Effect of concurrent visual feedback on acquisition of a weightlifting skill

Practice in front of a mirror is a common procedure for activities such as dance, gymnastics, and other sports. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect that performing with concurrent visual feedback from a mirror had on the acquisition of the power clean movement. 18 college-age males who had no prior experience with the power clean movement served as subjects who were assigned to one of two groups. One group had use of a mirror during the practice trials and the other practiced without the mirror. All subjects viewed an instructional videotape and had practice trials. All subjects were evaluated for proper technique on a pretest, a posttest without the mirror, and a posttest with the mirror. Analysis showed a significant difference between pre- and posttest performances for both groups and a significant difference between groups on the posttest performances with the mirror. Evidently the videotaped instruction was sufficient to allow both groups to improve in performance of the power clean. Differences in posttest performances with the mirror reflected the type of feedback (with or without the mirror) available during training.     

Learned helplessness in the cockroach (Periplaneta americana)

For 3 consecutive days cockroaches (Periplaneta americana) were exposed to either escapable, inescapable, or no shock in an escape task. Twenty-four hours later they were tested in a shuttlebox escape task. There were reliable differences between escapable and inescapable animals and between inescapable and control animals in both escape latencies and the number of failures to escape.     

Fragile X speech phonology in Finnish

Fragile X syndrome is a recently discovered relatively common syndrome linked with an anomaly of the X chromosome and causing handicaps of cognitive development especially in males. In the present phonological analysis we will discuss the sound patterns of two Finnish fragile X speakers, a five (borderline intelligence)- and an eight (mildly mentally retarded)-year-old boy. The fragile X syndrome is not necessarily linked with any anomalies of speech organs. The subjects could produce all Finnish speech sounds in isolated test words. However, in the present samples of connected speech they exhibited general dysphonology. What is noteworthy is that their phonological error patterns resembled each other to a great extent. Among the common features were the tendencies to substitute and omit phonemes. As for vowels, our results showed about one-half of the errors to be omissions. Labiality and quantity oppositions were quite resistant to substitution. Most substitution errors of place of consonants occurred in dentals. As for the feature of manner, /r/ and /s/ were the phonemes most prone for substitution. A tendency toward spirantization or /h/ sation was common for both patients. The number of additions was clearly lower than has been reported for English-speaking developmentally dyspraxic children and also for Finnish Broca's aphasics. The speech problems of our patients seemed to indicate higher level motor encoding problems of linguistic information rather than peripheral articulatory deficits.     

Some tests of the interactive-activation model for word identification

Summary The interactive-activation model postulates (a) that activation at the letter level leads automatically to activation at the word level, (b) that the word-superiority effect reflects reactivation of letters by the word they spell, and (c) that subjects identify words on the basis of information obtained from separate letter-position channels. In the first two experiments, we showed words in upper, lower, or mixed case: the word-superiority effect was reduced when words were presented in mixed-case letters, presumably because extra-letter information is lost with mixed-case presentation; i.e., postulate (c) is wrong. The third experiment showed that when the letters of a word are rotated 180° subjects can identify the letters without producing a word-superiority effect; i.e., one of postulates (a) and (b) is wrong. In Experiments 4 and 5, we trained subjects to name words presented in inverted letters; training was more effective when subjects could exploit bigram information in addition to letter-channel information; i.e., reading inverted text is based on extra-letter-feature information, not on a general skill in rotating letters. Taken together, our data deny three of the interactive-activation model's major postulates. We offer some suggestions for future versions of the model. Electronic mail: Userid: MEWHORTD; Nodeid: QUCDN; Domain: BITNET     

Treatment recommendations for mentally disordered offenders: More than roulette?

Clinical judgments on the treatability and prognosis of mentally disordered offeenders (MDO) may strongly influence legal dispositions and the availability of treatment resources. This study examined 1,238 discharge summaries for MDOs referred for court assessments. Psychiatrists evidenced marked variability in how often they recommended treatment and how frequently they judged patients to have a poor prognosis. Two logit analyses suggested that diagnosis and consultation by other clinicians were associated with (a) treatment recommendations (i.e., Axis I diagnosis and social work consultations) and (b) prognosis (i.e., Axis II diagnosis and psychology consultations).     

The Multilevel Conception of Intentionality: Implications for counselor training

Counseling training programs have failed to differentiate between and among behavioral, cognitive, and unconsciousness dimesnsions. This omission has resulted in confusion and competition in many counseling curricula in that valuable programs are competing for space rather than being integrated systematically. This article proposes a multilevel model of intentionality which integrates the several aspects of the counselor-client relationship. In turn, this integration of behavioral, cognitive, and unconscious dimensions will have important applications in counselor daily practice.     

A simulation-based tutorial system for exploring parallel distributed processing

This article presents a simulation-based tutorial system for exploring parallel distributed processing (PDP) models of information processing. The system consists of software and an accompanying handbook. The intent of the package is to make the ideas underlying PDP accessible and to disseminate some of the main simulation programs that we have developed. This article presents excerpts from the handbook that describe the approach taken, the organization of the handbook, and the software that comes with it. An example is given that illustrates the approach we have taken to teaching PDP, which involves presentation of relevant mathematical background, together with tutorial exercises that make use of the simulation programs.