A feminist therapy application of the boundary model with obese female binge eaters

Increasing empirical attention is being paid to understanding the etiology, course, and duration of binge eating disorder, and numerous types of treatment for this disorder are currently available. This article examines binge eating disorder and discusses problematic issues in its current treatments from a feminist therapy perspective. A model conceptualizing the regulation of food intake and binge eating is presented. Clinical applications of the model consistent with principles of feminist therapy are suggested.     

Inhibition, Contextual Segregation, and Subject Strategies in List Method Directed Forgetting

This experiment tested alternative explanations of list method directed forgetting effects. Two word lists were studied by 135 subjects. Between lists, subjects were instructed to remember both lists (remember group), remember both lists as well as in which list words were studied (segregate group), or to forget the first list and remember the second (forget group). All subjects took both recall and recognition tests with test order varied between subjects. Among subjects who took the recall test first, the forget group showed a directed forgetting effect (poorer performance on List 1 than List 2) with both recall accuracy, recall typing time, and recognition reaction time measures. Contextual segregation of List 1 words by forget subjects was ruled out as a sufficient cause of the effect. Limited support was obtained for a differential rehearsal explanation of the effect. Within-group comparisons and findings of release from directed forgetting support inhibitory processes as the major cause of the directed forgetting effect.     

Ethnicity as a variable in responses to California Psychological Inventory items

The responses of Black and White subjects to the California Psychological Inventory items were compared. On the average, 34% in each of the 18 scales showed significant differences. Approximately two-thirds of the significant items for the males were also significant for the females. Blacks responded in the keyed direction for over 23% of the items. The results of this study were consistent with the results of previous studies. The implications of the results of this research are discussed. It is suggested that future development of tests of this nature carefully consider the socio-cultural factors that might contribute to differential responses to test items on objective personality tests as assessment devices. Scores obtained by Blacks on the CPI should be interpreted against the background of the results of this study.     

Linear perspective as a cue in misperceived rotary motion

Pairs of luminous lines of differing length ratios, rotated about an axis perpendicular to the line of sight, resulted in misperceptions of the direction of rotation. The illusions are similiar to the Ames trapezoid illusion. The results help to clarify the role ofdepth cues in visual perception of motion.     

The role of R-S1 expectancy in discrimination and discrimination reversal learning

Four experiments assessed the role of response-reinforcement (R-S¹) expectancy as rats either learned a discrimination or a discrimination reversal. Experiment 1 showed that the higher the percentage of reinforcement during nondiscriminative pretraining the more quickly a subsequent discrimination is learned. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the overlearning reversal effect (ORE) can be obtained even though the overtraining phase consists of responses to a single neutral card. In Experiment 3 subjects were again overtrained on a single neutral stimulus under conditions of varying reinforcement. ORE was apparent under reinforcement of a high percentage of responses but was not apparent under reinforcement of a low percentage. Experiment 4 revealed that the fewer errors a subject makes prior to reversal the better its reversal performance is. Results of these studies were discussed in terms of generalized attention theories and the expectancy notions of Bolles (Psychological Review, 1972, 79(5), 394–409.     

Effects of stimulus ear presentation on the voice reaction time of adult stutterers and nonstutterers

The initial and optimum voice reaction times (VRT) to auditory stimuli presented separately to the left and right ears of ten adult stutterers and ten nonstutterers was investigated. Subjects initiated the neutral vowel sound /Λ/ in response to one hundred 4000 Hz tones of 2.5 sec in duration. The silent intervals between the tones varied randomly. The stimulus cues were divided into five equal response sets of 20 tones each with 10 tones in each set being presented to the right ear and 10 tones to the left ear alternating back and forth. No significant differences were reported between the VRTs for cues presented to the left or right ears for either group. However, the stutterers exhibited voice reaction times which were significantly longer and more variable than those of the nonstutterers. The between- group differences were observed for what appeared to be the “optimum” level of voice initiation for the experimental task. These results lend to the speculative hypothesis that the observed difficulty for adult stutterers to promptly and consistently initiate vocalization may in part be attributable to inherent rather than learned factors.     

Probability,evidence, and the coherence of the whole truth

The coherence of the whole truth is a presupposition of any holistic coherence theory of justification that postulates a positive connection between justification and truth, for unless the whole truth is itself systemically coherent there is no reason to look for systemic coherence when deciding whether one is justified in accepting a given body of beliefs as true. This paper develops a formal model of holistic evidential coherence and uses this model to formalize and defend the claim that the whole truth must be coherent in an evidential sense.