Isoluminance and contingent color aftereffects

In the typical induction of the orientation-contingent color aftereffect (CCAE), the stimuli are composed of elements that differ in both color and luminance. Three experiments are reported that show that chromatic contrast between stimulus elements is insufficient for the induction of the orientation-CCAE and that luminance contrast is necessary. These experiments expand on previous research concerned with the role of luminance contrast in the induction of orientation-CCAEs by eliminating alternative explanations.     

Reducing MMPI-2 defensiveness: the effect of specialized instructions on retest validity in a job applicant sample

The MMPI-2 is often used for screening job applicants when public safety or security are at risk. Inherent in such applications is concern for profile validity and test defensiveness. In this study, we examine the impact of revised instructions on profile validity for a group of job applicants who initially produced invalid profiles. Participants were 271 male applicants for airline pilot positions. Of these, 72 produced invalid defensive MMPI-2 profiles during preemployment screening. The MMPI-2 was readministered to these applicants with instructions informing them of validity scales and instructing them to respond in a more open, honest manner. Comparisons were made between valid and invalid profiles for initial administrations and between valid and invalid profiles at readministration. Some clinical scales were more elevated for valid, nondefensive profiles. Most content scales showed more elevation for valid profiles, and 12% of the applicants who were retested produced significant elevations (T>or=65) on the content scales. Profiles were similar to those produced by employed pilots of a previous study.     

Encoding, repetition, and the mirror effect in recognition memory: Symmetry in motion

Attention/likelihood theory has been used to explain the mirror effect in recognition memory. The theory also predicts that any manipulation that affects the recognition of old items will also affect recognition of the new items—more specifically, that all the underlying distributions will move and that they will move symmetrically on the decision axis. In five experiments, we tested this prediction. The first two experiments used encoding tasks during study to change recognition performance for high- and low-frequency words. The results show symmetrical dispersion of the underlying distributions. The final three experiments used repetition to increase recognition performance. Repetition produced a symmetrical pattern of movement that was different from that produced by encoding task. This pattern is, however, also covered by attention/likelihood theory. A further extension of the theory was used to predict response times.     

Recognition memory ROCs for item and associative information: The contribution of recollection and familiarity

Receiver-operating characteristics (ROCs) were examined in three recognition memory experiments. ROCs for item information (i.e., was this word presented?) were found to be curvilinear. However, ROCs for associative information (i.e., were these two words presented together?) were found to be linear. The results are in agreement with the predictions of a dual-process model that assumes that recognition judgments are -based on familiarity and recollection. Familiarity reflects the assessment of a continuous strength dimension and is well described as a signal detection process, whereas recollection reflects the retrieval of qualitative information about the study episode and behaves like a discrete threshold process. The results showed that memory judgments about items relied on a combination of recollection and familiarity, but that judgments about associations relied primarily on recollection. Further examination of the associative ROCs suggested that subjects were able to recollect that old pairs of items were in the study list, and, under some conditions, that new pairs were not in the study list.     

DEGREES OF FREEDOM AND THE INTERPRETATION OF QUANTUM FIELD THEORY

Nick Huggett and Robert Weingard (1994) have recently proposed a novel approach to interpreting field theories in physics, one which makes central use of the fact that a field generally has an infinite number of degrees of freedom in any finite region of space it occupies. Their characterization, they argue, (i) reproduces our intuitive categorizations of fields in the classical domain and thereby (ii) provides a basis for arguing that the quantum field is a field. Furthermore, (iii) it accomplishes these tasks better than does a well-known rival approach due to Paul Teller (1990, 1995). This paper contends that all three of these claims are mistaken, and suggests that Huggett and Weingard have not shown how counting degrees of freedom provides any insight into the interpretation or the formal properties of field theories in physics.     

The dimensionality of the flanker compatibility effect: A psychophysiological analysis

The psychophysiological approach was used to evaluate the effects of feature similarity and intrinsic response mapping on the flanker compatibility effect. Symbol (e.g., < > < and < / <) and letter arrays (e.g., HCH and SCS) were used. Results showed that delays in stimulus evaluation and both peripheral and central response competition contributed to the compatibility effect, with the contribution of these processes depending on feature similarity and the intrinsic response mapping of the stimuli. For letter stimuli, the difference in the size of the compatibility effect for similar and dissimilar arrays could be accounted for in terms of stimulus evaluation. For symbol arrays, differences in size of the compatibility effect could be accounted for by response competition. Thus, symbol and letter arrays do not appear to be processed differently; what is different is the degree to which stimulus and response-related processes are affected by incompatibility.     

A general linear model for estimating effect size in the presence of publication bias

When the process of publication favors studies with smallp-values, and hence large effect estimates, combined estimates from many studies may be biased. This paper describes a model for estimation of effect size when there is selection based on one-tailedp-values. The model employs the method of maximum likelihood in the context of a mixed (fixed and random) effects general linear model for effect sizes. It offers a test for the presence of publication bias, and corrected estimates of the parameters of the linear model for effect magnitude. The model is illustrated using a well-known data set on the benefits of psychotherapy.Authors' note: The contributions of the authors are considered equal, and the order of authorship was chosen to be reverse-alphabetical.     

Instance-based categorization: Automatic versus intentional forms of retrieval

Two experiments are reported which attempt to disentangle the relative contribution of intentional and automatic forms of retrieval to instance-based categorization. A financial decision-making task was used in which subjects had to decide whether a bank would approve loans for a series of applicants. Experiment 1 found that categorization was sensitive to instance-specific knowledge, even when subjects had practiced using a simple rule. L. L. Jacoby’s (1991) process-dissociation procedure was adapted for use in Experiment 2 to infer the relative contribution of intentional and automatic retrieval processes to categorization decisions. The results provided (1) strong evidence that intentional retrieval processes influence categorization, and (2) some preliminary evidence suggesting that automatic retrieval processes may also contribute to categorization decisions.     

Signifying harassment: Communication,ambiguity and power

This essay reports on phenomenological research conducted with people who describe having been harassed, having been accused of harassment, and/or having mediated or adjudicated harassment disputes. The authors review recent legal conceptions of sexual harassment and articulate a methodology for analyzing individual narrative accounts. The analysis of six selected interviews (three alleged harassers and three declared harassees) depicts how, through discourse with others, persons in ambiguous cases of harassment come to perceive themselves as harassers or harasseesgradually, how intention is inferred from conductcontingently, and how perceptions and expressions are often reified as certainties in the effort to secure some sense of justiceinstitutionally.Many people have been involved with this project since its inception, and most wish to remain anonymous. We would like to thank all participants, colleagues, students, and critics for their contributions and expressions of interest. We would especially like to acknowledge Thomas Pace and Richard Lanigan for their teaching, friendship and support, and Frances Chaput Waksler for her helpful comments. An earlier version of this paper was presented to The Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences, Boston MA, USA, October 1992.     

The Cost of Client Transfer

Clients undergoing transfer from one counselor to another were compared on the Generalized Contentment Scale and a DSM-III-R measure with clients staying with the same counselor over the same length of treatment. In three 12-week blocks, the clients with the same counselor made the greatest progress in the first 12 weeks, making less progress in each successive block. The clients who were transferred in the middle of the second 12-week block also made the greatest progress in the first time block, lost some of the progress in the transfer block, and made significant progress with the new counselor in the third time block, ending with no significant differences in either generalized contentment or DSM-III-R outcome from clients who had not been transferred.