Gender recognition from point-light walkers

Point-light displays of human gait provide information sufficient to recognize the gender of a walker and are taken as evidence of the exquisite tuning of the visual system to biological motion. The authors revisit this topic with the goals of quantifying human efficiency at gender recognition. To achieve this, the authors first derive an ideal observer for gender recognition on the basis of center of moment (J. E. Cutting, D. R. Proffitt, & L. T. Kozlowski, 1978) and, with the use of anthropometric data from various populations, show optimal recognition of approximately 79% correct. Next, they perform a meta-analysis of 21 experiments examining gender recognition, obtaining accuracies of 66% correct for a side view and 71% for other views. Finally, results of the meta-analysis and the ideal observer are combined to obtain estimates of human efficiency at gender recognition of 26% for the side view and 47% for other views.     

Pragmatism as a Philosophy of Education in the Hispanic World: A Response

We concentrate on four questions among the many posed by this special collection of papers on Pragmatism and the Hispanic world. They are, first, what took pragmatism beyond the borders of the United States and into the Hispanic world? Next, what are the ideas of Dewey (or pragmatism) that have had the greatest impact on Hispanic culture? Third, what are the past and present obstacles that has kept the Hispanic world from using pragmatism to deal with many of their educational and social problems? Finally, why does pragmatism still hold great promise and potential for the Hispanic world?     

Measuring counsellor theoretical orientation

Previous studies of counsellors' and psychotherapists' theoretical orientations have suggested the importance of two superordinate dimensions of beliefs about therapeutic practice: an analytical-experiential dimension and an objective-subjective dimension. A 40-item measure was developed which tapped both these. A study involving 132 counsellors found evidence that the Counsellor Theoretical Position Scale is a reliable and valid measure of important aspects of theoretical orientation to counselling practice.     

Viktor Frankl and Interactional Group Therapy

Although Viktor Frankl's Logotherapy concepts have been described as a basis for support groups and for small sharing groups, they have seldom been reported in the literature as a basis for the practice of interpersonal group psychotherapy. In this article the author overviews and outlines the treatment elements and dynamics of a Logotherapy approach to interpersonal group therapy. Clinical material is provided to give a flavor of the described treatment approach.     

Intolerance of ambiguity and socio-politico ideology: A multidimensional analysis

This study tested the relative plausibility of three, main theories and/or hypotheses concerning the relationship between intolerance of ambiguity and socio-politico ideology: (a) authoritarian personality theory, (b) the extremism hypothesis and (c) the context hypothesis. The sample consisted of 195 Swedish high school students randomly selected from five different high schools from greater Stockholm in the spring of 1974. Separate factor analyses of the Budner Intolerance of Ambiguity Scale and the S4 Conservatism Scale generated seven factors of ambiguity intolerance and five factors of socio-politico ideology, Scattergram, correlation and trend analyses disclosed a number of statistically significant relationships between the various dimensions of ambiguity intolerance and socio-politico ideology. The main trend of the results tended to confirm authoritarian personality theory concerning the relationship between intolerance of ambiguity and racism or ethnic prejudice. Furthermore, some support was found for the context hypothesis, with regards to the relationship between general intolerance of ambiguity and general conservatism, among other things. No support could be found for the extremism hypothesis.     

Political socialization: A multivariate analysis of Swedish political attitude and preference data

Studied the socio-political attitudes and political party preferences of 532 Swedish high school students as a function of seven background variables: (I) the mother's political party preference, (2) the father's political party preference, (3) the mother's education, (4) the father's education, (5) the mother's income, (6) the father's income and (7) social class identification. Multiple classification analysis and multivariate nominal analysis were used to uncover the most important possible determinants of political socialization of the youth in both bivariate and multivariate aspects. The results showed that, of the seven predictor or background variables studied, only three had any substantial relationship with socio-political attitudes and political party preferences of the youth: (a) the mother's political party preference, (b) class identification and (c) the father's political party preference in that general order of importance. Furthermore, the superiority of the mother's political party preference over the father's political party preference was especially marked for girls. Among other things, the results also disclosed that ‘left-wing’ youth tended to be more loyal to parental political beliefs than ‘moderate’ and ‘right-wing’ youth. Several alternative explanations were proposed for these findings.     

THE RELATION OF FOOD QUANTITY TO RUMINATION BEHAVIOR

Preliminary work suggested that the quantity of food ingested by retarded individuals who usually ruminated following meals was related to the frequency and duration of ruminating responses. This possible relation was experimentally examined by systematically varying food quantity from regular portions to satiation levels for three retarded individuals who exhibited high levels of ruminating. A clear functional relation of food quantity to ruminating emerged, with satiation procedures producing rapid and large decreases in the relatively high frequencies and durations of ruminating characteristic of baseline food quantity conditions.