Infant lightness perception: do 4-month-old infants follow Wallach's ratio rule?

When adults view a test disk embedded in a higher-luminance surround, the perceived lightness of the disk is largely determined by the surround-to-disk (S/D) luminance ratio (Wallach's ratio rule). Performance of 4-month-old infants tested with a forced-choice novelty-preference technique was consistent with predictions based on Wallach's ratio rule. This result suggests that the ability to extract and maintain information about local luminance ratios is present early in infancy. This ability is likely to contribute to the development of lightness constancy.     

Medical slang in British hospitals

The usage, derivation, and psychological, ethical, and legal aspects of slang terminology in medicine are discussed. The colloquial vocabulary is further described and a comprehensive glossary of common UK terms provided in appendix. This forms the first list of slang terms currently in use throughout the British medical establishment.     

Manipulating and recognizing virtual objects: where the action is.

In an earlier report (Harman, Humphrey, & Goodale, 1999), we demonstrated that observers who actively rotated three-dimensional novel objects on a computer screen later showed faster visual recognition of these objects than did observers who had passively viewed exactly the same sequence of images of these virtual objects. In Experiment 1 of the present study we showed that compared to passive viewing, active exploration of three-dimensional object structure led to faster performance on a "mental rotation" task involving the studied objects. In addition, we examined how much time observers concentrated on particular views during active exploration. As we found in the previous report, they spent most of their time looking at the "side" and "front" views ("plan" views) of the objects, rather than the three-quarter or intermediate views. This strong preference for the plan views of an object led us to examine the possibility in Experiment 2 that restricting the studied views in active exploration to either the plan views or the intermediate views would result in differential learning. We found that recognition of objects was faster after active exploration limited to plan views than after active exploration of intermediate views. Taken together, these experiments demonstrate (1) that active exploration facilitates learning of the three-dimensional structure of objects, and (2) that the superior performance following active exploration may be a direct result of the opportunity to spend more time on plan views of the object.     

A delivery system for olfactory stimuli

This paper describes the design of a new method for controlling and administering olfactory stimuli—namely, thehood system. The hood system involves a stream of vaporized odor (at known concentrations) mixed with odorless air and pumped (at a constant flow rate) into an oxygen therapy hood. It is designed to be used with odorants in solution, such as essential oils, as the olfactory stimulus. The use of oxygen therapy hoods allows for the precise control of a constant concentration of odorized air over time, while allowing subjects to breathe normally. The hood system provides a natural administration of olfactory stimuli and the exact determination of the stimulus concentration. The use of this system will allow experimental conditions to be completely defined and results and replication studies to be accurately interpreted. The hood system is portable, cost effective, and constructed from readily available components. It is proposed that the hood system could be adopted to suit a wide range of olfactory research, particularly that in which the effects of chronic exposure to olfactory stimuli on cognition are examined.     

Cerebral asymmetry in visual attention

The traditional view of cerebral lateralization of various cognitive functions has been challenged by results from recent experimental and clinical studies. Evidence has been gathered to suggest that a seemingly unitized cognitive function can be further broken down into various processing subcomponents which are distributed across the two hemispheres. For instance, according to such a more complex conceptualization of cerebral lateralization, language is seen not as a unitary ability, but rather as a collection of syntactic, semantic, and prosodic components, with each lateralized in particular manners. In much the same way, the present study attempts to examine the cerebral lateralization patterns of the seemingly unitary visual perception process. In a visual half-field experiment, 20 normal subjects were asked to make same/different judgments to laterally presented arrays of stimuli of the same type as previously studied by Treisman and her colleagues in experiments attempting to separate the preattentive and attentive stages of visual perception. Hemispheric differences were obtained only in tasks requiring attentive processing (i.e., Treisman's glueing). Results indicate a local attentional strategy for the left hemisphere and a global attentional strategy for the right hemisphere.     

Is it sometimes better to receive than to give? Preferences for receiver roles over proposer roles in consumer behavior ultimatums

In the context of purchasing ultimatums, consumers may dislike the freedom of choice that comes with proposing offers due to their awareness that the other party may have better information than they do and the fact that the attractiveness of outside alternatives is uncertain. Indeed, across three studies, we find that people prefer to receive rather than propose offers. In Study 1, proposers reached fewer agreements and experienced less favorable attitudes (e.g., satisfaction, fairness, recommendation intentions), particularly when their offers were rejected. In Study 2, proposers experienced more uncertainty and cognitive depletion as compared to receivers, again particularly if the proposed offer was rejected. In Study 3, role preferences were explained by the existence of higher regret in the proposer role, particularly if the proposed offer was rejected. We conclude with a consideration of the theoretical and practical implications of our research for scholars, customers, and service providers.     

The Role of Atomic Repertoires in Complex Behavior

Evolution and reinforcement shape adaptive forms and adaptive behavior through many cycles of blind variation and selection, and therein lie their parsimony and power. Human behavior is distinctive in that this shaping process is commonly "short circuited": Critical variations are induced in a single trial. The processes by which this economy is accomplished have a common feature: They all exploit one or more atomic repertoires, elementary units of behavior each under control of a distinctive stimulus. By appropriate arrangements of these discriminative stimuli, an indefinite number of permutations of atomic units can be evoked. When such a permutation satisfies a second contingency, it can come under control of the relevant context, and the explicit arrangement of discriminative stimuli will no longer be required. Consequently, innovations in adaptive behavior can spread rapidly through the population. A consideration of atomic repertoires informs our interpretation of generalized operants and other phenomena that are otherwise difficult to explain. Observational learning is discussed as a case in point.     

Personal reputation in organizations: Two‐study constructive replication and extension of antecedents and consequences

Personal reputation has been argued to demonstrate important influences on work outcomes. However, substantive research on personal reputation is relatively scarce. This two‐study investigation empirically supports and extends existing theory regarding the temporal development of personal reputation (i.e., antecedents and consequences), and thus contributes to a more informed understanding of both the construct and criterion‐related validity of this important construct. Study 1 is conducted longitudinally, in order to assess the development of personal reputation over time, which is undertaken to demonstrate the effects of human capital and social effectiveness as antecedents of reputation. Study 2 complements and extends the first study by conducting a field investigation examining the effects of time, human capital, and social effectiveness as antecedents of personal reputation, while also exploring the reputation consequences of autonomy, power, and career success. Our findings suggest that human capital, time, and social effectiveness play a part in the development of a reputation. Furthermore, career success, power, and autonomy were shown to be outcomes of the reputation construct. Contributions and strengths of this investigation, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.