An experimental analysis of anti-litter procedures

This study evaluates the differential effectiveness of six different anti-litter procedures in two neighborhood theaters. The procedures used to encourage individuals in attendance to pick up litter and deposit it properly included: providing litterbags, providing litterbags with instructions to use them, providing extra trash cans, showing a special anti-litter film before the feature film, and providing incentives for the appropriate deposit of litter. In both theaters, the incentive procedures resulted in the removal of over 90% of all litter by the children in attendance, a figure far above that achieved by the other procedures investigated.     

Comparison of sensitivity for the perception of bodily rotation and the oculogyral illusion

Two samples of 10 random polygons were scaled tactually and visually using multidimensional scaling techniques. Unidimensional solutions were very similar for both modalities and were linearly dependent upon the number of independent sides of the forms. Solutions of higher dimensionality did not produce clearly interpretable unique orderings of the forms beyond the first dimension with these samples. Within the limits imposed by these samples of forms. the data strongly support equivalence for visual and tactual form perception.     

Semantic distinctions and memory for complex sentences

This investigation studied what people remember in recalling complex sentences, whether it is certain semantic distinctions or merely transformational markers. After short intervals 24 subjects tried to recall sentences of six kinds which formed paraphrase sets: S₁ before S₂, S₁ and then S₂, After S₁ S₂, S₂ after S₁, S₂ but first S₁, and Before S₂ S₁. (S₁ and S₂ denote first and second clauses in temporal, not linguistic, order.) Subjects remembered the underlying sense of sentences with S₁-S₂ clause ordering better than those with S₂-S₁ clause ordering, regardless of transformational complexity. Subjects also showed a response bias, hence better verbatim recall, for sentences with subordinate clause second and for sentences with S₁-S₂ clause ordering. Sentence confusions indicated that subjects remembered three semantic distinctions: the temporal order, order of mention, and main-subordinate relation of the two described events. A theory of memory for marked and unmarked semantic distinctions was used to account for the results.     

Egocentric localization of the visual horizontal in normal and labyrinthine-defective observers as a function of head and body tilt

Perception of the visual horizontal by observers in five different combinations of head and body position was studied to determine the effect of 20-degree body tilts. Both normal and labyrinthine-defective observers made five settings to the visual horizontal for each condition using, a goggle device which presented a collimated line of light to the right eye while the other eye was covered. The results showed no significant constant errors in the settings by either group, and it is suggested that the absence of the E-phenomenon was due primarily to adequate contact cues and kinesthetic cues. The data also make it clear that vestibular information is not required for veridical perception of the visual horizontal under these experimental conditions.     

Overt “mediating” behavior during temporally spaced responding

A rat was trained on a schedule that programmed reinforcements only when a minimum waiting time between successive responses was exceeded (DRL schedule). It was observed to fill much of the pause between lever presses with a stereotyped behavioral chain: it would take its tail in its mouth and nibble it. This behavior was shown to be functionally related to the efficiency with which the subject spaced its responses. It is thought to have served as mediating behavior, providing discriminating stimuli for appropriate lever presses.