What’s up in mental rotation?

We report two experiments on the influence of head tilt on mental rotation. In Experiment I, subjects decided whether dot patterns were or were not repeated about a line. Their reaction times (RTs) were consistent with the interpretation that they mentally rotated the patterns so that the line was subjectively vertical before making their decisions. When the subjects tilted their heads, the RT functions shifted in the direction of the tilt, indicating that the subjective vertical lay closer to the retinal than to the gravitational vertical. In Experiment II, subjects decided whether singly presented alphanumeric characters in various orientations were standard or backward (mirror-reversed). Again, analysis of their RTs suggested mental rotation to the standard upright, but the function was unaffected by head tilt; in this case, the subjects operated in subjective gravitational rather than retinal coordinates. The choice of retinal or gravitational coordinates may depend on whether the stimuli are interpreted egocentrically or as part of the external world.     

Cognitive biases and depression

Compared symptomatically depressed, clinically remitted, and normal controls using cognitive measures designed to be traitlike and statelike in cross-sectional and longitudinal designs, respectively. Remitted depressives and normal subjects did not differ in their attributional biases, endorsement of dysfunctional attitudes, or interpretation of schema-relevant ambiguous events, but both groups differed from symptomatic depressives. Depressive episodes thus affect cognition, but cognitions measured by self-reports are more statelike than traitlike.     

Semantic priming: subliminal perception or context?

Briefly presented, masked priming stimuli that cannot be identified by themselves can affect the processing of subsequent targets. The effect, which is sometimes viewed as a demonstration of unconscious processing, has been linked to the subliminal perception literature. Experiments 1 and 2 indicated that the identification of primes in the context of semantically related targets is superior to the identification of primes presented alone, and that the identification of primes in the context of semantically unrelated targets is inferior to the identification of primes presented alone. Experiment 3 indicated parallel findings in a recognition task. Consequently, an explanation of semantic priming in terms of the interactive nature of stimuli that are near to one another in time seems preferable to one based upon concepts of unconscious processing and subliminal perception.     

Trait-anxiety and sense of coherence: a longitudinal study

A study of trait-anxiety and sense of coherence on a group of medical students over 18 mo. shows that, although both characteristics are rather stable over time, the measure of sense of coherence is more sensitive to stressors than A-trait and is better predicted by A-trait than the opposite.     

State vs trait anxiety: A case study in confirmatory factor analysis

The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI; Spielberger et al., 1970) originally divided anxiety into two factors: state anxiety, reflecting how an individual currently feels, and trait anxiety, reflecting how an individual generally feels. Recently, however, Spielberger revised his position to separate the presence and absence of anxiety symptoms within state and trait factors, yielding a hypothetical correlated 4-factor structure (Spielberger et al., 1980). Endler and Magnusson (1965) and Endler et al. (1976) have challenged the state vs trait distinction based upon their own factor analytical results. Since both sets of investigations used exploratory approaches, which do not postulate a particular factor structure, these studies do not provide an explicit test of the state vs trait distinction. A confirmatory factor analytic approach was used in the present study to evaluate Spielberger's 4-factor hypothesis. The subjects were large samples of male air force trainees and high school students for whom STAI data were available. The results of these confirmatory analyses indicated that the factors identified in exploratory analysis by Spielberger and his colleagues accounted for the data quite well.     

An interactive program for observation and analysis of human behavior in a long-term continuous laboratory

An Apple II microcomputer is used for processing observations of human behavior in a long-term live-in laboratory. On-line analysis produces multiple measures of response strength and response pattern for experiments on the reinforcement value of ordinary human activities. An interactive program with an informative screen display monitors observers’ data input and operation of the experimental procedures, preventing certain classes of errors. Redundant storage is included to avoid loss of data in the event of equipment failure. The data are handled by humans only one time, as opposed to three with the previous system, reducing both expense and errors. Immediate availability of fine-grained analysis allows more sophistication in within-subjects designs.