Smell and taste function in the visually impaired

Surprisingly few quantitative studies have addressed the question of whether visually impaired individuals evidence, perhaps in compensation for their loss of vision, increased acuteness in their other senses. In this experiment we sought to determine whether blind subjects outperform sighted subjects on a number of basic tests of chemosensory function. Over 50 blind and 75 sighted subjects were administered the following olfactory and gustatory tests: the University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test (UPSIT); a 16-item odor discrimination test; and a suprathreshold taste test in which measures of taste-quality identification and ratings of the perceived intensity and pleasantness of sucrose, citric acid, sodium chloride, and caffeine were obtained. In addition, 39 blind subjects and 77 sighted subjects were administered a single staircase phenyl ethyl alcohol (PEA) odor detection threshold test. Twenty-three of the sighted subjects were employed by the Philadelphia Water Department and trained to serve on its water quality evaluation panel. The primary findings of the study were that (a) the blind subjects did not outperform sighted subjects on any test of chemosensory function and (b) the trained subjects significantly outperformed the other two groups on the odor detection, odor discrimination, and taste identification tests, and nearly outperformed the blind subjects on the UPSIT. The citric acid concentrations received larger pleasantness ratings from the trained panel members than from the blind subjects, whose ratings did not differ significantly from those of the untrained sighted subjects. Overall, the data imply that blindness, per se, has little influence on chemosensory function and add further support to the notion that specialized training enhances performance on a number of chemosensory tasks.     

Book Reviews

The Psychological Record -     

Ethnic populations: Community mental health services ten years later

In a replication of a series of studies conducted by Sue and colleagues in the mid-1970s, demographic and service data were retrieved for the Seattle-King County area from the Washington Mental Health Information System. Caucasian clients were compared against Asian, black, Hispanic, and Native American client groups, and, where possible, against the findings reported earlier by Sue. These clients were compared in terms of basic demographic characteristics, characteristics of staff providing the services, dropout rates, and average number of services received. The most notable findings are (a) that failure-to-return rates are dramatically lower for the current sample than for Sue's and not greatly different for minorities than for Caucasians, (b) that variability in failure-to-return rates is most strongly related to level of functioning and not related to minority status, and (c) that although Asian Americans still average fewer services than Caucasians (other minorities do not differ significantly), the mean number of services had increased substantially for all groups but more for minorities than for Caucasians.     

Relations among aspects of children's social environments,gender schematization,gender role knowledge,and flexibility

Sixty 33–60-month-old children's gender role knowledge, gender role flexibility, and gender schematization were assessed. Parents completed questionnaires describing aspects of their child's social environment. Results indicated that boys who reportedly interacted more with their fathers, and girls who interacted more with both parents, exhibited greater gender schematization. Children who interacted more with parents displayed less gender role flexibility. Girls with mothers who worked outside the home demonstrated greater gender role flexibility. Boys with many siblings displayed greater gender role knowledge. Children with fewer siblings displayed greater gender role flexibility. Boys favoring entertainment television demonstrated greater gender role knowledge. Girls favoring educational television displayed greater gender role flexibility. Future research and theory evaluating the interactive effects of social and cognitive factors on boys' and girls' gender role development are encouraged.     

Medical malpractice and the legal standard of care

In this essay, I examine the relationship between lawsuits for medical malpractice and the legal standard of care. I suggest that there is an insidious, dynamic relationship between physicians' reactions to the recent increase in malpractice litigation and an artificial elevation of the legal standard of care. Since, that is, the legal standard for proper medical care is based upon the community standard of care rather than the reasonable person standard, to the extent that overtreatment or “defensive” medicine becomes widespread as a reaction to malpractice litigation, the legal standard becomes elevated as well. Thus, it will increasingly be the case that unless a physician practices defensive medicine, and hence practices unreasonably, she risks being found liable for medical malpractice.     

Assessing familiality of cognitive ability

In a recent paper in this journal, Benbow, Zonderman, and Stanley (1983) conclude that intellectually precocious children resemble their parents to a lesser extent than do children of lesser ability. In reply, Vining (1985) asserts that Benbow, Zonderman, and Stanley's results are artifacts of selection and their statistical methodology, and that a more appropriate statistical methodology yields quite the opposite conclusion. The present study has two purposes: (1) To show that Vining's criticism is misdirected, stemming from a misunderstanding of how Benbow, Zonderman, and Stanley selected their subjects, and (2) to point out some problems in the model, indices of familiarity, and design used by Benbow, Zonderman, and Stanley that need to be addressed before future comparative studies of familiality are attempted.     

Sex differences in ambulation and defecation in the degu (Octodon degus)

The degu, a hystricomorph rodent, was studied in both an open-field (OF) and running-wheel testing situation. Of primary interest was whether there would be appparent sex differences in ‘emotionality’ and/or locomotion measures. Unlike domesticated species, females were found to ambulate and defecate more frequently than males in the OF. Both sexes increased their rates of defecation with exposure to the field. The running-wheel data indicatedf that overall males were more active, particularly during the dark phase of the light cycle. The data are examined with respect to similar measures obtained from domesticated laboratory rodents.     

The effects of problem content,instructions, and verbalization procedure on Wason’s selection task

This study examined various hypotheses for facilitation on Wason’s four-card selection task by means of a factorial experiment. The factors were memory cuing vs. nonmemory cuing content, violation vs. true-false instructions, and verbalization procedure. The results indicated that memory cuing content may be a necessary and sufficient condition for facilitation, but that the amount of facilitation is affected by the type of instructions. Verbalization procedure had no effects, but this may have been due to the subjects’ failure to comply completely with the various verbalization instructions. An explanation of the results that assumes that content and instructions determine the cognitive processing load of the task and hence the solution strategies employed is considered.