Neonatal hyperthyroidism in the rat: thyroxine accelerates the development of unconditioned but not learned responses to tastes

The effects of neonatal hyperthyroidism induced by thyroxine injection on the development of unconditioned and learned behaviors mediated by the gustatory system of the rat were investigated. The development of unconditioned ingestive responses evoked by 10% sucrose and 0.1% HCl taste solutions was advanced several days by thyroxine treatment. However, the emergence of taste aversion learning involving 10% sucrose and LiCl injection was not advanced and may have been slightly delayed. Thus, the ontogenesis of unconditioned and learned behaviors mediated by the gustatory system was not influenced uniformly by neonatal thyroxine treatment.     

Current comments on Freud's treatment of "The question of lay analysis"]

The author gives a review on Freud's basic thoughts on lay analysis from 1926 and proceeds with the question why the Deutsche Psychoanalytische Vereinigung (German Psychoanalytic Association) admits only such candidates for psychoanalytic training who are physicians or psychologists. This corresponds with the policies of German health insurance agencies, which include only physicians directly or psychologists indirectly in their plans. He suggests that this attitude derives from a limited view of psychoanalysis, for which he names three different reasons: historical, institutional, and those that grow out of the specifics of psychoanalytic practice.     

PERCEPTIONS OF BEHAVIORAL CONSISTENCY:

Abstract— Actors view behavior relevant for personality traits as more variable than observers do. This study was designed in replicate this actor-observer effect (AOE) in a common-target paradigm, test whether actors, observers, or both are intuitively aware of the AOE, and examine the effects of social projection on people's awareness of the AOE. Within each actor-observer pair, subjects described the actor on a series of trait adjectives and rated the consistency of relevant behavior. They then predicted the other person's ratings. The AOE emerged, and actors, but not observers, were aware of the effect On average, actors correctly predicted that observers rated actors' behavior as more consistent than actors themselves did Correlational analyses showed that actors and observers were equally prone to project their own ratings lo their matched partners     

A stochastic model for paired comparisons of social stimuli

A stochastic model for paired comparisons of multiattribute social stimuli is proposed where one objective is to find the relative importance of the attributes for a judge. The model can be conceived as a special strict binary utility model, i.e., a BTL-model, and is related to of the stimuli are linear combinations of functions of the attributes of the stimuli. The model neither assumes that the functions are fixed in advance nor that different judges have the same set of functions. The choice among such functions, however, is admitted only within a finite scope. Within the framework of exponential families, maximum likelihood estimators and tests are derived and applied to data coming from two psychological experiments.     

The place of order and uncertainty in art and environmental aesthetics

Contrasting views in writings of architectural aesthetics regarding the virtues of diversity as opposed to unity are examined in terms of Berlyne's treatment of the unity-amid-variety issue, and of work by him and others attempting to distinguish effects of complexity and redundancy. Research on the role of structural relationships in complex configurations suggests the need for coming to grips with such Gestaltist variables as order and balance in the context of a motivational theory of response to aesthetic stimuli such as Berlyne's.This paper was written while the author was on leave at the Institute for Urban and Regional Development of the University of California at Berkeley, with partial support from a grant from the Farrand Fund of the Department of Landscape Architecture. It was prepared for a symposium in memory of Daniel Berlyne held at the meetings of the Canadian Psychological Association in Vancouver, B. C., June 9, 1977.     

Some characteristics of psychophysical data obtained with a group version of the up-and-down method

Effects of backgroun reflectance on the shapes of scales of lightness were investigated in two experiments. In Experiment I, 25 Ss compared similaritiesofpairs ofgray chips that were viewed against black, gray. or white backgrounds. In Experiment 2, 33 Ss positioned a series of gray chips, viewed against a white, gray. or black background, so that the distances between successive chips represented the perceived differences in lightness between them. The results of both studies indicated that scale shape was influenced by background. The nature of the effect was that interstimulus differences in the region of a background were enhanced relative to interstimulus differences far from a background.     

Global-local orientation congruency effects in visual search

In a visual search task, subjects had to decide which of 2 possible target letters was presented among 12 distractor letters. The 13 characters were arranged to form a global Navon-type letter. The global letter and the local letters (target and distractors) were independently presented in four different viewer-related orientations. When the global letter and the target were frequently congruently oriented, the response times increased with growing orientation disparity between them. This global-target congruency effect was independent from target identity (Experiment 1), and it diminished when global and target orientations were not correlated (Experiment 2). The results indicate that the orientation of the global letter can be deliberately used in order to facilitate the processing of congruently oriented local targets. The alignment of a spatial frame of reference is discussed as the most probable process underlying this facilitation.