Effects of stimulus duration and ISI on accuracy and transference errors in pictorial recognition

The influence of stimulus duration and ISI on accuracy of recognition for two-part configurations was investigated in two experiments. A six-alternative forced-hoice recognition procedure is described that tested (1) subjects’ ability to recognize correct or partially correct stimuli, and (2) their tendencies to make transference errors. Subjects were significantly more accurate in recognition of pictorial components when given a longer (2-sec) rather than a shorter (.5-sec) exposure to stimuli, with ISI held constant (.5 sec). There was no beneficial effect on recognition of pictorial components when ISI was lengthened from .5 to 2 sec Iwith a .5-sec stimulus duration) or from .5 to 1.5 to 7 sec Iwith a 2-sec stimulus duration). The total time hypothesis received no support, since when two groups were given the same total time (2.5 sec for stimulus duration plus ISI), the group given the longer 12-sec) stimulus duration was significantly more accurate in partial recognition than a group given a longer 12-sec) ISI. There was a high incidence of transference errors in all experimental groups, although subjects’ ability to distinguish old stimuli from distractors made by recombining parts from different targets was not affected by any of the temporal manipulations. It appeared that, although length of stimulus duration determines the number of components encoded from a picture, the encoding of information that integrates these components into a whole does not require additional processing time.     

When educational supervision meets clinical supervision: what can we learn from the discrepancies?

The authors question the taken-for-granted notion of supervision. Their concerns arose out of an attempt to introduce 'clinical' supervision into academia as a way of addressing an increasing number of the ethical issues which confront lecturers. They recognise that knowledge can impact adversely on students and that lecturers at times find themselves compromised. They settled on supervision as an organisational space in the domain of power in which to address the distress they observed. However, through their different experiences of supervision, they soon found themselves talking past each other. When clinical supervision meets educational supervision, several anomalies are brought to the fore. The authors draw on Foucault's notion of discourse, and of knowledge as power, in order to foreground these and conclude by cautioning against an uncritical acceptance of supervision as an ethical practice. They believe there is a benefit in bringing together the two discourses of clinical and educational supervision for further discussion.     

Concepts of the person in the symbolist philosophy of Viacheslav Ivanov

Viacheslav Ivanov’s concept of person underwent significant development in the course of his career. In his earliest works the person is a transient form that is to be superseded by union with the supra-personal, transcendent self. In works of his middle period Ivanov posits the person as an image of the transcendent self. Lastly, in the 1910s Ivanov integrated these two concepts into a hermeneutic view of the person as an agent of transcendence.     

Adolescent development of motor imagery in a visually guided pointing task

The development of action representation during adolescence was investigated using a visually guided pointing motor task (VGPT) to test motor imagery. Forty adolescents (24 males; mean age 13.1 years) and 33 adults (15 males; mean age 27.5 years) were instructed to both execute and imagine hand movements from a starting point to a target of varying size. Reaction time (RT) was measured for both Execution (E) and Imagery (I) conditions. There is typically a close association between time taken to execute and image actions in adults because action execution and action simulation rely on overlapping neural circuitry. Further, representations of actions are governed by the same speed-accuracy trade-off as real actions, as expressed by Fitts’ Law. In the current study, performance on the VGPT in both adolescents and adults conformed to Fitts’ Law in E and I conditions. However, the strength of association between E and I significantly increased with age, reflecting a refinement in action representation between adolescence and adulthood.     

Perceptions of unconditional and conditional worth among college students

Self-esteem scales tend to represent conditional perceptions of self-esteem. The Worth Index has been previously validated as an effective measure for identifying both conditional and unconditional perceptions of worth. We administered the Worth Index to 1,161 college-aged students at Brigham Young University to assess their current perceptions of unconditional and conditional worth. Both men and women agreed more strongly with items involving unconditional worth than conditional worth. A negative correlation was found between ratings of unconditional and conditional worth. Women had lower unconditional worth scores than men, which was related to being more likely to wish they were someone else, desire to have a better body, and to being concerned about weight. Agreement with two overview measures of self-esteem involving a "good" sense of self and stability of self-esteem was positively associated with agreement on statements about unconditional worth. This research shows the importance of incorporating unconditional worth into self-esteem measures.