Preferential looking: A sudden shift in visual fixation pattern at 32 months of age

Observations of eye movements of young children in a modified preferential looking task suggest a change in the visual looking pattern taking place during a very brief time between 32 and 33 months of age. In the younger children, a grating stimulus elicited eye movements towards the target followed by a few seconds of focused attention; in the older children a visual avoidance behavior was observed where subjects looked consistently in the opposite direction of the target. An analysis of video recordings suggests that this avoidance pattern was a composite of a very brief initial target-directed eyemovement which was quickly arrested, and followed by eye movements in the opposite direction, initiating a search of the visual scene.     

Interventive Interviewing: Part III. Intending to Ask Lineal,Circular, Strategic,or Reflexive Questions?

Every question asked by a therapist may be seen to embody some intent and to arise from certain assumptions. Many questions are intended to orient the therapist to the client's situation and experiences; others are asked primarily to provoke therapeutic change. Some questions are based on lineal assumptions about the phenomena being addressed; others are based on circular assumptions. The differences among these questions are not trivial. They tend to have dissimilar effects. This article explores these issues and offers a framework for distinguishing four major groups of questions. The framework may be used by therapists to guide their decision making about what kinds of questions to ask, and by researchers to study different interviewing styles.     

Predicting Job Seeking Frequency and Psychological Well-Being in the Unemployed

Unemployed (n = 118) and employed (n = 120) people were contrasted on variables of well-being, confidence, and employment commitment. The unemployed scored lower on the General Health Questionnaire (Goldberg, 1972) and the General Self-Efficacy Scale (Sherer et al., 1982). No differences were Identified on levels of employment commitment. For the unemployed sample, predictors of job-seeking behavior and well-being were then examined. Intention to seek work predicted job-seeking behavior, while self-efficacy, employment commitment, and intentions to seek work predicted well-being. Results are discussed in light of current theories of job seeking behavior, and recommendations are made for practice.     

Studies in subjective probability V: Chance vs. structure in visual patterns

Student subjects were instructed to produce maximally non-random, aesthetically attractive and random appearing dot patterns of two different levels of complexity (3 and 5 dots). When the patterns were grouped according to similarity, random patterns were found to belong to greater equivalence groups than non-random patterns. They were also estimated to be far more probable to arise from a chance process, regardless of number of elements. The aesthetically attractive patterns were placed between random and non-random patterns in terms of probability estimates. With increasing pattern complexity, patterns produced according to different instructions became increasingly distinguishable. It is argued that there may be an optimal complexity level for discovering "structure" or unique configurations in chance patterns (cf. the constellations of stars).     

"Perception" versus "Learning": The effect of different instructions upon the central tendency shift

Abstract.— Earlier studies of context effects in stimulus generalization, especially in the adaption-level tradition, have failed to take into account the subjective difference between a learning experiment and an experiment in perception. In the present study, 68 student subjects were trained to discriminate a 30 cm vertical line from shorter and longer lines, and were subsequently tested for generalization with asymmetrical test series (centering around 34 cm). Half of the subjects were told that they were participating in a perception experiment, the other half that they were participating in a learning experiment. Subjects in the latter condition were considerably more influenced by context and gave a greater number of equivalence responses than did the subjects in the perception condition. Amount of training and discriminability of training stimuli did also influence the central tendency shift, but to a lesser extent.     

Studies in subjective probability III: The unimportance of alternatives

In four experiments, student subjects were asked to estimate probabilities for a list of two to ten exhaustive, non-chance events, covering a variety of situations, both of prediction and diagnosis. Only in the two-alternative case a majority gave estimates which add up to unity (or 100%). As the number of alternatives increased, the total probability increased far beyond 100%, indicating a non-distributional probability concept. For instance, the probability that a person has committed murder was considered to be quite independent of his being one of three or one of five suspects. Even when subjects were told that the list should be extended with two additional alternatives and were allowed to correct their earlier estimates, few thought it necessary to do so, and corrections went equally in both directions.