Interaction Between Visually and Kinesthetically Triggered Voluntary Responses

A voluntary motor response that is prepared in advance of a stimulus may be triggered by any sensory input. This study investigated the combination of visual and kinesthetic inputs in triggering voluntary torque responses. When a visual stimulus was presented alone, subjects produced a fast and accurate increase in elbow flexion torque. When a kinesthetic stimulus was presented instead of the visual stimulus, subjects produced a similar response with a reduced response latency. When a visual stimulus was presented in combination with a kinesthetic stimulus, subjects initiated their responses after either a visual or a kinesthetic response latency, depending on the relative timing of the two stimuli. An analysis of response amplitude suggested that when visual and kinesthetic stimuli were combined, both stimuli triggered a response. The results are more consistent with a simple behavioral model of addition of visual and kinesthetic responses (which predicts that the response to combined stimuli should be the sum of individual responses) than with a model of exclusion of one response (which predicts that the response to combined stimuli should be identical to either the visual or the kinesthetic response). Because addition of visually and kinesthetically triggered responses produced a response with an erroneously large amplitude, it is suggested that visual and kinesthetic inputs are not always efficiently integrated.     

Loneliness: Lost in the Landscape of Meaning

The present study is an examination of sex differences in the sources of annoyance that partners in close relationships might experience as a result of each other's behavior. To test hypotheses derived from S. E. Cross and L. Madson's (1997) self-construal theory and from D. M. Buss's (1989) evolutionary psychology-based model, men and women of varying ages and educational levels were asked to rate how annoyed they would be with each of 13 potentially annoying behaviors of their intimate partner. Results were consistent with self-construal theory in that relationship-threatening behaviors were more annoying to women than to men and autonomy threatening behaviors were more annoying to men than to women. Results were also consistent with evolutionary psychology in that aggressive behaviors were more annoying to women than to men and sexual withholding was relatively more annoying to men than to women. Sex differences in annoyance with relationship-threatening, autonomy-threatening, and reproductive strategy behaviors were independent of age and education level, although these factors did affect respondents' annoyance when partners were unemotional, sloppy, or pleased with their own appearance. Results showed that sources of annoyance in intimate relationships should not only be studied from an evolutionary perspective but from the perspectives of social, personality, and developmental psychology as well.     

Relationship of Maudsley Obsessional-Compulsive Inventory Subscales with Negative Priming

The relationship between the 4 subscales (Checking, Cleaning, Doubting, Slowness) and total score of the Maudsley Obsessional-Compulsive Inventory (MOCI) and performance in a negative-priming task and a response-speed task in 102 undergraduates was examined. Only Cleaning subscale performance correlated with magnitude of negative priming. Performance on the Checking, Slowing, and Doubting subscales was not significantly related to the magnitude of negative priming. The not significant correlation between Checking score and negative priming magnitude supports the findings of Maki, O'Neill, and O'Neill (1994), who observed that compulsive checking (of, e.g., whether the stove is turned off) appeared to be unrelated to deficiencies in inhibitory control. The present results are not, however, consistent with the view that obsessive-compulsive characteristics (as measured by the MOCI) result in a disruption in and a reduction of inhibitory control (Enright & Beech, 1993).     

Memory Drum Theory

Two experiments investigated the memory drum theory’s prediction (Henry & Rogers, 1960) that simple reaction time (SRT) increased with the complexity of the response to be initiated. Experiment 1 (N = 9) matched the Experiment 1, Group 1, SRT condition described by Henry and Rogers. Results of Experiment 1 replicated those of Henry and Rogers and indicated that the memory drum theory’s prediction of increased SRT as a function of increased complexity of response was tenable. Experiment 2 (N = 11) tested the effects of anatomical unit, extent, and target size on SRT, premotor time, and motor time. The results supported the contention that alternative explanations for SRT were possible. With complexity constant, increases in anatomical unit lead to increases in SRT, but only in the motor time component which indicated electromechanical rather than neuromotor program delays. It is proposed that the increased motor time could be explained by peripheral events such as the duration maximum torque must be applied by the agonist muscle(s) to generate the angular acceleration required to initiate rapid movement. SRT, premotor time, and motor time increased when target size was reduced from 6.35 cm to .79 cm. The increased premotor time could be a function of the determining of new equilibrium points for the elbow joint during response initiation. No effects on SRT were observed for extent.     

