Book review

EVANS, R. M. The Perception of Color. New York: Wiley and Sons. 1974. Pp. xii + 248. £ 8.10.

ROSS, H. E. Behaviour and Perception in Strnge Enviroment. London: George Allen and Unwin. 1974. Pp. 171. £ 3.95. (Hardback), £ 1.95. (Peperback).

COOPER, J. R. BLOOM, F. E. and ROTH, R. H. The Biochemical Basis of Neuropharmacology. 2nd Ed. New York and London: Oxford University Press. 1974. Pp. 272. £ 2.50.

JOHNSON, F. N. (Ed.) Lithium Research and Teerapy. London: Acakemic Press. 1974. Pp. 570. £ 13.50.

GERGG, L. W. (Ed.) Cognition in Lerning and Memory. New York: Wiley. 1972. Pp. vii + 263. £ 5.85.

SCHIEFELBUSCH, R. L. and LLOYD, L. L. Language Perspectives-Acquisition, Retardation and Intervention. Macmillan: Baltimore, 1974. Pp 670. £ 7.95.

CHOMSKY, C. The Acquisition of Syntax of Syntax in Children form 5 to 10. Cambridge, Massa-chusetts: M. I. T. Press. 1969. Pp. 126.

Annual Review of Psychology. Vol. 25. Palo Alto, California: Annual Reviews Inc. 544 PP. $ 12.50.

HARRISON, B. Meaning and Structure: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. New York: Harper and Row. 1972. Pp. 318. £4.65.

MACKINTOSH, N. J. The Psychology of Animal Learning. Academic Press. 1974. Pp. 730. £ 8.00.

BURES, J., BURESOVA, O. and KRIVANEK, J. The Mechanism and Application of Leao's Spreading Depression of Electroephalagraphic Activity. New York: Academic Press. 1974. Pp. 410. £ 14.15.

SOLSO, R.L. (ED.). Theories in Cognitive Psychology: The LOyola Symposium. Potomac, Maryland: Lawrence Erlbaum associates. 1974. £ 7.95.

MURDOCK, B. B. Jr. Human Memory: Theory and Data. Potomac: Erlbaum (distributed by Wiley). 1974. Pp. 362. £ 6.85.

REED, S. K. Psychological Process in Pattern Recogntion. New York: Academic Press. 1973. $ 13.95.

RABBIT, P. M. A. and DORNIC, D. (Eds). Attention and Performance V. London: Academic Press. 1975. Pp. 732. £ 16.00.     

Receiving Help,Reciprocation, and Interpersonal Attraction1

In a 3 × 3 factorial experiment with 3 additional cells, 329 male or female subjects working with two same-sex confederates (A and B), received either voluntary, involuntary, or no help from A after which attraction to A and B were measured for one-fourth of the subjects. The remaining subjects were assigned to a second set of tasks and were induced to help A, help B, or were not given an opportunity to help, after which they completed attraction and mood measures. Subjects were more likely to volunteer help after the second task when they had received prior help. Receipt of help led to more liking for the helper and the helper was liked more when subjects were able to reciprocate. Attraction and mood results are discussed in relation to attractiveness mediation, modeling, and indebtedness explanations for reciprocity.     

Prospective and retrospective judgments of time as a function of amount of information processed.

The subjects, 120 college students, sorted cards for 42 sec with instructions to process 0, 1, or 2 bits of information per card (response uncertainty) and then were asked to make an absolute judgement of the interval's duration. Half of the subjects knew this judgement would be required before the interval (prospective paradigm); half did not (retrospective paradigm). Judged time was an inverse linear function of response uncertainty under the prospective paradigm, whereas no significant function was obtained under the retrospective paradigm.     

Therapeutic rationale,monetary incentive and fear behavior: a methodological note on analogue research

Analogue research has been questioned as a means of evaluating clinical procedures (e.g. Cooper, Furst and Bridger, 1969). A major criticism has been the failure to include adequate controls. Placebo conditions have varied markedly in their similarity to active treatment procedures (Caputo, Nau and Borkovec, 1973), have not provided equally credible therapeutic rationales (Borkovec and Nau, 1972), and have thus generated differing expectancies and demands for improvement.To evaluate a therapy procedure, a comparison condition is needed in which no treatment intervenes between pre- and post-test measures, yet which provides adequate incentive for improvement. Rimm and Mahoney (1969) used a ‘contingent reinforcement’ placebo condition in which tokens, exchangeable for money, were dispensed for improvement in a graded approach to a feared stimulus. Little improvement occurred, suggesting a lack of effectiveness of money alone in improving approach behavior. However, as no therapeutic rationale was presented, it is likely that little expectancy for improvement occurred.The present study provided a ‘no treatment’ condition in which Ss participated in three test sessions with no intervening treatment procedure. Unlike Rimm and Mahoney (1969), two conditions provided a rationale explaining why Ss had maintained their fear and why no real therapy was needed to eliminate it. Also, monetary reward (a $5.00 bill rather than tokens) was dispensed only upon picking up the feared object. A follow-up session assessed the lasting effects of rationale and monetary incentive in the absence of extrinsic reinforcement. Thus, the present study attempted to determine the effect of therapeutic rationale and/or the possibility of receiving money, in the absence of ‘therapy’, on subclinical fear.     

