The effect of subject's gender on judgments of similarity and choice of a comparison other

This study examined the implications for social comparison theory of the proposition that women have lower self-confidence than men when there is a socially defined standard of performance. To this end, it was hypothesized that women would judge themselves to be similar to a lower ranked person, whereas men would judge themselves to be similar to a higher ranked person. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that women would choose to see a score lower than their own, whereas men would choose to see a score higher than their own. The results on the measure of similarity indicated that men did judge themselves to be similar to a higher ranked person, whereas women showed no consistent preferences in their judgments of similarity. The results on the choice of a comparison other were not as clear-cut.     

Spatial attention in vision

Summary Human observers can selectively allocate processing resources to different areas of the visual field within a single fixation. This spatial attention system may affect either the quality of information extraction or the decisions and responses based on this information. This paper reviews evidence from behavioral, single-unit, and event-related potential paradigms; the evidence suggests a relatively early locus of spatial attention.This research was supported by the U. S. Army Research Office under contract DAAG 29-83-K-0049. Portions of this paper were presented to the Conference on Attention and Action, Bielefeld, West Germany, in July 1985     

Building higher-order units in tachistoscopic identification: A test of two models

Summary Subjects were shown eight-letter pseudowords tachistoscopically and were asked to report as many letters as possible. The pseudowords, examples of either first- or fourth-order approximation to English, were printed in normal or reversed spelling and were presented in either normal of mirror-imaged letters. Finally subjects were either free to report in any order they wished, or they were instructed to report from left to right or from right to left. With normal letters, the familiarity effect was controlled by the spelling direction, not by the direction of report or the match between direction of report and spelling direction. With mirrored letters, however, order of approximation to English had no effect. The results contradict two existing theories: Mewhort's theory claims that the familiarity of fourth-order materials aids processing at a postcategorical level; it has trouble explaining why the familiarity effect disappeared with mirrored letters and normal spelling. Wolff's theory claims that familiarity aids processing at the feature level; it has trouble explaining why the familiarity effect disappeared with mirrored letters and reversed spelling.     

RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE, ARCHETYPES, AND THE NEUROPHYSIOLOGY OF EMOTIONS

Abstract. Established religions integrate a society's everyday secular realities with humankind's numinous experience of the holy. Powerful emotions nourish the cultural expression of the archetypes propelling the "ritual dances" of art, sport, and technocracy. During sacred moments such as mother-infant or adult bonding, neuroendocrine triggers activate lifelong ties. The cultural canon of the left cortex contrasts with the intuitive right. Brainstem "switches" alternate the left's cool, extraverted, sympathetic drive for control with the right's "warm" attachment behavior and dreaming sleep. Psychic trauma damages flexibility with resultant alexithymic blindness to emotions and archetypes. Substance abuse and narcissistic overemphasis on control ensue.     

Induction,trance, and ritual in family mythologizing

The authors put forward a theory of family mythologizing as a process of induction, trance, and ritual. These phenomena, in the context of expressive language, comprise myths. Mythologizing is assumed to be part of normative development. All individuals and families employ myths as schemata for organizing highly complex yet cognitively inexplicable relationships. The authors propose a systemic explanation for the operations of mythologizing and present case illustrations.