On the Integration of Nomothetic and Idiographic Research Methods in the Study of Personal Meaning

ABSTRACT This study presents the technique of self-investigation as a research tool for the study of personal meaning from the perspective of the general and the particular After reviewing the nomothesis-idiography debate, I argue that personality psychology can benefit from a combination of nomothetic and idiographic research methodologies This creates a need for new theoretical frameworks that incorporate both nomo-concepts, enabling the study of people in general and idio-concepts, enabling the psychologist to understand the particular world of the individual Allport's term “value” is reformulated as the idio-concept “valuation,” which refers to personal meaning in an individual's history The term “affect,” as a central component in the process of valuation, is treated as a nomo-concept The relation between the two concepts is demonstrated by studying specific concerns in the history of an individual as recurrent expressions of general winner and loser experiences     

Does motor encoding enhance relational information?

Summary Three experiments investigated whether learning action phrases by enacting the denoted action enhances organization or not. In the first experiment it was shown that, compared to a standard learning instruction, enacting did not enhance the clustering of episodic and taxonomic lists, but it did enhance memory performance. Furthermore, the enacting effect was strongest with an unrelated list; in all lists, organization and recall correlated only under a verbal instruction and not under an enacting instruction. In the second experiment, subjects were also informed about the categories of the lists and instructed to use them to learn the items. The organization was enhanced in all cases by this procedure, but the recall performance was enhanced only with a standard learning instruction. Under enacting, information about the categories had no influence. In the third experiment this effect was replicated for a taxonomic list and could be generalized for a motor list, in which categories were in accordance with the similarities of the movement pattern. Here too the explicit category information had an effect only under a standard learning instruction, but not with enacting. We interpret these effects as support for the assumption that enacting does not enhance memory performance by better relational information. Relational information is, on the contrary, less important for recall under enacting than under a standard learning instruction.     

Combinatorial data analysis: Association and partial association

A combinatorial data analysis strategy is reviewed that is designed to compare two arbitrary measures of proximity defined between the objects from some set. Based on a particular cross-product definition of correspondence between these two numerically specified notions of proximity (typically represented in the form of matrices), extensions are then pursued to indices of partial association that relate the observed pattern of correspondence between the first two proximity measures to a third. The attendant issues of index normalization and significance testing are discussed; the latter is approached through a simple randomization model implemented either through a Monte Carlo procedure or distributional approximations based on the first three moments. Applications of the original comparison strategy and its extensions to partial association may be developed for a variety of methodological and substantive tasks. Besides rank correlation, we emphasize the topics of spatial autocorrelation for one variable and spatial association between two and mention the connection to the usual randomization approach for one-way analysis-of-variance.     

Motor programme information as a separable memory unit

Summary Two experiments produced further evidence for the claim that motor programme information may be considered as a separate memory unit, partially independent of other memory representations. In Experiment 1, it was shown that for the comparison of shared movement components in two actions such as turning the handle and stirring the ingredients, the activation of their motor programmes is required. This is demonstrated by the finding that the execution of the first action, which preactivates its motor programmes, leads to shorter reaction times than under control conditions in which the verbally described action is only spoken. In Experiment 2, it was further shown that the execution of the action does not in every case expedite the assessment of a connection between a prime item and a target item vis à vis verbal repetition, but only where the task requires the activation of motor programmes.     

Über die logische Stellung der relativistischen Meßtheorie

Journal for General Philosophy of Science - Wenn die relativistische Längenkontraktion und Zeitdilatation Folgen der Signalmessung sind, führt dies im Falle der nach einer Reise...     

Toward Effective Evaluation Of the Culturally Deprived

Attention is focused on some of the factors which may result in the invalidation or distortion of both objective and subjective evaluations of students from the lower socioeconomic strata of the population. These factors include: (a) counselor attitude in evaluation; (b) counselee attitude in evaluation; (c) counselor-counselee value systems; (d) test weaknesses such as low reliability and/or validity and inadequate norms; and (e) a lack of understanding by the counselor and/or counselee of the purpose for testing. Evaluation is an integral part of the counseling process; however, the effectiveness of the evaluative process is dependent upon the counselor's knowledge and sense of responsibility as well as the validity and reliability of the tests.     

Grading the ‘cultural literacy’ project

The essay examines the argument advanced by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., for instituting ‘cultural literacy’ as a fundamental priority of schools. A number of confusions and equivocations in Hirsch's reasoning are identified, and the propensity of his project to indoctrinate is exposed. Among the features of Hirsch's argument shown to be troubling are his shifting construal of ‘language’, his inconsistency about the requirements of cultural literacy, and his uncritical relation to traditional images of the American past and present. The upshot is to raise the question why Hirsch's project has elicited wide support and praise.     

Multiple information sources in interceptive timing

This study was designed to explore the limitations of tau (τ) as an explanatory construct for the timing of interceptive action. This was achieved by examining the effects of environmental structure and binocular vision on the timing of the grasp in a simple one-handed catch. In two experiments, subjects were required to catch luminous balls of different diameters (4, 6, 8 and 10 cm) in a completely darkened room. In the first experiment the influence of the presence vs. absence of an environmental background structure (both under monocular viewing) was tested, and in the second experiment the influence of monocular vs. binocular vision was examined. It was found that irrespective of the presence of environmental structure, an effect of ball size occurred in the monocular viewing conditions. That is, in monocular viewing conditions the grasp was initiated and completed earlier for the larger balls as compared to the smaller ones, while in the binocular viewing condition subjects behaved in accordance with a constant time to contact strategy: no effects of ball size were found. It is concluded that under binocular viewing a binocular information source is used, while in the monocular viewing condition a lower order information source like image size or image velocity is probably involved.