On Alan Turing's anticipation of connectionism

It is not widely realised that Turing was probably the first person to consider building computing machines out of simple, neuron-like elements connected together into networks in a largely random manner. Turing called his networks unorganised machines. By the application of what he described as appropriate interference, mimicking education an unorganised machine can be trained to perform any task that a Turing machine can carry out, provided the number of neurons is sufficient. Turing proposed simulating both the behaviour of the network and the training process by means of a computer program. We outline Turing's connectionist project of 1948.In Memory of Robin Gandy     

Effects of visual familiarity on “same” and “different” decision processes

An experiment was conducted in which subjects matched upper and lower case versions of well-known abbreviations, such as BBC and etc, and meaningless controls. “Same” RT showed a familiarity effect for upper case versions of abbreviations such as BBC and GPO, but not for the lower case versions bbc and gpo. The converse did not occur for abbreviations such as etc, which were thought to occur most frequently in lower case. The “different” RT was inhibited by familiarity, with pairs such as IBM GPO being classified less rapidly than their lower case versions or controls. These effects occurred for subjects instructed to report “No” for “same” displays and “Yes” for “different” displays as well as for subjects given a conventional decision-report assignment. Some implications of these results for an account of the manner in which familiarity affects graphemic comparison processes are considered.     

A neurophysiologic model for aggressive behavior in the cat

A neurophysiologic model for aggessive behavior in the cat is proposed. Stimulus-bound and seizure-bound aggression was evaluated in relation to limbic and basal ganglia induced seizures (after-discharges). Electrically induced limbic and basal ganglia afterdischarges were used because they are known to implicate septohypothalamic sites from which aggression can be elicited by direct stimulation. The occurrence of behavioral aggression is correlated with the discharge characteristics of a single discharging system and with two interacting discharging systems. Aggression is composed of autonomic and somato-motor components which poses relatively low and high thresholds, respectively, for their activation. Aggression occurring during a combined septum and amygdala discharge was more intense and prolonged than with a septum discharge alone. Participation of a slow frequency discharging basal ganglia system activated seizurebound aggression in an otherwise nonaggressive limbic seizure. The limbic and basal ganglia stimulations and after-discharges lowered the excitability threshold of the aggression system and made it more vulnerable to being activated by external stimuli, such as visual and auditory stimuli. These observations are reminiscent of patients with aggressive behavior associated with psychomotor seizures.     

Limbic system seizures and aggressive behavior (superkindling effects)

Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science - This study was done to further analyze the neural mechanisms underlying aggressive behavior associated with psychomotor or temporal lobe seizures....     

Childrens' perceptions of parental expressiveness

While the literature suggests that males are less emotionally expressive than females, the issue has been informed by little systematic research. This article investigates the differences between sons' and daughters' perceptions of their mothers' and fathers' expressiveness of several emotions, both verbally and nonverbally. Using a sample of 1,245 students the dependent variable, perceived expressiveness of parents, was determined from responses to a 16-item Likert-type Perceived Parental Expressiveness Scale (PPES). It was hypothesized that fathers would be perceived to be less expressive than mothers. T tests were used to determine whether the mean differences are significant. The data indicate that fathers are perceived as less expressive of all emotions except physical anger. The ramifications of these findings for sex-role learning are discussed.The research reported in this paper is part of National Institute of Mental Health Grant No. 22156-01, The Inexpressive Male (Jack Balswick, Principal Investigator), University of Georgia. The authors wish to thank Dr. Charles W. Peek for his assistance in the revision of this article.     

Teacher reactions to school-based consultation services: A multivariate analysis

The impact of consultation services on teachers' preferences for consultation versus referral approaches and upon teachers' perceptions of severity for common acting out, withdrawal, and academic types of student problems were investigated. The subjects were 96 teachers whose public and parochial schools were matched and randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. Following a 14-week period during which advanced school psychology graduate students served as consultants in the treatment schools, the Pupil Problem Behavior Inventory (PPBI) was administered to all teachers. The results of a repeated measures MANOVA analysis indicated that the teachers in the treatment group rated the acting out and academic problems on the PPBI as significantly less severe than did teachers in the control group. The subjects in both the treatment and control groups indicated a significant preference for consultation rather than referral services for all types of student problems presented in the PPBI. There was a moderate, positive correlation between perceived problem severity and teacher preference for referral rather than consultation services. The study's results were interpreted as supportive of the consultation model.     

Teaching awareness of strategic behavior in combination with strategy training: Effects on children's memory performance

The present study examined the effectiveness of two components (rehearsal training and strategy awareness) of an instructional package designed to train the developmentally young in the use of mature information processing techniques. Two groups of children of equivalent developmental age (MA = 8), one mildly retarded and the other of average intelligence, participated. Rehearsal training was effective in improving recall scores on the training task; however, neither rehearsal training, memory awareness, nor their combination significantly altered memory performance on the generalization tasks. There was evidence, however, that the combination of rehearsal training and strategy awareness did increase the likelihood of strategy transfer on the generalization task (recognition) which most closely resembled the training task. Post-task questioning revealed that instructions concerning memory awareness did improve subjects ability to verbalize appropriate strategic behavior; however, these improvements were not consistently translated into either actual use of a rehearsal strategy or improved performance. Discussion centered on the implications of these results and on the need for increased research on the metamnemonic skills involved in strategy generalization.