were recently recognized for good performance, (5) were male (though race was unrelated to whistle-blowing), (6) were members of larger work groups, and (7) were employed by organizations perceived by others to be responsive to complaints. Implications for research and practice are described.     

Sample size determinations for the two rater kappa statistic

This paper gives a method for determining a sample size that will achieve a prespecified bound on confidence interval width for the interrater agreement measure,. The same results can be used when a prespecified power is desired for testing hypotheses about the value of kappa. An example from the literature is used to illustrate the methods proposed here.     

Perceptions of speakers with minimal eye contact: Implications for stutterers

One hundred and thirty-three college students responded to percentage definitions of “good,” “minimal,” and “no” eye contact. They also judged their perceptions of a speaker with “little or no eye contact” on a semantic differential scale containing 60 polarized adjective pairs regarding personality traits. The majority of the student respondents defined an individual with “good” eye contact as looking at his/her audience/listener 90–100% of the time. This is a more stringent definition than other literature has indicated. Furthermore, speakers with little or no eye contact were judged less favorably on 70% of the items, which indicates that low eye contact adversely affects perceptions of a speaker's personality. Therefore, stutterers need to be made aware of the importance of and determinants of effective eye contact in communication. Also, the development of effective eye contact needs to be incorporated as a major goal in stuttering therapy.     

Cerebral hemispheric mechanisms in the retrieval of ambiguous word meanings

Targets related to ambiguous primes were projected to the left and right visual fields in a lexical priming experiment with stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) of 35 and 750 msec. Right visual field results were similar to our earlier results with central projection (G. B. Simpson & C. Burgess, 1985, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 11, 28-39). Facilitation was found for the more frequent meaning at both SOAs and a decrease in facilitation for the less frequent meaning at the longer SOA. In contrast, left visual field results indicated a decay of facilitation for the more frequent meaning at the longer SOA, while activation for the subordinate meaning increased. Results suggest that, while automatic processing occurs in both hemispheres, only the left hemisphere engages in controlled processing of ambiguous word meanings. In addition, the present results support the idea that the right hemisphere has a special role in ambiguity resolution and that the right hemisphere lexicon possesses a richer endowment than earlier thought.     

Naltrexone-reversible pain suppression in the isolated attacking mouse

Fighting pairs of isolated DBA/2 mice showed a significant increase in tail-flick response latencies independent of whether opponents were losing or winning the combat. The effect lasted less than 10 min in both animals. Elevated pain thresholds were also found in isolates that attacked a nonaggressive conspecific, and were prevented by naltrexone (0.2 mg/kg), while a larger dose (1.0 mg/kg) inhibited the attack behavior. A small increase in pain threshold was observed after exposure of isolates to the test box alone, while isolation per se had no effect on baseline tail-flick latencies. The data demonstrate that endogenous pain suppressing systems are activated during attack and suggest that this opioid-mediated antinociception is a correlate of the isolation syndrome, reflecting enhanced arousal of the attacking animal.