Attentional biases and the right-ear effect in dichotic listening

Most dichotic listening experiments permit subjects to deploy attention in any way they choose. We argue that this adds uncontrolled variance to the observed right-ear advantage. In the first experiment, more robust laterality effects were obtained in an identification task with focused than with divided attention. Such differences were not found in the second experiment, when a detection procedure was used. Virtually all the laterality effect observed in the second study could be attributed to subjects who were biased attenders, in the sense that they exhibited more intrusions from the right ear to the left than vice versa. However, rather than indicating that laterality effects are simply attentional bias, this effect can be attributed to an asymmetry of perceptual discrimination.     

Central auditory processing : III. The “cocktail party” effect and anterior temporal lobectomy

The capacity to selectively attend to only one of multiple, spatially separated, simultaneous sound sources—the “cocktail party” effect—was evaluated in normal subjects and in those with anterior temporal lobectomy using common environmental sounds. A significant deficit in this capacity was observed for those stimuli located on the side of space contralateral to the lobectomy, a finding consistent with the hypothesis that within each anterior temporal lobe is a mechanism that is normally capable of enhancing the perceptual salience of one acoustic stimulus on the opposite side of space, when other sound sources are present on that side. Damage to this mechanism also appears to be associated with a deficit of spatial localization for sounds contralateral to the lesion.     

Programmed stuttering therapy for children: Comparison of four establishment programs

Four different establishment programs (programmed traditional, delayed auditory feedback, pause, and gradual increase in length and complexity of utterance) for improving the fluency of school-age children who stutter were compared. The programs were carried out by eight public school clinicians with 16 children (eight elementary and eight junior-senior high school) in their respective schools. All four programs produced important improvement in the speech fluency of the 16 children. All the children demonstrated transfer of fluency to extratraining settings. The delayed auditory feedback program required the least therapy hours, but it was difficult for the clinicians to operate correctly. The gradual increase in length and complexity of utterance programs produced the best overall results. The transfer and maintenance programs provided for additional generalization and permanency of fluency. Follow-up revealed that the children continued their increased level of fluency.     

A process analysis of group development

A process analysis of group development forms the basis of a methodology for identifying group phase boundaries and describing moment-to-moment process in psychotherapy groups. This paper presents the general rationale for identifying variables, the statistical technique for producing graphs and the first of three variables used in the process analysis. The focus is on phases two and three as defined by Beck's theory of group development. The first variable tracks the members' responses toward the Scapegoat Leader in terms of supportiveness, criticism or hostility. Results on two groups show a clear shift in responses from negative to supportive as the group moves from phase two to phase three.     

A spectral-analysis tutorial with examples in FORTRAN

A procedure for performing spectral analysis using a digital computer is described. The relevant analysis parameters and their interaction are reviewed, and the underlying mathematical theory of the analysis is annotated with page references to a standard reference text. A computer program that implements the procedure is presented in a general form of FORTRAN. Examples of the spectra produced by a variety of input time histories are shown.     

Reconstruction of preverbal experiences

Only a few analysts (Deutsch, 1947, 1952; Braat?y, 1954) have systematically tried to investigate how nonverbal behavior may be derived from events and experiences from the preverbal phase of development. Their approaches to the analysis of such behavior differ. Extracts of an analysis are used to illustrate basic technical and theoretical questions with regard to the possibility of making use of nonverbal material to reconstruct preverbal experiences. It is inferred that the analyst's visual observations of the patient's nonverbal behavior may be a cue to significant events and trauma from the preverbal period. Besides, the specific visual imagery of the patient that, in this case, emerged just after the appearance of nonverbal behavior, may be a valuable source of data for analytic reconstruction.     

Learned helplessness in groups

Group learned helplessness is demonstrated in Experiment I. Groups of 2 tried to turn off noise by their joint action. In the solvable group (S), noise offset was contingent on their sequence of button pushing. In the yoked, unsolvable group (U), noise offset was independent of all sequences of button pushes they produced. In a practice group (O). subjects practiced coordinated sequences of button pushes with their partners, but heard no noise. Later, all 3 groups were tested in pairs in a shuttlebox which required coordinated joint responding to turn off noise. The unsolvable group escaped more poorly than the other 2 groups, paralleling helplessness effects with individuals. Experiment 2 and 3 found no transfer from individual helplessness training to group testing and no transfer from group helplessness training to individual testing. We suggest that the same mechanism, the expectation of response ineffectiveness, may mediate both individual and group learned helplessness.     

Distribution of visual attention over space

Subjects viewed 3 X 3 grids in which different subsets of the nine squares were designated as "figure," either by physical shading of those squares or by a verbal instruction to imagine those squares as shaded. The time taken by participants to respond "on" or "off" the figure was measured for single or multiple probe dots, which all appeared on or off the figural subset together, and which had already been shown to be equally detectable against shaded or unshaded squares and in all nine locations within the grid. In contrast to the set-size effect generally found in experiments on memory scanning, reaction time did not necessarily increase with the number of squares in the figural subset. Instead, the critical variable, which in previous research may often have adventitiously covaried with set size, was the spatial compactness of the subsets (as indexed by square-root-area over perimeter): Probes of less compact figures required more time to classify correctly. Subjects were evidently more successful in confining their attention to sets of mutually proximal items. Reasons are given for believing that this principle may also apply in the more abstract representational or semantic spaces that determine reaction times and errors in various other cognitive tasks.