Transfer of discrimination from solid objects to pictures by pigeons: A test of theoretical models of pictorial perception

Various authors have suggested that learning associations between objects and pictures is a necessary condition for the perception of pictures. If so, then animals, never exposed to situations in which those associations might be learned, should not show transfer between objects and pictures. In this investigation, pigeons trained to discriminate between two solid objects were retrained with reinforcement reversal on either the objects themselves or photographs, line drawings, or silhouettes of the objects. Significant negative transfer indicated object-photograph and object-silhouette equivalence, but no transfer was found to line drawings. Positive transfer to photographs was also demonstrated. Transfer did not appear to be a function of object-picture confusability.     

An assessment of manager/subordinate perceptions of performance appraisal effectiveness

This study postulates that performance appraisal will be effective to the extent that managers and subordinates have a shared perception of its purpose and function and the degree to which it meets the needs of both groups. A two part research project was conducted to: 1) identify manager/subordinate perceptions of the purposes served by the formal performance appraisal process; 2) determine the extent to which these purposes are being satisfied in organizational practice; and 3) assess if managers and subordinates have a shared perception of the effectiveness of the appraisal process. The sample for the study included 36 managers and 143 subordinates from a division of a large Midwest service organization. The results were mixed with regard to the appraisal system effectively accomplishing its diverse goals. However, in general, there was support for the notion that both managers and subordinates find the appraisal process to be a worthwhile organizational practice. Approximately 70% of the respondents indicated that they would participate in the appraisal program whether they were required to do so or not.     

FAMILY AND WORK PREDICTORS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING AMONG HISPANIC WOMEN PROFESSIONALS

This study examines the relative contributions of job- and gender-related variables to the mental health of Hispanic women professionals. Hispanic women professionals, managers and business owners ( n = 303) were surveyed using the mailing list of a Hispanic professional women's organization. Results of multiple regression analyses indicate that income and Hispanic group were consistently related to mental health measures. Spouse support and ethnicity of spouse were associated with measures of stress in balancing roles and psychological distress symptoms. Marital status was related to personal life satisfaction (married women reported more satisfaction), and having young children was negatively associated with personal and professional satisfaction. Experience of discrimination, job stress and peer support were also significantly related to mental health measures. Although preliminary, this study underscores the importance of both job- and gender-related factors in research on the effects of employment on Hispanic women's mental health.     

Responsible to whom? Responsible for what? Some ethical issues in community intervention

Conclusion Each ethical decision is a blend of general principles and contextual features. Many require compromises between competing values, must be made in the absence of perfect information, and require the courage to confront mistakes.In community intervention, we have seen that adopting a collaborative paradigm imposes the freedom to determine to whom we are responsible for our actions. A rationale was offered for giving priority to the most vulnerable group, even though this strategy leaves us with an accountability gap in which the group to whom we owe primary loyality is least likely to be able to call us to account.When we reject the professional-client paradigm in community psychology, we lose the formal contract as a device for setting the terms and limiting the scope of our responsibility. We do the best reconnaissance we can, but even with careful data-gathering we are condemned to act on the basis of imperfect information. We must follow through on unforseen consequences even when we have no formal role to mandate our perseverence.The community as a setting for psychological intervention faces us, then, with ethical challenges: we work for the well-being of groups too broad to give informed consent to our interventions; we act in collaboration with others, but collaborative action does not free us from professional obligation; we reconnoiter, but reconnaissance does not provide us with perfect information; we may advise while others act, but we cannot walk away from the consequences of their actions. Ethical decision making, in the community as elsewhere, is a creative act in which we invent our profession choice by choice. Editor's Note: The subject of ethics, in the specific context of Community Psychology, deserves our attention. This paper provided us with an opportunity for such attention. My own reactions to it were of sufficient range to lead me to invite commentary from individuals with a range of views. Thanks is extended to the eight authors whose comments immediately follow.The cases in this paper were first presented in talks given to the Canadian Psychological Association and the Ontario Psychological Association. On both occasions, Carole Sinclair made valuable comments on the material; Elaine Campbell and David Colquhoun also contributed to the present formulation of these issues. In the editorial process, three anonymous reviewers made many valuable suggestions. The paper was written while the author was Invited Professor at the University of Montreal.     

Lexical projection and the interaction of syntax and semantics in parsing

A series of self-paced reading studies utilized an embedded anomaly technique to investigate long-distance dependencies with dative verbs. Previous research i our lab demonstrated that argument structure influences the gap-filling process. Experiment I extended that work by demonstrating that dative verbs pattern with other complex transitive verbs (i.e., a fronted filler that is implausible as the direct object will not be interpreted as the direct object until the absence of a noun phrase after the verb forces the postulation of a direct object gap. This pattern contrasts with that of transitive verbs that subcategorize for a single internal argument position, where fronted fillers are obligatorily interpreted as the direct object). Experiments 2 and 3 investigate the prediction that semantic analyses precede syntactic analyses in dative questions. It is argued that the lexical information about argument structure and thematic roles can guide semantic interpretation.This research was supported in part by NSF grant BNS-8617738 and NIH grant HD-22271.