A note on E. B. Titchener and G. M. Whipple

In 1898, one of E. B. Titchener's graduate students, Stella E. Sharp, conducted an experiment on Alfred Binet and Victor Henri's theory and belief that mental abilities should be tested by means of complex mental processes. Her subjects were seven advanced students in psychology. She concluded that the findings were incommensurate with the effort required. That closed the subject as an area of research and instruction in the Cornell Department of Psychology until 1941, when the subject of test theory and uses was included in that department's course offerings. This continued until 1963. Currently, the subject is once again being actively pursued in the Department of Education.     

Extraretinal and retinal amplitude and phase errors during Filehne illusion and path perception

Pursuit eye movements give rise to retinal motion. To judge stimulus motion relative to the head, the visual system must correct for the eye movement by using an extraretinal, eye-velocity signal. Such correction is important in a variety of motion estimation tasks including judgments of object motion relative to the head and judgments of self-motion direction from optic flow. The Filehne illusion (where a stationary object appears to move opposite to the pursuit) results from a mismatch between retinal and extraretinal speed estimates. A mismatch in timing could also exist. Speed and timing errors were investigated using sinusoidal pursuit eye movements. We describe a new illusion--the slalom illusion--in which the perceived direction of self-motion oscillates left and right when the eyes move sinusoidally. A linear model is presented that determines the gain ratio and phase difference of extraretinal and retinal signals accompanying the Filehne and slalom illusions. The speed mismatch and timing differences were measured in the Filehne and self-motion situations using a motion-nulling procedure. Timing errors were very small for the Filehne and slalom illusions. However, the ratios of extraretinal to retinal gain were consistently less than 1, so both illusions are the consequence of a mismatch between estimates of retinal and extraretinal speed. The relevance of the results for recovering the direction of self-motion during pursuit eye movements is discussed.     

Effects of Stimulant Medication Treatment on Mothers' and Children's Attributions for the Behavior of Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Participants were 55 children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) who were receiving ongoing treatment with stimulant medications and their mothers, and 31 children with ADHD who were beginning stimulant medication and their mothers. Mothers and children offered attributions for child behaviors that occurred when the child was medicated and not medicated. Mothers rated child compliance and prosocial behavior as more global and stable when the child was medicated and rated noncompliance, ADHD symptoms, and oppositional behavior as more externally caused, less global and stable, but more controllable by the child when the child was medicated. Children rated both their compliance and noncompliance as more controllable in the medicated condition. On a forced-choice measure, both mothers and children selected ability, effort, and task attributions for compliance more in the not-medicated condition, and pill-taking attributions more in the medicated condition. This was reversed for noncompliance, which was attributed more to effort, task, or ability in the medicated condition and more to not taking a pill in the not-medicated condition. The potential risks and benefits for parent–child interactions and children's self-perceptions of these medication-related differences in attributions are discussed.     

Positive behavior support: Expanding the application of applied behavior analysis

Positive behavior support (PBS) is an approach to providing services to individuals who exhibit challenging behavior. Since its inception in the early 1990s, PBS has received increasing attention from the behavior-analytic community. Some behavior analysts have embraced this approach, but others have voiced questions and concerns. In this paper we describe the framework of PBS and show that it is consistent with the tenets of behavior analysis. Also, we illustrate how the framework of PBS might be used to guide practitioners and researchers in the field of applied behavior analysis. We hope to demonstrate that PBS offers useful suggestions regarding how applied behavior analysts can design and evaluate effective programs for people with developmental disabilities or behavioral challenges.     

The treatment of neuropathic pain

Neuropathic pain is responsible for a significant amount of the morbidity associated with generalized and focal peripheral neuropathies. It is a consequence of alterations in neuronal function, chemistry, and structure that occur secondary to nerve injury. These manifestations of neuronal plasticity occur in the peripheral nerve, spinal cord, and brain. A variety of agents from diverse pharmacologic classes, the so-called adjuvant analgesics, have been used to treat neuropathic pain. These include antidepressants, first- and second-generation anticonvulsants, antiarrhythmic agents, topical agents, N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor antagonists, and opioid analgesics. The use of these adjuvant analgesics, either alone or in combination, should result in the alleviation of neuropathic pain in most patients. Recent advances in the understanding of pain mechanisms at multiple central nervous system levels should pave the way toward more effective treatment modalities.     

Graduate training and the treatment of suicidal clients: the students' perspective

Existing literature suggests that graduate programs may not provide adequate training in working with suicidal clients. Therefore, we surveyed 238 predoctoral psychology interns and assessed the prevalence of clients engaging in suicidal behaviors and the amount of formal training in managing suicidal clients received. Results showed approximately 5% of participants indicated a client suicide and 99% indicated they had treated at least one suicidal client during their graduate training. In contrast, results demonstrated only 50% of the participants reported attending programs where formal training was offered. These findings suggest a continued need for increased formal training in managing suicidal clients in graduate psychology programs.     

The depth and selectivity of suppression in binocular rivalry

Binocular rivalry occurs when the two eyes are presented with incompatible stimuli and the perceived image alternates between the two stimuli. The aim of this study was to find out whether the periodic perceptual loss of a monocular stimulus during binocular rivalry is mirrored by a comparable loss of contrast sensitivity. We presented brief test stimuli to one eye while its conditioning stimulus was dominant or suppressed. The test stimuli were varied widely across four stimulus domains--namely, the relative stimulation of medium- and long-wavelength-sensitive cones, duration, spatial frequency, and grating orientation. The result in each case was the same. Suppression depended slightly or not at all on the type of test stimulus, and contrast sensitivity during suppression was around 64% of that during dominance. The effect of suppression on sensitivity is therefore very weak, relative to its effect on the perceived image. Furthermore, suppression was largely independent of the similarity between the conditioning and the test stimuli, indicating that our results are better explained by eye suppression than by stimulus suppression. A model is presented to account for the small, monocular sensitivity loss during suppression: It assumes that test detection precedes conditioning stimulus perception in the visual pathway.