Checkerboard-specific color aftereffects: A failure to find effects of perceptual organization

Two experiments investigated the effects of differing perceptual organizations of reversible figures on McCollough aftereffects. Experiment 1 used colored checkerboard inducing stimuli and achromatic grating test stimuli. While some subjects tended to organize the checkerboards into rows and/or columns and others to organize them into obliques, these variations did not result in differences in aftereffect direction or magnitude. Experiment 2 induced an aftereffect with colored gratings and tested with checkerboards, gratings, and a reversible concentric octagon pattern. Perceptual organization had no effect on results for checkerboards, but was related to aftereffect strength for the octagon pattern. Indirect evidence suggests that, in the latter case, differences in aftereffect strength may have influenced the perceived organization, rather than vice versa. Finally, regardless of the specific organization perceived, spontaneous viewing of all test stimuli produced stronger aftereffects than were found when subjects reorganized the pattern. This may have resulted from a viewing strategy associated with reorganization, since similarly small aftereffects were found when subjects concentrated their attention on a single pattern element.     

Weekending on the Coronation Gulf

Allen E. Ivey's visit to Coppermine, an Inuit village in the Canadian Arctic, is the basis for this assessment of the difficulties that arise when a traditional society is confronted and affected by the changes that inevitably accompany technological advancement and so-called Western contact. This article is written in narrative form that incorporates some aspects of a travelogue as well as professional observation and analysis. Focus is particularly held on the matter of counseling and guidance techniques and the question of their applicability outside the milieu in which they have been developed.     

Effects of context in judgments of sweetness and pleasantness

Dramatic effects of the immediate stimulus context were demonstrated for ratings of sweetness and also for ratings of pleasantness of soft drinks containing different concentrations of sucrose. The same drinks were rated sweeter when the lower concentrations were presented more frequently, less sweet when the higher concentrations were presented more frequently. A quasi-normal distribution of frequencies yielded ratings falling between the two skewed distributions. Ratings of sweetness were accurately predicted by Parducci’s (1974) range-frequency model of judgment, which was originally developed to explain contextual effects in other psychophysical dimensions. Ratings of pleasantness were also affected by context; the highest ratings were assigned to concentrations of intermediate sweetness in their respective contexts.     

The problem of parental nonadherence in clinical behavior analysis: effective treatment is not enough

Applied behavior analysts have developed many effective interventions for common childhood problems and have repeatedly demonstrated that childhood behavior responds to properly managed contingencies. The success of these interventions is dependent upon their basic effectiveness, as demonstrated in the literature, their precise delivery by the clinician to the parent, and adherence to or consistent implementation of the intervention. Unfortunately, arranging the consistent implementation of effective parenting strategies is a significant challenge for behavior analysts who work in homes, schools, and outpatient or primary care clinics. Much has been done to address issues of adherence or implementation in the clinic, but relatively little has been done to increase our understanding of the contingencies that affect parental adherence beyond the supervised clinic environment. An analysis of the contingencies that strengthen or weaken adherence might suggest strategies to improve implementation outside the clinic setting. What follows is an analysis of the variables associated with adherence by parents to recommendations designed to solve common childhood problems.     

Values and beliefs of vegetarians and omnivores

Following the claim by some anthropologists and sociologists that 1 symbolic meaning of meat is a preference for hierarchical domination (C. J. Adams, 1990; N. Fiddes, 1989; D. D. Heisley, 1990; J. Twigg, 1983), the authors compared the values and beliefs of vegetarians and omnivores in 2 studies conducted in New Zealand. They compared the full range of vegetarians and omnivores on right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, human values, and consumption values. The participants tending toward omnivorism differed from those leaning toward veganism and vegetarianism in 2 principal ways: The omnivores (a) were more likely to endorse hierarchical domination and (b) placed less importance on emotional states. Accordingly, the acceptance or rejection of meat co-varied with the acceptance or rejection of the values associated with meat; that finding suggests that individuals consume meat and embrace its symbolism in ways consistent with their self-definitions.     

Neural representation of consciously imperceptible speech sound differences

The concept of subliminal perception has been a subject of interest and controversy for decades. Of interest in the present investigation was whether a neurophysiologic index of stimulus change could be elicited to speech sound contrasts that were consciously indiscriminable. The stimuli were chosen on the basis of each individual subject's discrimination threshold. The speech stimuli (which varied along an F3 onset frequency continuum from /da/ to /ga/) were synthesized so that the acoustical properties of the stimuli could be tightly controlled. Subthreshold and suprathreshold stimuli were chosen on the basis of behavioral ability demonstrated during psychophysical testing. A significant neural representation of stimulus change, reflected by the mismatch negativity response, was obtained in all but 1 subject in response to subthreshold stimuli. Grand average responses differed significantly from responses obtained in a control condition consisting of physiologic responses elicited by physically identical stimuli. Furthermore, responses to suprathreshold stimuli (close to threshold) did not differ significantly from subthreshold responses with respect to latency, amplitude, or area. These results suggest that neural representation of consciously imperceptible stimulus differences occurs and that this representation occurs at a preattentive level.     

Trust in managed care organizations

Two basic criticisms of managed care are that it erodes patient trust in physicians and subjects physicians to incentives and pressures that compromise the physician's fiduciary obligation to the patient. In this article, I first distinguish between status trust and merit trust, and then argue (1) that the value of status trust in physicians is probably over-rated and certainly underdocumented; (2) that erosion of status trust may not be detrimental if accompanied by an increase in well-founded merit trust; and (3) that under conditions of managed care the physician's commitment to traditional medical ethics cannot serve as an adequate basis for merit trust. Next, drawing on an analogy between managed care organzations and politics, I argue that (4) the most appropriate basis for merit trust in managed care is a conception of organizational legitimacy that includes procedural justice, empowerment of constructive criticism within the organization, and organizational accommodation of the noninstrumental commitment to patient well-being that is distinctive of medical professionalism. I then explore the conditions necessary for robust competition for merit trust among managed care organizations and indicate the kinds of public policies needed to facilitate such competition. Finally, I show how the account of organization-based merit trust can accommodate the special fiduciary obligation of medical professionals, without indulging in the delusion that it is the physician's fiduciary obligation always to provide all care that is expected to be of any net benefit to the patient.