Seeing textons in context

Texton theory holds that visual texture segregation occurs through the preattentive detection of local differences in primitive visual units called “textons.” Three textons have been proposed for shape: lines, line terminators, and line intersections. The experiments reported here show that line closure also behaves like a texton under some conditions. In addition, the experiments show that texture segregation is not determined by texton differences per se, but by the extent to which the unique textons in a region are salient in the context of the textons common to regions. This suggests that preattentive vision is not as simple minded as texton theory claims it to be.     

The electronic chalkboard

The present paper describes “the electronic chalkboard” (TEC), a teaching innovation made possible by the recent development, under a FIPSE grant to CONDUIT, of specialized instructional software. The instructional power of TEC casts the computer in the role of catalyst in the student-teacher dyad and leads to the emergence of the more powerful student-computer-teacher triad. Relevant educational principles and CAI techniques that should ensure the intelligent use of TEC are discussed.     

Self-reported assessment practices of school psychologists: Implications for training and practice

This study reports the results of an investigation of the assessment views and practices of school psychologists in the United States. Results of the investigation indicated that respondents are predominantly behavioral and cognitive behavioral in orientation; spend most of their professional time in the public schools; and engage in a great deal of assessment. Behavioral assessment and projective testing occupies the greatest amount of their social-emotional assessment time. Behavioral interviewing is the most used behavioral technique, followed by behavioral observation, which is reportedly used by approximately one third of the respondents with from 41% to 100% of clients. Although most of the respondents report a preference for continuing to do approximately the same amount of the various social-emotional assessment activities as they are presently doing, very high percentages of respondents indicate that their use of behavioral assessment strategies would increase with development of published instrumentation, normative standards, and standardized out-of-setting behavioral procedures.     

Factors influencing readability of rapidly presented text segments

Experiment 1 compared paragraph comprehension for texts shown either as normal pages on a computer terminal screen or as rapid serial visual presentations (RSVPs) of small text segments to a common location. Over several days of practice, reading comprehension was equivalent in the normal presentation mode and the RSVP format. When successive RSVP segments contained some information in common, to mimic the experience of successive parafoveal and foveal views of words in normal reading, comprehension was somewhat worse than when successive segments contained no overlapping information. Experiment 2 used a variety of segment size and segment duration combinations to investigate the optimal means of presenting text in the RSVP format. Across a variety of presentation rates and text difficulties, comprehension was maximal for segments averaging about 12 character spaces in length. In Experiment 3, texts were divided into short idea units or into random segments of equal average length. Comprehension was shown to be greater in the structured condition than in the random condition. An optimal means of presenting text in the RSVP format could be superior to normal presentation methods for reading and other text-processing tasks.     

A word’s meaning affects the decision in lexical decision

The influence of an isolated word’s meaning on lexical decision reaction time (RT) was demonstrated through four experiments. Subjects in two experiments made lexical decision judgments, those in a third experiment pronounced the words used in the lexical decision task, and those in a fourth experiment quickly pronounced their first associative response to the words. Differences in lexical access time for the words were measured with the pronunciation task, and differences in meaning were assessed with the association task. Multiple regression analyses of lexical decision RT were conducted using associative RT, pronunciation RT, and other target word properties (printed frequency, length, instance dominance, and number of dictionary meanings) as predictor variables. These analyses revealed a relationship between lexical decision RT and associative RT after the effects of other variables had been partialed out. In addition, word frequency continued to have a significant relationship to lexical decision RT beyond that shared with pronunciation RT and the other variables. The results of these experiments indicate that at least some of the effect of word meaning and word frequency in lexical decision is attributable to a decision stage following lexical access.     

Childhood aggression and social adjustment as antecedents of delinquency

A sample of 2,453 grade school children were followed into young adulthood through record sources. Teacher interviews provided information about low-peer-status children that was assessed in relation to subsequent delinquency for both sexes and young adult criminality for males. A multivariate design evaluated the joint effects of social class, a measure of family disturbance, and childhood problem behavior factors as antecedents of delinquency. Childhood aggression emerged as the most prominent antecedent factor for males but not for females. Social class and family disturbance were associated with aggression but did not have significant direct effects on delinquency. Aggression was related to severity of delinquency. Dispositional status, reflecting severity, was the best indicator of which delinquent males would have adult criminal records. A causal model is presented.The study was supported by a grant from the Scottish Rite Schizophrenia Research Program, N.M.J., U.S.A. Portions of the study were presented at the Life History Research conference in Monterey, California, 1981. The authors wish to thank June White, Cindy Hanson, and Ned Worell for their help in conducting this research. Data for this research was originally gathered by Merrill Roff. Follow-up data were contributed by Ronald Peek, Donald Bamber, Charles Watson, Shiela Makie, William S. Ward, Edward S. Posey, Chris Hemlabs, and Harriet Barnes.