Resource-Allocation Behavior in Complex but Commonplace Tasks

We all face resource-allocation tasks, yet little is known about how people make resource-allocation decisions. Three earlier papers (Langholtz, Gettys, & Foote, 1993, 1994, 1995) established that people can intuitively solve technical two-dimensional resource-allocation problems, where allocations are made on a continuous scale, reaching solutions that approach the optimum solution determined with Linear Programming (LP). In this research we expand our understanding of how people make resource-allocation decisions by examining how people perform complex but commonplace problems using a discrete scale where optimal solutions are determined with Integer Programming. We also contrast performance under conditions where progressively unequal scheduling is required to reach the optimum solution. The data show people can achieve solutions that provide most of the payoffs found with LP, even when they are faced with a complicated three-dimensional problem, but there is a tendency toward equal scheduling under all conditions.     

Epistemic Normativity, Argumentation, and Fallacies

In Biro and Siegel (1992) we argued that a theory of argumentation mustfully engage the normativity of judgments about arguments, and we developedsuch a theory. In this paper we further develop and defend our theory.     

New Roles for Rhetoric: From Academic Critique to Civic Affirmation

The classical conception of rhetoric as the method of reasoned political judgment survived into the Renaissance but was reduced to academic critiques of style and "empty" public rhetoric with the rise of modern science and its representationalist theories of language. Recently, however, rhetoric, textuality, and the "linguistic turn" generally, have become central metaphors in the human sciences. This renewed rhetorical perspective not only fosters a critique of positive philosophy and of scientism in public discourse, it also offers affirmative methods by which persons can construct their civic lives.     

Stress and family support as predictors of distress and rejection in people who care for a relative with schizophrenia

Relatives (N=121) of adult schizophrenia patients were interviewed to investigate predictors of their level of psychological distress and of rejecting attitudes toward the sufferer. The relatives' total stress, particularly that associated with poor communication skills in the sufferer, predicted several measures of their psychological distress, and the same variables plus turbulence of sufferer behavior (i.e., violence and disruptiveness) predicted rejection of the sufferer by the relative. In each case, adequacy of family support moderated the influence of the stressors, although this effect was more marked for distress outcomes than for rejection. The results have important implications for the sorts of professional and peer support which relatives may need to encourage their performance of this potentially burdensome role. In addition, the results fit a classic stress management model and provide a feasible alternative to the Expressed Emotion Model of the relationship between relatives' rejection and patients' illness severity.     

Dual-career Couples: The Selection Dilemma in International Relocation

No one factor could have as great an impact on multinational corporations (MNCs) than the dual-career phenomena. The selection of expatriate candidates is a complex process made more arduous by the career orientation of the expatriate's spouse. The need for a social support network is essential for the dual-career family to increase the probability of successfully completing an expatriate assignment.     

Career change and congruence of personality type: An examination of DOT-derived work environment designations

Holland's theory of congruence of work environments was examined by analyzing the career redirection of 62 men of managerial and professional level who changed occupations between the ages of 33 and 54. Three-letter personality codes for each subject were obtained by administering the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory. Dictionary of Occupational Titles codes for first and second occupation were obtained and then translated into Holland codes. These were compared to the personality code for each man to determine whether the first or second job was more congruent. It was found that 26 men changed to careers more congruent with their personality, 25 to careers less congruent, and 11 made no change. The results of the study do not lend support to Holland's theory, probably because of the imprecision of DOT categories for research purposes. The need for a more reliable means for coding work environments is discussed.     

The effects of graphemic,phonetic, and semantic relationships on access to lexical structures

The question of whether or not lexical information is accessed directly from a visual code or by a process of phonetic mediation was investigated in three lexical decision experiments. Phonetic similarity influenced decisions about visually presented words only when they were to be discriminated from orthographically regular nonwords. When consonant strings or random letter strings were used as nonwords, phonetic similarity effects were absent, and graphemic similarity exerted a powerful effect while evidence of semantic priming was found. This pattern was interpreted as evidence of direct lexical access, which is probably the normal processing mode for skilled readers. Phonetic coding, when it occurs, may be a storage strategy rather than a part of the addressing chain for lexical structures.     

Visual texture perception and Fourier analysis

The relationship between the Fourier spectra of visual textures (represented by four hypothetical visual channels sensitive to spatial frequencies) and the perceptual appearance of the textures was investigated. Thirty textures were synthesized by combining various spatial frequencies of different amplitudes. Twenty subjects grouped the textures into 2, 3, 4, and 5 groups based on the similarity of their appearance. The groupings were analyzed by means of linear discriminant analysis using the activity of the four channels as predictor variables. The groupings were also examined by multidimensional scaling, and the resulting stimulus configuration was canonically correlated with the channel activity. The results of both analyses indicate a strong relationship between the perceptual appearance of the textures and their Fourier spectra. These findings suport a multiple-channel spatial-frequency model of perception.     

Dichotic sequence discrimination: The effect of continued practice

Summary Dichotic sequence discrimination was studied by means of a three-alternative forced-choice method. Two of the alternatives (same) consisted of a single pair of dichotic clicks with the stimulus at one ear preceding the stimulus at the other ear by a given temporal separation (e.g., R-t-L). One of the alternatives consisted of a single pair of clicks with the opposite sequence (e.g., L-t-R). The subjects' task was to discriminate between the different and the same dichotic pairs. The results indicate that discrimination is a nonmonotonic function of t, i.e., V- or U-shaped, with high levels at both short and long temporal separations (t=2 and 4 ms and t=64 and 96 ms) and with lower levels of discrimination for intermediate ts. A second experiment was performed to study the effect of continued practice by subjects trained in dichotic sequence discrimination for ts 4 and 64 ms (high discrimination levels) and for t=16 ms (low discrimination level). There was no systematic trend towards improvement over 8 blocks of 50 trials for each t. Discrimination levels of these ts did not differ between Experiments 1 and 2.Dr. Babkoff is spending the 1979–1981 academic year at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Department of Military Medical Psychophysiology, Forest Glen Annex, Building 189, Washington, D.C. 20012, USAThe experiments were conducted at the Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel. The authors would like to thank the Bar-Ilan Research Committee for making funds available to conduct the experimentsThis material has been reviewed by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, and there is no objection to its presentation and/or publication. The opinions or assertions contained herein are the private views of the authors and are not to be construed as official or as reflecting the views of the Department of the Army or the Department of Defense     

Apple II/FIRST system control of electrical brain stimulation in the rabbit

An Apple II/FIRST system has been developed to control classical conditioning experiments, collect analog data, and extract dependent variable measures of conditioning from uniphasic (Scandrett & Gormezano, 1980) and multiphasic (Johnson, 1981) response signals. The present paper details the development of an electrical brain stimulation system as a peripheral device to the Apple II/FIRST system. In addition, data are presented that document the capabilities of the EBS system to concurrently stimulate up to eight animals while values along the dimension of each of four stimulation parameters are manipulated by a program written in FIRST. In our judgment, the EBS system has a number of advantages over currently available commercial stimulators, including cost, number of sites that can be independently stimulated, and availability of complete software control.