Mapping Teacher-Faces

This paper uses Deleuze and Guattari's concept of faciality to analyse the teacher's face. According to Deleuze and Guattari, the teacher-face is a special type of face because it is an 'overcoded' face produced in specific landscapes. This paper suggests four limit-faces for teacher faciality that actualise different mixes of signifiance and subjectification in a classroom in which individualisation and massifications are affected. Understanding these limit-faces suggests new ways to conceive the affects actualised in the classroom that are subjected to increasing levels of surveillance from education policy makers. Through this ‘partial mapping’ new possibilities emerge to “escape the face”.     

Facing Down the Representation of An Impossibility: Indigenous Responses to a ‘Universal’ Problem in the Repatriation Context

This paper explores the ways Native Americans and Native Hawiians have responded to what Ernesto Laclau has called ‘the representation of an impossibility’—the discursive crisis faced by non-dominant groups who seek to advance rights claims in ways that are culturally rooted but universally audible to ideologically dominant audiences. Taking the NAGPRA law of 1990 as its case study, this paper asserts the need for a re-theorisation of indigenous religious discourse in order to illuminate the ways native peoples build rather than concede agency through self-representations in the current political moment. Pursuing this argument, the paper charts an analytical course specifying the relationship of rights claims to discourse, hegemony, articulation, tradition, and religion. The paper then focuses upon specific examples of religious claims in the context of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to demonstrate the ways Native Americans have faced down an ‘impossibility’.     

Intervening response events between identification targets do not always turn repetition benefits into repetition costs

When there is a relatively long interval between two successive stimuli that must be detected or localized, there are robust processing costs when the stimuli appear at the same location. However, when two successive visual stimuli that must be identified appear at the same location, there are robust same location costs only when the two stimuli differ in their responses; otherwise same location benefits are observed. Two separate frameworks that inhibited attentional orienting and episodic integration, respectively, have been proposed to account for these patterns. Recent findings hint at a possible reconciliation between these frameworks—requiring a response to an event in between two successive visual stimuli may unmask same stimulus and same location costs that are otherwise obscured by episodic integration benefits in identification tasks. We tested this hybrid account by integrating an intervening response event with an identification task that would otherwise generate the boundary between same location benefits and costs. Our results showed that the intervening event did not alter the boundary between location repetition benefits and costs nor did it reliably or unambiguously reverse the common stimulus-response repetition benefit. The findings delimit the usefulness of an intervening event for disrupting episodic integration, suggesting that effects from intervening response events are tenuous. The divide between attention and feature integration accounts is delineated in the context of methodological and empirical considerations.     

Early mathematics achievement trajectories: English-language learner and native English-speaker estimates, using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey

This study used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999, to (a) estimate mathematics achievement trends through 5th grade in the population of students who are English-language proficient by the end of kindergarten, (b) compare trends across primary language groups within this English-language proficient group, (c) evaluate the effect of low socioeconomic status (SES) for English-language proficient students and within different primary language groups, and (d) estimate language-group trends in specific mathematics skill areas. The group of English-language proficient English-language learners (ELLs) was disaggregated into native Spanish speakers and native speakers of Asian languages, the 2 most prevalent groups of ELLs in the United States. Results of multilevel latent variable growth modeling suggest that primary language may be less salient than SES in explaining the mathematics achievement of English-language proficient ELLs. The study also found that mathematics-related school readiness is a key factor in explaining subsequent achievement differences and that the readiness gap is prevalent across the range of mathematics-related skills.     

Pascal’s Wager and the Nature of God

This paper argues that Pascal’s formulation of his famous wager argument licenses an inference about God's nature that ultimately vitiates the claim that wagering for God is in one’s rational self-interest. Specifically, it is argued that if we accept Pascal’s premises, then we can infer that the god for whom Pascal encourages us to wager is irrational. But if God is irrational, then the prudentially rational course of action is to refrain from wagering for him.