Self-perceived information needs and concerns of elderly persons.

The research was intended to identify the dimensions underlying self-perceived information needs and concerns of an elderly population. The spontaneously mentioned needs and concerns expressed in 271 letters from a sample of the population were extracted and a multidimensional scaling procedure was used to represent the 58 most frequently mentioned items in configurations of varying dimensionality. To interpret the multidimensional spaces, another sample of 176 elderly subjects was asked to rate the 58 concerns on eight properties. These ratings were then regressed onto the multidimensional configurations. The results indicate that the most frequently mentioned information needs and concerns of elderly persons can be parsimoniously understood in terms of three underlying dimensions: (1) Improving the Quality of Life vs Securing the Necessities of Life, (2) Health-related vs Not Health-related, and (3) Individual vs Societal Responsibility.     

Consistency of use of phonological processes by a sample of educable mentally impaired children.

A group of 10 educable mentally impaired children (M age = 10 yr., 4 mo.) were assessed for use of phonological process under three speaking conditions: production of single words, imitated sentences, and connected speech samples. Only the process of gliding showed significant differences in use among conditions. Results generally indicated that any of those three speaking conditions were viable for eliciting use of phonological processes by such subjects. Results are also discussed in terms of individual differences.     

Auditory subliminal stimulation: a re-examination.

Unconscious or subliminal perception has historically been a thorny issue in psychology. It has been the subject of debate and experimentation since the turn of the century. While psychologists now agree that the phenomenon of visual subliminal stimulation is real, disagreement continues over the effects of such stimulation as well as to its existence in other sensory modalities, notably the auditory. The present paper provides an overview of unresolved issues in auditory subliminal stimulation which explains much of the difficulty that has been encountered in experimental work in this area. A context is proposed for considering the effects of auditory subliminal stimulation and an overview of current investigations in this field is provided.     

Relationships among age, sex, and depth of sport experience with initial open-task performance by 4- to 9-year-old children.

The purpose of this study was to assess the relative interrelationships of age, sex, and depth of sport experience on initial practice of a soccer task for 46 4- to 9-yr.-old children. Each child practiced 1 transfer trial and 3 blocks of 3 trials. Measures recorded were performance time, goal attainment, and movement accuracy. Multivariate analyses of variance and multiple regressions yielded evidence for (a) a speed-accuracy tradeoff, (b) a relation of age to goal attainment, movement accuracy, and performance time on the transfer trial, and (c) a relation of age with Block 1 performance time. Experience was more related than sex to all variables except movement accuracy in Block 1 and consistency of goal attainment. Conclusions are that age and experience are the most important to the quality of performance, and no constructs were related to consistency on this task for this age group.     

On the perception of shape from shading.

The extraction of three-dimensional shape from shading is one of the most perceptually compelling, yet poorly understood, aspects of visual perception. In this paper, we report several new experiments on the manner in which the perception of shape from shading interacts with other visual processes such as perceptual grouping, preattentive search ("pop-out"), and motion perception. Our specific findings are as follows: (1) The extraction of shape from shading information incorporates at least two "assumptions" or constraints--first, that there is a single light source illuminating the whole scene, and second, that the light is shining from "above" in relation to retinal coordinates. (2) Tokens defined by shading can serve as a basis for perceptual grouping and segregation. (3) Reaction time for detecting a single convex shape does not increase with the number of items in the display. This "pop-out" effect must be based on shading rather than on differences in luminance polarity, since neither left-right differences nor step changes in luminance resulted in pop-out. (4) When the subjects were experienced, there were no search asymmetries for convex as opposed to concave tokens, but when the subjects were naive, cavities were much easier to detect than convex shapes. (5) The extraction of shape from shading can also provide an input to motion perception. And finally, (6) the assumption of "overhead illumination" that leads to perceptual grouping depends primarily on retinal rather than on "phenomenal" or gravitational coordinates. Taken collectively, these findings imply that the extraction of shape from shading is an "early" visual process that occurs prior to perceptual grouping, motion perception, and vestibular (as well as "cognitive") correction for head tilt. Hence, there may be neural elements very early in visual processing that are specialized for the extraction of shape from shading.     

Effects of noise on sleep inertia as a function of circadian placement of a one-hour nap.

