Decrement of the Müller-Lyer illusion with saccadic and tracking eye movements

Subjects viewed the Müller-Lyer illusion, making either saccadic or smooth tracking eye movements between the apexes of the arrow heads. The decrement in the magnitude of the illusion was significantly greater for Ss in the saccadic viewing condition. Saccadic and smooth tracking eye movements are separately controlled,and information about eye position is more readily available from the efferent signals issued to control a saccadic eye movement. The experimental findings were consistent with the hypothesis that Ss in the saccadic condition learned a new afferent efferent association. The results support a theory that visual perception is determined by efferent readiness activated by visual afferent stimulation.     

Predicting Units Needed for College Entrance

This article reports an example of guidance research to improve student decision-making. Each of 278 students in a recent high school graduating class in Palo Alto was classified according to the criterion of highest level of college (in terms of academic preparation required for entrance) by which he had been accepted. A correlation analysis indicated that the criterion could be predicted almost as accurately from test scores and grades available at the end of Grade 9 as from data available in grades 11 and 12. The criterion data and the 9th grade data were incorporated into an experience table for use by 9th graders in determining how rigorous a high school program a student would need for entrance into the highest level of college by which he might eventually be accepted. An additional analysis indicated that many of the poorer students took far more college preparatory courses than they needed for college entrance purposes.     

Preface Writers are Consistent

The preface paradox does not show that it can be rational to have inconsistent beliefs, because preface writers do not have inconsistent beliefs. I argue, first, that a fully satisfactory solution to the preface paradox would have it that the preface writer's beliefs are consistent. The case here is on basic intuitive grounds, not the consequence of a theory of rationality or of belief. Second, I point out that there is an independently motivated theory of belief – sensitivism – which allows such a solution. I sketch a sensitivist account of the preface writer's (consistent) doxastic state.     

The Fundamental Attribution Error and Harman's Case against Character Traits

Abstract

Gilbert Harman argues that the warrant for the lay attribution of character traits is completely undermined by the “fundamental attribution error” (FAE). He takes it to have been established by social psychologists, that the FAE pervades ordinary instances of lay person perception. However, examination of recent work in psychology reveals that there are good reasons to doubt that the effects observed in experimental settings, which ground the case for the FAE, pervade ordinary instances of person perception. Furthermore, it is possible to make sense of these experimental results without invoking the FAE. Harman's argument against lay character trait attribution is unsubstantiated.