A portable pupilometer system for measuring pupillary size and light reflex

A new pupilometry assessment system was evaluated as an instrument for potential use in basic research and clinical studies of addictive drug use in humans. The system is portable and can be used as a peripheral device with a variety of IBM-compatible personal computers. The pupilometer electronically measures the pupil diameter with infrared sensors and has the ability to stimulate the pupil with a programmable pulse of light and to record the resultant papillary response. The present report compares the static pupil-diameter measurements obtained with this infrared pupilometer and those obtained photographically in a bench-top and in a clinical setting. The infrared pupilometer was also used to record the light reflex of the pupil in research subjects after administration of various morphine-related drugs. The results indicate that static pupil-diameter measurements made with the infrared pupilometer compare favorably with the photographic measurement. The ability of the infrared pupilometer to record the light reflex may provide an additional means of quantitatively measuring drug action.     

Person-treatment interactions across nonaversive response-deceleration procedures for self-injury: A case study of effects and side effects

Three nominally nonaversive response-deceleration treatment packages, “gentle teaching,” differential reinforcement of incompatible behavior plus interruption, and graduated guidance, were administered to two profoundly retarded men who exhibited topographically similar self-injurious head-hitting maintained under contrasting contingencies identified by functional analysis. Following No Demand and Instructional Demand baseline sessions, the three intervention packages were balanced across 18, 30-minute analog training sessions and three trainers in each subject's prevocational setting, using a simple panel-pressing task as the training objective. There were significant differences between the three packages in rates of target response suppression, effects on collateral behaviors, acquisition of panel pressing, and immediate post-treatment carry-over, both within and between subjects. It is concluded that both functional analysis and within-subject treatment comparison may assist in identification of the least restrictive alternative in applied service settings, and that topographic similarity of self-injury between subjects may not necessarily indicate selection of similar treatment packages.     

PSN: A prolog declarative model of conceptual knowledge

This paper introduces a declarative model of semantic memory, called PSN, written in Prolog. It is shown to be a descendant of Quillian’s (1969) Teachable Language Comprehender (TLC) in its structuring of knowledge as a conceptual reticulum and in its use of spreading activation as a retrieval mechanism. PSN goes beyond TLC, however, in its ability to instantiate the essential benchmark properties of human semantic retrieval. As such, it can provide cognitive science with a normative model on which to assess further research and it demonstrates the value of the Prolog language for modeling psychological processes.     

IMPROVING PEDIATRIC APPOINTMENT KEEPING WITH REMINDERS AND REDUCED RESPONSE REQUIREMENT

We evaluated the effectiveness of appointment reminders and a reduced response requirement for improving appointment keeping in a hospital ambulatory pediatric clinic. Participants received mailed and telephoned reminders along with a parking pass that reduced the time and effort required to attend the clinic. A multiple baseline analysis of 5,261 appointments over one fiscal year showed that the intervention increased the percentage of appointments kept and decreased the percentage of appointments broken in the continuity clinics of five pediatric health care providers. Social validation, consumer satisfaction, and cost-effectiveness measures, as well as an interrupted time-series analysis, all support the effectiveness of the intervention.     

Visual attention skills of premature infants with and without intraventricular hemorrhage

The relation between two medical complications associated with prematurity (intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH) and respiratory distress syndrome (RDS)) and visual attention skills of very low birth-weight (VLBW) infants were examined. Fourteen preterm VLBW infants with IVH and RDS, 9 preterms with RDS and no IVH, and 10 full-term infants matched on SES, sex, and race were assessed at 7 months of age (after correction for prematurity) for their ability to show a decremental response to a familiar visual stimulus and an increment in response to a novel visual stimulus. Measures of attention getting (turning toward a stimulus) and attention holding (sustained fixation on the stimulus after turning) were taken. On the attention-getting measures, IVH-RDS preterms had longer latencies than both the RDS-no-IVH preterm group and the full-term group. There were no group differences on attention-holding measures. The three groups did not differ in habituation to the familiar visual stimulus or discrimination of the novel stimulus. This study indicates that the early visual attention skills of preterm infants are differentially affected by specific types of prenatal complications.     

The influence of sex-role orientation on ratings of perceived exertion

Previous research has shown that feminine-typed women have an aversion to strenuous physical activity and when engaging in cross-sex behavior may experience psychological distress. Given the growing interest in aerobic exercise, the present study was designed to test whether sex-role orientation mediated the report of physical exertion. Subjects were 33 college-aged women selected from three categories: masculine, feminine, and androgynous. Procedures required that each subject complete two one-hour testing sessions. The first session was employed to collect anthropometric data and to evaluate maximum aerobic capacity, while the second session consisted of subjects completing a preperformance affect scale and subsequently running for 30 minutes at a preestablished work intensity. Results revealed that those who were feminine-typed gave significantly higher exertional ratings than either the masculine or androgynous women. The fact that the feminine group was less positive about the task suggests that the observed perceptual differences may have been due to affective schemata which have been hypothesized to mediate the perception of pain.This article is based on a master's thesis by the first author, but the second author assumed primary responsibility for the preparation of the present article.     

Scan-display of high-resolution images using the Apple II

Two programs are presented for the scan-display of high-resolution images using the Apple II+ and Apple IIe. The first program permits the user to move a rectangular aperture about the video screen to reveal different portions of a stationary image. The second program scrolls an image vertically within a horizontal window, giving rise to the impression of an object moving behind a stationary slit. These programs should be useful in the study of anorthoscopic perception, motion perception, perceptual integration of successively displayed information and other topics in visual perception.     

Voxcom: A system for analyzing natural speech in real time

A system is described for analyzing recorded natural speech in real time using a microcomputer. Recordings up to 15 min in length can be analyzed in terms of fundamental frequency, amplitude, length of utterances, and pauses. Although primarily developed for clinical research, the system has applicability to other research areas involving speech.     

Students' R]eactions to Teachers' E]valuations: The Unique Impact of Negative Feedback1

This study attempts to identify some of the processes mediating self-fulfilling prophecies in the classroom. Specifically, we hypothesized that negative feedback conveyed by teachers would influence students' p]erceptions of how the teacher viewed their success/failure, effort, ability and task difficulty more than positive feedback. In response to college students' s]core on an anagrams test, a (confederate) teacher expressed either positive, negative or no evaluative feedback. Questionnaires assessed students' s]elf-perceptions and perceptions of the teacher's evaluations of them. Consistent with our hypotheses, negative feedback was seen as a more credible indicator of the teacher's evaluation than positive feedback. Furthermore, negative feedback led students to believe that the teacher held an extremely unfavorable but inaccurate impression of their effort and ability and that the teacher underestimated the difficulty of the task. There were few differences between the effects of positive feedback and no feedback, and there were no significant effects on self-perceptions. These findings suggest new insights into negativity effects in evaluations and into the mechanisms underlying self-fulfilling prophecies.