A DEVELOPMENTAL DEFICIT IN LOCALIZING OBJECTS FROM VISION

Abstract— We describe a college student, A. H., with a developmental deficit in determining the location of objects from vision. The deficit is selective in that (a) localization from auditory or tactile information is intact, (b) A H reports the identity of mislocalized objects accurately, (c) visual localization errors preserve certain parameters of the target location, and (d) visual localization is severely impaired under certain stimulus conditions, but nearly intact under other conditions. These results bear on the representation and processing of location information in the visual system, and also have implications for understanding developmental dyslexia.     

Aspects of preschoolers' comprehension of indoor and outdoor gender-typed toys

Forty-nine 44- to 81-month-old predominantly white children's classification of and clustering in recall of gender-typed indoor and outdoor toys, and their gender schematicity, were assessed. Consistent with predictions, children high in gender schematicity demonstrated significantly greater clustering in their recall by gender type than children low in schematicity. As expected, all children demonstrated more accurate classification of same-sex than other-sex gender-typed toys in general. However, boys and girls showed distinctively different patterns in their abilities to accurately classify same-sex and other-sex indoor and outdoor gender-typed toys. Results are discussed in terms of the different social and play contexts inhabited by preschool boys and girls.Completion of this project was facilitated by funds received when the author was a National Institute of Mental Health Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Denver; Grant 5T32 MH 15780-09, in addition to an Academic Challenge Award from the University of Toledo. This support is gratefully acknowledged. Special thanks to Maryjo Jones for her data collection efforts and to the faculty, children, and parents of Iliff Preschool of Denver, Colorado, and especially to Director Jean True for assisting in the completion of this research. Thanks also to Joan M. Barth, Narina N. Nightingale, Kathy A. Park, and Peg Hull-Smith for their comments on earlier versions of this article. A shorter version of this paper was presented at the Conference on Human Development, Richmond, Virginia, March 1990.To whom reprint requests should be addressed at Department of Psychology, University of Wyoming, P.O. Box 3415, Room 135 Biological Sciences Building, Laramie, WY 82071-3415.     

AN EXPERIMENTAL COMPARISON OF THREE DIFFERENT SCHEDULES OF REINFORCEMENT OF DRUG ABSTINENCE USING CIGARETTE SMOKING AS AN EXEMPLAR

The efficacy of three different schedules of reinforcement for promoting and sustaining drug abstinence was compared in this study. Cigarette smoking was studied as an exemplar of stimulant drug self-administration. Sixty cigarette smokers were assigned to one of three groups (progressive rate of reinforcement, fixed rate of reinforcement, and yoked control). Participants in all three groups were asked to refrain from smoking for 1 week. Participants in the progressive and fixed groups achieved greater mean levels of abstinence than those in the control group. Participants in the progressive group were significantly less likely to resume smoking when they became abstinent than participants in the other groups.     

Boundary regulation in family and personal systems: Perceptions of late adolescents

Examination of boundary regulation can provide family therapists with a framework to describe both the functioning of family systems and personal systems (i.e., the intrapsychic functioning of individual family members). In the present study, late adolescents' perceptions of boundary regulation within their family systems (i.e., ratings of family health, communication, leadership, expressiveness, cohesion, and family conflict) were related to regulation of their personal boundaries (i.e., self-reported personal competence, distress, and patterns of defense mechanism use). In addition, personal system variables reliably discriminated between adolescents who described their families as psychologically healthy versus psychologically unhealthy.     

Laboratory functions for the Tecmar Lab Tender and IBM PC

A set of assembly language functions has been written to interface laboratory software for the IBM PC to the Tecmar, Inc., Lab Tender circuit board. These functions provide convenient access to the Lab Tender’s parallel ports, timers, A/D converters, and D/A converters from laboratory control programs written in the C language.     

Help Seeking: Effects of Visibility of Task Performance and Seeking Help

This study manipulated independently whether help seeking and task performance were public or private, since in public settings persons may lose esteem by seeking help or by demonstrating unsuccessful performance. Subjects were given false feedback that they were doing poorly on a task involving judging levels of neuroticism in others, and were given all opportunity to seek help by consulting a set of guidelines. The main result was an interaction with help seeking most likely when task performance was public and help seeking was private.     

Vocational role choice in second- and sixth-grade children

In a replication of two investigations reported by Looft (1971a, 1971b), 40 second- and sixth-grade male and female students were interviewed concerning their desired and expected vocational aspirations. In contrast to Looft's findings, no significant sex differences were found for either grade level in (a) the number of different (nonoverlapping) vocations nominated or (b) the number of subjects changing initial vocational role choices. When the issue of traditionality of vocational choice (i.e., vocations socially identified with the sex of the subject) was examined, it was found that half of the sixth-grade females interviewed nominated nontraditional vocations (e.g., basketball player, police officer). It was observed further that males in both the second- and sixth-grade samples overwhelmingly nominated traditional vocations. Contrary to Looft's interpretation, the findings suggest that although goals associated with the women's liberation movement (e.g., changes in sex-role expectations) are not demonstrated clearly in the vocational aspirations or expectations of young children, they may be reflected in the aspirations of adolescent females.