Antigone's Dilemma: A Problem in Political Membership

I would like to thank Donna Haraway, Barrie Thome, Daniel Scripture and, especially, Peter Euben for their many helpful comments and suggestions on various drafts of this article. I would also like to thank Thelma Francis for her generous support and encouragement.     

Innovations in marriage counseling

Love is the result of reciprocity of one's deepest desires and needs (DDN) being met to a reasonable degree. Marriage is the legalizing of the relationship, with the understanding that the contract to satisfy each other is binding and modifiable from time to time. Marital therapy proceeds in an orderly and logical fashion. The mutual complaints are listed in some detail. To reduce the list as much as possible is the goal of therapy. Some complaints are learned to be ignored, others require confrontation. If comfort is not achieved with these options, separation or divorce is the most frequently used option and calls for RET techniques to reduce reliance on neurotic methods. Several strategies crucial to facilitate change are discussed.     

Computing stress

This article is based on a review of recent literature on “computing stress”; that is, on the psychological stress effects of working with computer systems. Current research into the sources of computer-related stress has tended to concentrate on those employees who operate Visual Display Units (VDUs), either on a full-time professional basis as word-processor (WP) operators, data-entry clerks, secretaries, or those dealing with enquiries from the public; or employees who use the VDU irregularly as part of their other duties. A few studies have looked at specific occupation groups, such as printers (Kalimo & Leppänen, 1985), information technology professionals (programers and analysts), process workers, and college students (Sproull, Kiesler, & Zubrow, 1984). Generally, however, research has been carried out on office workers, more often women, carrying out administrative tasks. An attempt is made to identify those potential work-related stressors that have been isolated by these studies, and also included are criticisms of the general methodologies used in many of them.     

Narrative unity and clinical judgment

Alasdair MacIntyre's recent thinking both about the concept of a practice and the existence of narrative unity in human life raises important questions about how we should view clinical medicine today. Is it possible for clinical medicine to pursue patient well-being in a society (allegedly) afflicted with what he calls ‘modernity’? Here it is argued that MacIntyre's pessimistic view of the individual in contemporary society makes his call for patient autonomy in the clinical setting pointless. Finally, recent work in gerontology is cited to make three points: first, MacIntyre's pessimism about us is too extreme; second, the concept of a ‘fictionalized’ personal history is closer to reality than either MacIntyre's notion of narrative unity or the ideas of his imagined opponent (Sartre); and finally, we should not expect clinical medicine to produce patient well-being, when this is understood narratively.     

A Commodore 64-based experimental psychology laboratory

When used in conjunction with a 6522 interface board, the Commodore 64 (C64) computer can control and precisely time externally generated stimuli. A C64-based experimental psychology laboratory that uses these capabilities is described along with a set of programs that can be used to control experimentation. The pros and cons of using the C64 as a laboratory computer are discussed.     

Decision factors affecting line orientation judgments in the method of single stimuli

Just noticeable differences in orientation are smaller at principal standard orientations than at oblique standard orientations when they are measured with the method of single stimuli. We determined whether this oblique effect is due to an anisotropy in decision factors. A first series of experiments showed that the subjects compare the stimulus with an internal criterion, and that this decision rule is used at all standard orientations. A second series of experiments determined the influence on the oblique effect of nonsensorial variables related to criterion setting. The results strongly suggest that the effect is not due to a criterial noise anisotropy and that criterion-setting processes are similar at principal and oblique standard orientations. The latter conclusion was also supported by an analysis of the sequential stimulus and response dependencies in this task. Hence, it appears that the oblique effect in line orientation discrimination, when it is measured with the method of single stimuli, is due not to decision factors but to a sensorially based anisotropy.     

Effects of flash luminance and positional expectancies on visual response latency

It is well established that human observers respond more quickly to visual targets that appear in expected locations than they do to ones in unexpected locations. These variations in simple reaction time have been attributed to a covert alignment of an attentional mechanism to the expected target location. The present experiments investigated the influence of strength of signal and strength of subject’s positional expectancy on the magnitude of this attentional effect. In the first experiment, target luminance was varied over a range of three log units, and it was found that the effects of luminance were essentially additive with the effect of the positional expectancy (i.e., the attention effect). The second experiment found that the magnitude of visual attention interacts with the information value of the precue used to create the spatial expectancy, although, once again, luminance had additive effects. The resuls are interpreted as indicating that, rather than influencing early visual processing, the act of attending to a spatial location operates fairly late in the detection process.     

Some evidence for correlated separate activation in a simple letter-detection task

This study investigates the separate activation versus coactivation issue for redundant targets in a simple letter-detection paradigm with latency as the dependent variable. The results of a one-response visual-search task are reported. Since, on single-target trials, only the target was presented and no accompanying noise element, no “distraction decrement” caused by irrelevant noise elements (Grice et al., 1984) was to be expected. The data obtained showed a clear redundantsignal effect. Subsequent detailed analysis of the latency data using Miller’s (1982) procedure indicated that the results were consistent with a separate activation model and failed to provide convincing evidence in favor of coactivation models. A further analysis of the data indicated that, in the present study, the separate channels were negatively correlated for a range of fast RTs and positively correlated for intermediate and larger RTs. No evidence in favor of Grice et al.’s (1984) distraction-decrement hypothesis was found. The conclusions of this study are that (1) a separate activation model summarizes the essential features of information processing in this simple visual search task, and (2) no convincing evidence in favor of coactivation in visual search tasks has been reported in the literature up to now.     

The University Of Colorado Meaning Norms

There exist surprisingly few normative lists of word meanings even though homographs—words having single spellings but two or more distinct meanings—are useful in studying memory and language. The meaning norms that are available all have one or more weaknesses, including: (1) the collection of free associates rather than meanings as responses to the stimulus words; (2) the collection of single rather than multiple responses to the stimulus words; (3) the inclusion of only the two most frequently occurring meaning categories, rather than all meaning categories, for the stimulus words; (4) omission of the responses typical of each meaning category; (5) inadequate randomization of the presentation order of the stimulus words; and (6) unpaced presentation of the stimulus words. We have compiled meaning norms for 90 common English words of low, medium, and high concreteness using a methodology designed to correct these weaknesses. Analysis showed that words of medium concreteness have significantly more first-response meanings than do words of either low or high concreteness, lending support to the view that concreteness is a categorical, rather than a continuous, semantic attribute.     

Memory cueing and instructional effects on Wason’s selection task

The present study examined the hypothesis that violation and role-playing instructions are necessary conditions for facilitation on Wason’s selection task and that facilitation due to memory cueing via thematic content is secondary. The results of a factorial experiment employing these factors did not support the hypothesis. Memory cueing was indicated as the primary factor, but violation instructions did increase the amount of facilitation observed. This interactive effect and the nature of facilitation by memory cueing are briefly discussed.