Five minutes after death: A study of beliefs and expectations

This paper examines the beliefs and expectations that a sample of 508 people hold about the first five minutes after death. A substantial minority believed that they will experience the main elements of the neardeath experience (NDE). In general these elements were cited more frequently than were Biblical images. Six percent of the sample said that postmortem survival for them will be a negative and disturbing experience. We discuss these results in terms of their methodological implications for other survey work and their theoretical contribution toward our understanding of negative NDEs.     

Punitiveness in response to films varying in content: A cross-national field study of aggression

Punitiveness in male movie-goers in London, Philadelphia, Rome and Toronto was measured before or after they attended films varying in content (aggressive, sexual, neutral) and arousal potential (low, high). A second dependent variable, altruism, was also assessed for some Ss. Hypotheses stemming from social learning theory and arousal theory were tested by comparing changes in punitiveness at aggressive, nonaggressive arousing (sexual) and nonaggressive nonarousing (neutral) films. At aggressive films there was an increase in punitiveness whereas a reduction in punitiveness was found at neutral films. Sexual films led to a smaller (nonsignificant) increase in punitiveness than aggressive films. The findings implied that arousal was a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for increasing punitiveness. There were no significant cross-national differences in response to the films. Since the results did not generalize to other, nonaggressive responses, the film effects may be aggression-specific. Two additional findings in the U.S. sample were that urban Ss were more punitive than rural Ss and that the length of urban residency correlated negatively with altruism.     

Changes in nonprofessional mental health workers' response preference and attitudes as a function of training and supervised field experience

Nonprofessional mental health workers in a program for early detection and prevention of school maladaptation in children were compared to demographically similar controls on changes in attitudes and clinical response style after 12 didactic training sessions and 3$\text{1}\text{2}$ months of supervised field experience. There were no attitude change differences between aides and controls. Aides, however, came to favor “understanding” responses significantly more, and “rejecting” responses less, than controls. Interpretively, some combination of training, experience, and supervision increased aide knowledgeability without diminishing warmth and spontaneity.     

Discrimination of third-order Markov constraints within visual displays

Discrimination thresholds were measured for third-order Markov constraints within visual displays. The method permits the cancellation of adjacent second-order differences and of first-order differences. Excellent discrimination of third-order constraints is obtained despite the fact that the average conditional repetition probability and the average run length were invariant. The need to distinguish between local short-term and average long-term analyses for the visual system is briefly discussed.     

Detection of changes in spatial position: Short-term visual memory or motion perception?

The limiting conditions for short-term visual memory were explored for materials which are not readily codable. Two fields of random dots were presented successively in time. On half of the observations, the second display was identical to the first, and on the other half, a fraction of the dots was displaced relative to the first display. The task of the S was to indicate if any of the dots had moved (displacement detection), and in separate tests, if any of the dots had not moved (stationarity detection). Stationarity and displacement detection are largely related to the same variables, although performance is somewhat better with displacement detection. Discrimination of small displacements is critically dependent upon the interval between displays, with maximum accuracy in the region of 64 msec for briefly presented displays. Maximum accuracy is obtained under conditions which yield good apparent motion. By contrast, displacement discrimination is, within limits, relatively independent of the number of dots displayed, of the fraction of displaced dots.     

A nonparametric procedure for evaluation of true and false positives

A procedure is presented for the evaluation of single-point estimates of true and false positives without strong underlying parametric assumptions. The method is based upon the area operating characteristic and the Green area rule. Estimates of sampling error are also available. The procedure is extended to a strong one-parameter relation between true and false positives.     

Out-of-Body experiences in the blind

The theoretical significance of out-of-body experiences in blind people is explored. In this context I report results of a survey of a small sample of blind adults. It is concluded that we have yet to locate a case of an out-of-body experience in the blind that has critical implications for the interpretation of the experience among the general population.Acknowledgement hereby is given to the efforts of Margaret Kerr, Coordinator of Field Services for the Royal Blind Society of New South Wales, Australia, in supervising the collection of data reported in this paper.     

Social support of children of divorce: Direct and stress buffering effects

This study examined the direct and stress-buffering effects of support from family adults, nonfamily adults, family children, and nonfamily children on the adjustment of 104 children of divorce. For children's reports of adjustment, significant stress-buffering (i.e., Stress x Support) interactions for support from family adults and support from nonfamily adults occurred. The lower the level of social support, the stronger the positive relation between stress and adjustment problems. In addition, at high levels of stress, children with high support from nonfamily and family adults reported fewer adjustment problems than did children with low support. However, at the lowest level of stress, children with high support from nonfamily adults were significantly more poorly adjusted than were children with low support. For parental reports of children's adjustment, support from family adults was marginally positively related to adjustment whereas support from nonfamily adults was inversely related to adjustment. Implications for intervention programs for children of divorce are discussed.     

The effect of lateral visual fixation on response latency to verbal and spatial questions

The results of several studies have suggested a relationship between lateral eye movements and contralateral hemispheric activation or ipsilateral inhibition. The present study investigated the effects of lateral and central eye fixation on response latency to verbal and spatial questions. Response latencies for verbal questions were significantly longer when subjects fixated to the left or centrally, as compared to the right. On spatial questions, response latencies were significantly longer in the right fixation condition than in the other conditions. The results indicate that visual fixation ipsilateral to hemispheric activation is related to slower problem solving, and suggest that eye movements during cognitive activity may have functional significance.