Dynamic Stability of Behavior: The Rhythms of Our Interpersonal Lives

The authors examined whether variations in day-to-day estimates of personality characteristics, which are often treated as error, are instead predictable and meaningful. Using event-sampling and spectral analysis, they found that variations in interpersonal behavior over weekly periods were cyclic and normative. Dominant, submissive, agreeable, and quarrelsome behaviors rose during the week and fell on the weekend. The more general dimensions of agency and communion exhibited opposite patterns of cyclicity, with agency rising and communion falling during the week. Interpersonal traits were not useful in predicting behavior cyclicity. Extraverts exhibited a daily cycle, partially mediated by more varied partners and social behaviors during evenings. Findings are discussed with reference to conceptions of personality expression as dynamic yet stable processes.     

Transformations of the Concept of Reason

This outline of the transformations of the concept of reason is based on the idea that this can be presented/illustrated by means of a historical sketch of the criticism of reason, because all essential differentiations in that concept can be understood as consequences of critical arguments. In Kant's work, the Critique of Speculative Reason reaches its first conclusion; it was followed by a Critique of Critical Reason by Hegel and his followers, and Schopenhauer established a new type of critical argument: the Critique of Functional Reason which dominates the radical criticism of reason in our time. This radical criticism is the great challenge for the philosophy of reason today.     

Pattern recognition makes search possible: Comments on Holding (1992)

Chase and Simon's chunking theory of expert memory, which emphasizes the role of pattern recognition in problem solving, has attracted much attention in cognitive psychology. Holding advanced a series of criticisms that, taken together, purported to refute the theory. Two valid criticisms – that chunk size and LTM encoding were underestimated – are dealt with by a simple extension of the theory. The remainder of Holding's criticisms either are not empirically founded or are based on a misunderstanding of the chunking theory and its role in a comprehensive theory of skill. Holding's alternative SEEK theory, which emphasizes the role of search, lacks key mechanisms that could be implemented by the type of pattern recognition proposed by Chase and Simon. Received: 3 September 1997 / Accepted: 28 January 1998     

Sufficient conditions for the discrimination of motion

When one half of a randomly contoured pattern is displaced in one of four directions between successive exposures, Ss are capable of discriminating the direction of the displacement. Accuracy of discriminating decreases as a function of the relative displacement within the pattern, independent of the visual angle subtended by the pattern. Supplementary data suggest that Ss are unrealistically confident in the accuracy of their discrimination. The results demonstrate that identification of specific contours is not necessary for the discrimination of motion and suggest that some type of correlational process is employed by the visual system in dealing with spatially and temporally displaced patterns.     

A simulation of memory for chess positions

This paper describes an information-processing model, MAPP, implemented as a computer program, that simulates the processes subjects use to remember and reproduce chess positions they have seen briefly. The model incorporates processes adapted from PERCEIVER, an information-processsing theory of eye movements in chess perception, and EPAM, a theory of rote verbal learning. The data from MAPP show good agreement with the performance of strong chess players in identical tasks.     

The effects of viscosity upon perceived sweetness

U.S. Army Natick Laboratories, Natick, Massachusetts 01760 Six concentrations of sucrose and six concentrations of sodium saccharin were presented as stimuli to 30 Ss. The concentrations were equally spaced logarithmically, covering a 32: I range for each solute. The 12 aqueous solutions were presented at four levels of viscosity, ranging approximately from I to 10,000 centipoises, with sodium carboxymethylcellulose (cellulose gum) as the thickening agent. Magnitude estimates indicate that perceived sweetness decreases with viscosity. In log-log coordinates the Viscosity-sweetness relation is roughly linear with a negative slope, suggesting that sweetness of both sodium saccharin and sucrose varies as a power function of viscosity, with an exponent between ?.20 and ?.25.     

The design and operation of an improved olfactometer for behavioral and physiological investigation1

An improved olfactometer is described, and its range of application for the study of the olfaction in man is discussed. The apparatus is based on air dilution; an odorant is diluted in a constant-flowing stream of air. The odor-containing air flows to S, who is seated in an enclosed partition with his head in a Plexiglas hood. A visual signal system allows communication between E and S. Precision flowmeters, solenoid valves, one-way floats, and an automated control system permit E to select rapidly a large range of stimuli, stimulus concentrations, and trial lengths. The apparatus has been used in a variety of situations ranging from absolute threshold detection to adaptation and recovery.