Motor-motor adaptation: preliminary findings

This study investigated the relationship between speech perception and speech production. An experimental technique called motor-motor adaptation was devised. Subjects produced a speech token repeatedly (20 to 40 repetitions), then produced a second token one time. These tokens all contained stop consonants and were subsequently analyzed for voice onset time. The results paralleled previous findings using the experimental procedure, perceptuomotor adaptation. The present study supports the notion of a perception-production link.     

Differential visual field-interhemispheric transfer: can it explain sex and handedness differences in lateralization?

104 men and women were tested for visual field-hemispheric transfer of spatial information on a dot-localization task. Right-handed subjects showed significant improvement when stimuli were presented to the left visual field of the right hemisphere (LVF-RH) after practice on the same task presented to the right visual field of the left hemisphere (RVF-LH) first. No improvement was found when the task was presented in the reverse order (LVF-RH first followed by RVF-LH). It was concluded that, for right-handers, transfer of spatial information to the right hemisphere is facilitated while transfer to the left hemisphere is inhibited. Left-handed subjects demonstrated no significant improvement in either condition, suggesting inhibition or lack of transfer of spatial information in either direction. No sex differences were found in either right-handed or left-handed subjects. The findings suggest that there may be different mechanisms underlying the similarities in functional lateralization of women and left-handers.     

THE PASSIONATE MIND: BRAIN, DREAMS, MEMORY, AND SOCIAL CATEGORIES

Abstract. The intellectualist position held by structuralists does not explain the extremes of emotional reaction to the disruption of social categories. An approach from neuroscience based on the functions of the limbic system in the creation of long-term memory through the role of the hippocampus and REM sleep is proposed to account for the emotive loading of cognitive categories.     

Schedule-induced behavior in hyperactive children

A schedule-induced behavior paradigm was used to investigate the activity patterns of hyperactive children in a standardized situation. In Experiment I, 10 hyperactive and 10 normal control children matched for age, sex, and IQ were observed under conditions of baseline and schedule. Measures of a number of categorized activities were taken on a time-sampling basis. Hyperactive children were more active than controls in baseline and did not respond to the schedule, unlike the controls who became significantly more active in schedule conditions. In Experiment II, 12 hyperactive and 6 normal children were again subjected to the same experimental paradigm, but in two of the four experimental sessions the stimulant drug methylphenidate was administered in an attempt to reduce the amount of baseline activity. Results were substantially similar to those of Experiment I, with hyperactive children more active than controls in baseline and insensitive to the schedule. There was no overall effect of drug administration on the behavior of either group. There were some ratedependent effects of both drug and schedule conditions.     

The relation of nAch to extraversion,emotional instability and level of anxiety in people of different social status and success

Questionnaires of personality (Psychoticism, Extraversion, Neuroticism and Lie scales) and anxiety, together with a questionnaire for measuring need for achievement (nAch), were administered to a Bulgarian population consisting of four groups: gifted and talented high-school students, and eminent industrialists, artists etc. Correlations were observed between nAch but these differed between groups, an explanation required the recognition of the socially recognized success of the individual on his responses. A theoretical explanation of the findings is given in terms of the theories of Leontiev and Ananiev.     

Hierarchy as a Mediator of Fairness: A Contingency Approach to Distributive Justice in Organizations1

Employees of one organization were asked to indicate the fairness of six different ways of allocating a hypothetical lump sum. As expected, the results suggest an overall preference for equity-based allocations. However, the employee's level in the hierarchy was found to mediate perceptions of fairness: upper managers viewed organization-wide equity as being most fair; middle managers saw intra-departmental equity as fairest; and clericals, unable to differentiate between equality and equity, perceived both these principles as being fairest. The results were interpreted in terms of a “contingency” approach to distributive justice which aims at integrating institutional, situational, and individual determinants of fairness.     

Direct quantitative judgments of sums and a two-stage model for psychophysical judgments

Judged magnitudes of differences between stimuli have previously been shown to support a two-stage interpretation of magnitude estimation, in which input transformations and output transformations are each describable as power functions. In an effort to provide support for the model independent of the difference estimation procedure. the present investigation employed two additional judgment tasks. We obtained magnitude judgments and category judgments of the combined magnitudes (sums) of paired weights from two groups of Ss. Values of the inferred input exponent k calculated from the two sets of data were very similar and were also remarkably similar to the exponent previously calculated from magnitude estimations of differences between weights. The output exponent calculated from magnitude judgments of sums described a concave upward function; however. the similar function describing category judgments was essentially linear. These results show that the inferred input exponent is not the result of the difference estimation task, and in addition provides support for the contention that the interval scale may be a less biased sensory measure than the magnitude scale. The introduction of an additive constant to the model improved its fit to the data but the rule by which it was introduced made very little difference.     

Binocular fusion: A test of the suppression theory

Binocular fusion may be due to interocular inhibitory suppression, an hypothesis difficult to evaluate by phenomenal inspection. A test probe method (reaction time to a light pulse) was used to measure visual sensitivity during binocular rivalry and fusion. The absence of inhibitory effects during fusion fails to support the suppression theory of fusion.