Voice Onset Time in Ataxic Dysarthria

In eight patients with a purely ataxic syndrome due to cerebellar atrophy the voice onset time (VOT) of word-initial stop consonants was measured at the acoustic signal. The subjects had been asked to produce sentence utterances including either one of the German minimal pair cognates “Daten” (/datn/, “data”) and “Taten” (/tatn/, “deeds”). In addition, a master tape comprising the target words from patients and controls in randomized order was played to six listeners for perceptual evaluation. Two major findings emerged. First, the cerebellar subjects presented with a reduced categorical distinction of the VOT of voiced and unvoiced stop consonants. Second, the patients' target words with initial unvoiced plosive gave rise to a significantly increased number of misassignments at perceptual evaluation. To some extent comparable VOT disruptions have been noted in apraxia of speech and basal ganglia disorders. Thus, different pathomechanisms might result in similar VOT abnormalities.     

An experimental study of social performance and delay on the testimonial validity of story recall

Sixty adults from the city of Linz took part in this experiment. They read a story—The War of the Ghosts—in pairs, and were required to reproduce it either jointly, in dyads, or singly, and either immediately following or one week later. In addition they were asked a number of specific questions about the story, and gave various ratings of confidence and completeness. As predicted, social (dyadic) performance increased confidence, completeness and the incidence of implicational errors (errors which do not contradict the original). Delay significantly diminished confidence. Analyses of confidence for right and wrong answers indicated that subjective testimonial validity was substantial in all conditions. Analyses of objective testimonial validity showed that dyads are more trustworthy than individuals when they are correct, but are less trustworthy when they happen to be wrong. They overall conjidence I accuracy correlation across conditions of +0.6 masks the fact that the greatest obstacle to valid testimony is inappropriate confidence in wrong answers, especially in dyads, and especially immediately after the event. The incidence of implicational errors was highly related positively to measures of confidence and accuracy, whereas confusional errors were independent. Implicational errors are regarded as an especially important element in schematic recall, and are an important aspect of the superiority of social performance.     

The effects of levels-of-processing and organization on conceptual implicit memory in the category exemplar production test

The distinction between item-specific and relational information (Hunt & Einstein, 1981) may be relevant to accounts of conceptual priming in the category exemplar production task. In three experiments, the implications of this hypothesis were tested by examining the effects of organization and levels-of-processing (LOP) on this implicit test. Consistent with the hypothesis, the effects of LOP were greater when study lists were organized by category than when they were presented randomly. Furthermore, when subjects claiming test awareness or intentional retrieval were excluded from the analysis, the LOP effect was reduced (and, in fact, eliminated) in the random list condition but remained robust in the categorized condition. Finally, the experimental design of the LOP manipulation (i.e., mixed-list within, blocked-list within, or between subjects) did not moderate the effects of LOP on this priming task.     

Religious roots of antisemitism

In agreement with Freud, the author characterizes the unconscious structure of ecclesiastic and of contemporary racist anti-Semitism as paranoid projections of unconscious guilt feelings and of profound narcissistic injury. Chasseguet-Smirgel's thesis concerning the perverse character of anti-Semitism and Ostow's attempt to relate anti-Semitism to apocalyptic ideas are discussed as well.     

Effects of bonuses for punctuality on the tardiness of industrial workers

This study evaluated the effectiveness of an incentive procedure designed to increase the punctuality of six workers who were chronically late to work in a manufacturing company. The six workers in the experiment received a 2.00 pesos ($0.16 U.S.) bonus for every day that they arrived on time. A reversal design was used. The contingent bonuses increased the workers' rates of punctuality compared to their baseline rates. A control group of six workers observed during the same 77-week period showed a trend toward decreasing punctuality. These results suggest that the use of small daily bonuses is a practical procedure for modifying chronic tardiness among industrial workers.     

Dynamismus und atomismus-die beiden systeme der physik in der 1. H?lfte des 19. Jahrhunderts

Ohne ZusammenfassungVortrag beim Kolloquium Zur Struktur und Entwicklung naturwissenschaftlicher Theorien am 23. November 1975 in München.     

Visual search for size-defined target objects is modulated by the Ebbinghaus apparent-size illusion: facilitatory and inhibitory effects of the context objects

Five experiments were carried out to investigate under which conditions the apparent size of objects is computed and exploited optimally in visual search for size-defined targets. Observers searched for a target test circle that was retinally larger than the distractor test circles, with both types of circles surrounded by context circles modulating the apparent size of the test circles (Ebbinghaus illusion). RTs were the faster the better test circles could be differentiated from the context circles, ie with smaller numbers of context circles, larger distances, and higher lightness (or colour) contrast between test and context circles. Apparent-size modulation had a strong influence on search RTs, resulting in faster RTs with smaller, and slower RTs with larger, context circles. A model assuming overall facilitatory effects of the apparent-size modulation and interference effects arising from decreasing test-context circle discriminability can explain the present results.