The purpose of the present study was to analyse the arousing effects of noise on sleep inertia as a function of circadian placement of a one-hour nap. In a first experiment, we measured the effects of sleep inertia in a neutral acoustic environment after a one-hour nap placed either at 0100 or 0400 on response time during a spatial memory test. In a second experiment were analysed the effects of an intense continuous noise on sleep inertia. The results showed that noise produced a total abolition of sleep inertia after an early nap (0000 to 0100). This may be due to the arousing effect of noise; however, results are less clear after a late nap 0300 to 0400 as noise seems to be ineffective. This result is discussed in terms of either a function of time-of-day effect or of prior sleep intensity. Moreover, our data suggest a possible interaction of noise with partial sleep deprivation leading to a slight deleterious effect those subjects who did not sleep at all.     

Degree of learning,interpolated tests,and rate of forgetting

The purpose of the two experiments reported here was to observe the effects of degree of learning, interpolated tests, and retention interval, primarily on the rate of forgetting of a list of words, and secondarily on hypermnesia for those words. In the first experiment, all the subjects had one study trial on a list of 20 common words, followed by two tests of recall. Half of the subjects had further study and test trials until they had learned the words to a criterion of three correct consecutive recalls. Two days later, half of the subjects under each learning condition returned for four retention tests, and 16 days later, all the subjects returned for four tests. Experiment 2 was similar, except that all the subjects had at least three study trials followed by four recall tests on Day 1, intermediate tests were given 2 or 7 days later, and they all had final tests 14 days later. The results showed that rate of forgetting was attenuated by an additional intermediate set of tests but not by criterion learning. Hypermnesia was generally found over the tests that were given after a retention interval of 2 or more days. The best predictor of the amount of hypermnesia over a set of tests was the difference between overall cumulative recall and net recall on the first test of the set.     

Supernatural beliefs,natural kinds,and conceptual structure

This article presents cross-cultural evidence in support of the notion that adults' natural kind concepts are theory based but may be informed by knowledge/belief systems other than the biological. Three groups of subjects from western Nigeria--rural, urban, and elite--participated in the study. Subjects heard stories describing alterations of appearance; that is, one natural kind was made to resemble another in both ritual and nonritual contexts. Subjects then were required to judge the identity of the altered item and to give an explanation for the category judgment. It was predicted that subjects would make more nonpreservation-of-identity category judgments supported by supernatural explanations in the ritual contexts and that subjects' use of supernatural explanations would reflect the extent of their engagement with the supernatural. The first prediction was borne out; the second prediction was only partially supported. Discussion of the results emphasizes the importance of exploring the role of sociocultural factors in conceptual structure.     

The representation and integration in memory of spatial and nonspatial information

A series of experiments investigated whether people could integrate nonspatial information about an object with their knowledge of the object's location in space. In Experiments 1 and 3, subjects learned the locations of cities on a fictitious road map; in Experiments 2, 4, and 5, subjects were already familiar with the locations of buildings on a campus. The subjects then learned facts about the cities on the maps or the buildings on the campus. The question of interest was whether or not these nonspatial facts would be integrated in memory with the spatial knowledge. After learning the facts, subjects were given a location-judgment test in which they had to decide whether an object was in one region of the space or another. Knowledge integration was assessed by comparing levels of performance in two conditions: (a) when a city or a building name was primed by a fact about a neighboring city or building, and (b) when a city or a building name was primed by a fact about a distant city or building. Results showed that responses in Condition a were faster or more accurate, or both faster and more accurate, than responses in Condition b. These results indicate that the spatial and nonspatial information were encoded in a common memory representation.     

Context-dependent variation in social stereotyping 1: The effects of intergroup relations as mediated by social change and frame of reference

During the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf conflict an experiment was conducted with Australian university students (N = 200) to investigate whether the social stereotyping of Americans varied with social contextual manipulations related to the hostilities. The study, conducted in two phases at the start and end of the conflict, examined how the assignment of standard stereotypical traits to Americans was affected (a) by the large-scale social change constituted by the war and (b) by variation in the frame of reference provided by relevant comparison groups. The elicited stereotypes were sensitive to both of these contextual variables, demonstrating significant variation and fluidity. Overall, stereotypes of Americans were relatively negative. They were significantly more negative (a) at the end of the war than at the beginning in the restricted frame (when Australia and Britain were comparison groups) and (b) in the first phase of the conflict when the frame was extended to include Iraq as a comparison group. The findings were in line with expectations derived from self-categorization theory (Turner, 1985) that the social categorization of self and other into ingroup and outgroup is inherently variable, comparative and context-dependent. They question the long-held view of stereotypes as fixed, rigid and resistant to change.