Binocular fusion: A test of the suppression theory

Binocular fusion may be due to interocular inhibitory suppression, an hypothesis difficult to evaluate by phenomenal inspection. A test probe method (reaction time to a light pulse) was used to measure visual sensitivity during binocular rivalry and fusion. The absence of inhibitory effects during fusion fails to support the suppression theory of fusion.     

Does medics' social identification increase handicap for mentally retarded patients?

Briefs about mentally retarded people are more negative than briefs about other social categories; professionals, such as medical doctors evaluate them most negatively of all. It was hypothesized (a) that medics' beliefs about mentally retarded people are mediated by psychological salience of their clinical social identification, rather than by personal characteristics that medics happen to share and (b) that such beliefs will bias decisions, rather than enhance accuracy. Forty-five doctors and medical students were randomly assigned to conditions designed to enhance salience of their shared clinical social identification or individual self-perceptions. Subjects completed semantic differentials about mentally retarded people and distinguished between slides of ‘mentally retarded’ and ‘normal’ children. Beliefs of subjects in the medical condition were significantly more negative than those in the personal condition. A signal detection analysis revealed no difference between conditions in subjects' ability to distinguish between children but showed that subjects in the medical condition were significantly more likely to judge a child ‘mentally retarded’ when in doubt. Results were discussed within an information processing framework and supported the idea that a salient clinical social identity can mediate beliefs that are likely to handicap patients.     

Mental retardation and perception of global motion

We have found that mildly mentally retarded adults are impaired in their perception of global stereoscopic forms (Fox & Oross, 1988) in ways that cannot be attributed to peripheral visual deficits or failures to comprehend. To assess the generality of that result, we measured the ability of mentally retarded adults to perceive kinematographic forms. Mentally retarded and nonretarded adults were presented with a two-choice, forced-choice detection task requiring the location of a target's spatial position. The discriminability of the forms was varied by systematic reductions in both element density and temporal correlation. We found that, relative to nonretarded adults, mentally retarded adults exhibited large qualitative deficits in their ability to discriminate these kinematographic forms when either density or correlation was reduced. After considering a number of alternative interpretations of these data based on factors such as peripheral visual impairment and a failure to attend, we could find none more compelling than a perceptual interpretation, which posits a deficit within the short-range motion system.     

The role of compliance in hypnotic and nonhypnotic analgesia

We modified the standard procedure for administering finger pressure pain in order to assess the extent to which subjects biased their reports of pain reduction when exposed to compliance-inducing instructions. Experiment 1 used only highly hypnotizable subjects and found that compliance-induced reductions in reported pain were about half as large as the reported reductions produced by hypnotic analgesia suggestions. Experiment 2 used low as well as high hypnotizables and administered hypnotic or nonhypnotic analgesia instructions and compliance instructions to the same subjects on separate pain trials. Reported pain reductions produced by hypnotic and nonhypnotic analgesia suggestions and those produced by compliance instructions were substantially and significantly correlated. Furthermore, hypnotizability correlated with compliance-induced reported pain reductions as highly as it correlated with the reported reductions produced by hypnotic analgesia suggestions. Among high hypnotizables (but not low hypnotizables) compliant responding was predicted by social desirability. The findings of both studies indicate that compliance strongly influences the reports of hypnotic and nonhypnotic analgesia proffered by high hypnotizables. The role of compliance in the pain reductions reported by low hypnotizables is less clear-cut.     

Light at the End of the Tunnel? Philosophy of Religion and the Near Death Experience

This article argues that currently many aspects of the Near Death Experience (NDE) remain a mystery, even after the more than two decades of discussion and analysis triggered by the publication of Raymond Moody's ground‐breaking study, Life After Life in 1975. It suggests that one reason for this continuing mystery is connected to the current under‐representation of studies of the phenomenon from within philosophy generally, and philosophy of religion in particular. It questions why this under‐representation should exist, suggesting that the very complexity of the NDE demands a thoroughgoing philosophical analysis, and arguing that philosophy and philosophy of religion have a crucial and rightful role alongside other disciplines within any attempt to gain a total understanding of what NDEs, in essence, are.     

Did Georg Cantor Influence Edmund Husserl?

Few have entertained the idea that Georg Cantor, the creator of set theory, might have influenced Edmund Husserl, the founder of the phenomenological movement. Yet an exchange of ideas took place between them when Cantor was at the height of his creative powers and Husserl in the throes of an intellectual struggle during which his ideas were particularly malleable and changed considerably and definitively. Here their writings are examined to show how Husserl's and Cantor's ideas overlapped and crisscrossed in the areas of philosophy and mathematics, arithmetization, abstraction, consciousness and pure logic, psychologism, metaphysical idealism, new numbers, and sets and manifolds.     

The use of psychoeducational groups to improve marital functioning in high risk Israeli couples: a stage model

A modular and sequentially-based psychoeducational groupwork method, including the rationale for this type of work with couples in Israel, is presented. Modules of this form of groupwork are illustrated using two examples of groupwork with couples experiencing chronic post-traumatic stress disorder and groupwork with couples in low-income multiproblem neighborhoods. Issues that arise in the training of professionals to do this kind of psychoeducational groupwork in Israel are discussed.     

Prenatal gender preference of mothers of feminine and masculine boys: Relation to sibling sex composition and birth order

A mother's (prenatal) wish for a girl has, at times, been implicated as an etiological factor for boyhood femininity or its DSM-III-R diagnostic equivalent, the Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood. In one sample of 52 feminine and 52 nonclinical control boys from Los Angeles, the proportion of mothers who recalled a wish for a girl during the pregnancy did not differ significantly between groups (26.9% vs. 19.2%, respectively); however, in both groups, the maternal wish for a girl was significantly more common in sibships in which all of the proband's older siblings were male. In a second sample of 103 feminine boys from Toronto, the maternal wish for a girl was significantly higher than that found in the Los Angeles sample (43.7% vs. 26.9%), but a control group was not available; as in the Los Angeles sample, the maternal wish for a girl was significantly more common in sibships in which all of the proband's older siblings were male. Implications of these findings for further study of maternal influences on boyhood femininity are discussed.