The accuracy of memory for faces of personally known individuals

The present study was aimed at evaluating whether the very high accuracy of memory for familiar faces, demonstrated by Ge et al (2003, Perception 32 601-614) with a very familiar famous person, generalises to faces of personally known individuals. The accuracy of participants' perceptual memory for a close colleague's face and for their own face was evaluated by presenting original and manipulated pictures of these two targets. The manipulation consisted of increasing or decreasing the interocular distance. As in Ge et al's study, results indicated that proportions of correct recognition of the original faces, and just noticeable differences for the detection of alterations in the recognition task, were not significantly different from the corresponding measures in a perceptual discrimination task performed by a sample of participants who did not know the target persons at all. High accuracy of memory generalises to faces of personally known individuals.     

Toward an Aesthetic Medicine: Developing a Core Medical Humanities Undergraduate Curriculum

The medical humanities are often implemented in the undergraduate medicine curriculum through injection of discrete option courses as compensation for an overdose of science. The medical humanities may be reformulated as process and perspective, rather than content, where the curriculum is viewed as an aesthetic text and learning as aesthetic and ethical identity formation. This article suggests that a "humanities" perspective may be inherent to the life sciences required for study of medicine. The medical humanities emerge as a revelation of value inherent to an aesthetic medicine taught and learned imaginatively.     

Experimenting with phenomenology

We review the use of introspective and phenomenological methods in experimental settings. We distinguish different senses of introspection, and further distinguish phenomenological method from introspectionist approaches. Two ways of using phenomenology in experimental procedures are identified: first, the neurophenomenological method, proposed by Varela, involves the training of experimental subjects. This approach has been directly and productively incorporated into the protocol of experiments on perception. A second approach may have wider application and does not involve training experimental subjects in phenomenological method. It requires front-loading phenomenological insights into experimental design. A number of experiments employing this approach are reviewed. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for both the cognitive sciences and phenomenology.     

INCREASING THE VARIETY OF FOODS CONSUMED BY A PICKY EATER: GENERALIZATION OF EFFECTS ACROSS CAREGIVERS AND SETTINGS

A multiple baseline across settings was used to evaluate the effects of differential reinforcement of alternative behavior, nonremoval of the fork ( Hoch, Babbitt, Coe, Krell, & Hackbert, 1994 ), and stimulus fading on consumption of food rejected previously. The study was conducted in two separate settings, and caregivers were trained in the intervention technique to increase generalization to natural settings. Food variety increased in both settings.     

Nucleation of recrystallization in fine-grained materials: an extension of the Bailey–Hirsch criterion

Abstract

A new criterion for nucleation in the case of dynamic recrystallization is proposed in order to include the contribution of the grain boundary energy stored in the microstructure in the energy balance. Due to the nucleation events, the total surface area of pre-existing grain boundaries decreases, leading to a nucleus size smaller than expected by conventional nucleation criteria. The new model provides a better prediction of the nucleus size during recrystallization of pure copper compared with the conventional nucleation criterion.     

An Empirical Test of Nonresponse Bias in Internet Surveys

In surveys, nonresponse is considered a source of possible bias, which increases with the size of the nonresponding group. Nonresponse bias was investigated in 3 samples of offending drivers who were required to respond to an online questionnaire before taking a driver improvement course, creating an initial 100% response rate. The next 2 questionnaire waves were voluntary, and response rates were much lower. Results (means, internal consistency, correlations, etc.) in the first wave were compared between those who responded twice or thrice and those who responded only to the first wave. No substantial differences were found. Compared to common method variance, the effects of nonresponse are very small.     

The time course of resource allocation in spider-fearful participants during fear reactions

The dynamics of resource allocation to pictures of spiders and other animals in spider-fearful participants was investigated. The task of the participants was to respond rapidly and accurately to various probe stimuli superimposed on pictures of different animals. These were arguably fear relevant (spiders, snakes, and wolves) and fear irrelevant (beetles, turtles, and rabbits). The probes were shown with different stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) from picture onset to address the dynamics of resource allocation. A larger allocation of resources to spider pictures than to pictures of all other animals, with no difference between the latter regarding resource allocation was found. For the task that demanded more resources the fear-related physiological responses decreased, suggesting that controlled processing modulates fear responses.