The Missouri Children's Picture Series: Correlates of the aggression scale in normal fourth-grade males

Missouri Children's Picture Series (MCPS) Aggression scale scores and four more traditional measures of aggression were intercorrelated for 40 normal fourthgrade boys. Results indicated that the MCPS Aggression scale must be viewed as a highly specific instrument which has little if any usefulness in a public school setting. In addition, the failure of the five aggression measures to be interrelated significantly suggests that aggression may be a highly situational response, with children varying in the modality through which they are able to express aggressive feelings and motives.     

Can Hick's law and Fitts' law be combined?

An attempt was made to combine the two information-theory based laws relating speed and accuracy, Hick's law and Fitts' law, in a task where subjects were asked to repetitively aim at randomly indicated alternative targets from a home position.     

Spatial summation and the dynamics of warmth sensation

Various areal extents of the forehead and back were thermally irradiated at various levels of intensity. For any areal extent, the degree of apparent warmth grows approximately as a power function of intensity level; the larger the area, the smaller the exponent of the power function. Two families of psychophysical functions, one for the forehead, the other for the back, both show that the power functions extrapolate to a point of convergence in the neighborhood of the threshold for pain and tissue impairment. The rules that govern spatial summation of warmth reveal themselvesin the two families. Intensity and area trade one for the other to preserve the same level of warmth. At faint sensation levels, reciprocity is the rule of trading; but with increasing sensation level, area makes a weaker and weaker relative contribution to warmth, and, as a result, it takes a larger and larger percentage change in area to offset a given percentage change in intensity.     

Hemisphere function and vigilance

A vigilance task in which successive signals were presented to one or other hemiretina, and therefore to one or other cerebral hemisphere, revealed no differences between the hemispheres in terms of detections, although detections declined overall during the experimental period. False positive responses also declined, but consistently more arose from the left hemisphere. There was also a difference in the detection of signals received through the nasal and temporal hemiretinae, the temporal hemiretina showing superiority in detection rate throughout the experiment. This finding may provide a new and more economical approach to the tunnel vision phenomenon.     

Occurrence of theoretically correct responses during rotation of the Ames window

It has been hypothesized (Graham, 1963) that reversals in the Ames window are the outcome of a resolution of ambiguous differential angular velocity cues by linear perspective cues. This theory was tested. A parallel projection of the window on an opal glass screen was used as the stimulus. Ss almost always reported two apparent reversals per rotation. The long vertical side of the figure was always apparently in front of the short vertical side. These results were interpreted to be in line with theoretical expectations.     

Temperature can sharpen tactile acuity

The spatial acuity of the skin, as measured by two-point and two-edge limens, depends on the temperature of the objects that are touched. Cooling and warming the objects caused a marked improvement (an average of 41% in six subjects) in the skin’s acuity relative to thermally neutral stimulation. This improvement seems to be closely related to earlier observations that warm and cold objects placed on the skin feel heavier than do thermally neutral objects.     

The logic of ability,freedom and responsibility

The aim of this paper is to offer a rigorous explication of statements ascribing ability to agents and to develop the logic of such statements. A world is said to be feasible iff it is compatible with the actual past-and-present. W is a P-world iff W is feasible and P is true in W (where P is a proposition). P is a sufficient condition for Q iff every P world is a Q world. P is a necessary condition for Q iff Q is a sufficient condition forP. Each individual property S is shown to generate a rule for an agent X. X heeds S iff X makes all his future choices in accordance with S. (Note that X may heed S and yet fail to have it). S is a P-strategy for X iff X's heeding S together with P is a necessary and sufficient condition for X to have S. (P-strategies are thus rules which X is able to implement on the proviso P).Provisional opportunity: X has the opportunity to A provided P iff there is an S such that S is a P-strategy for X and X's implementing S is a sufficient condition for X's doing A. P is etiologically complete iff for every event E which P reports P also reports an etiological ancestry of E, and P is true. Categorical opportunity: X has the opportunity to A iff there is a P such that P is etiologically complete and X has the opportunity to A provided P. For X to have the ability to A there must not only be an appropriate strategy, but X must have a command of that strategy. X steadfastly intends A iff X intends A at every future moment at which his doing A is not yet inevitable. X has a command of S w.r.t. A and P iff X's steadfastly intending A together with P is a sufficient condition for X to implement S. Provisional ability: X can A provided P iff there is an S such that S is a P-strategy for X, X's implementing S is a sufficient condition for X's doing A, and X has a command of S w.r.t. A and P. Categorical ability: X can A iff there is a P such that P is etiologically complete and X can A provided P. X is free w.r.t. to A iff X can A and X can non- A. X is free iff there is an A such that X is free w.r.t. A.