Practical and scientific rationality: A Bayesian perspective on Levi's difficulty

In ‘Practical and Scientific Rationality: A Difficulty for Levi's Epistemology,’ Wayne Backman points to genuine difficulties in Isaac Levi's epistemology, difficulties that Backman attributes to Levi's having required, and for no good reason, that a rational person adopt but one standard of possibility for all her endeavors practical and scientific. I argue that Levi's requirement has, in fact, a deep and compelling motivation that tips the scales in favor of a different diagnosis of Levi's ills — i.e., that Levi's error lies simply in his having set insufficiently high qualifications for admission into the corpus that determines a person's standard of possibility.     

Language lateralization and handedness: Estimates based on clinical data

The suggestion that the cerebral representation of language is bilateral in at least some left handers relies on using the proportion of aphasics found in available clinical samples of sufferers of unilateral brain damage as a valid estimate of the probability that aphasia will occur following unilateral brain damage. This results in an overestimate of this probability since the clinical sample includes only cases with both unilateral brain damage and clinical symptoms and excludes cases with unilateral brain damage without clinical symptoms. With adjustment for this overestimate the clinical data are consistent with unilateral cerebral representation of language in left handers.     

Is beauty talent? Sex interaction in the attractiveness halo effect

Two experiments were performed to replicate and extend previous findings of judgmental bias which favors physically attractive people. In the first experiment male and female subjects judged an essay purportedly written by an attractive or an unattractive female author. The attractive author was rated as significantly more talented by male judges. Female judges rated the attractive author as less talented, although this difference was not statistically significant. A second experiment concerned ratings by males and females of essays written by attractive or unattractive male authors. The results suggested that the attractiveness halo effect does not occur for male authors.A similar version of this article was presented at the meeting of the Western Psychological Association, Los Angeles, April 1976. Thanks are due to Jan Ault, Lynn Barrett, Paul Leathem, Mike Orenich, Bill Starns, and Meg Wiedlin for their participation in various stages of the research.     

An output spooling system for continuous data-logging paradigms

Spooling is the process of temporarily routing data to high-speed disk storage, en route between programs and peripherals of different speeds. In the real-time laboratory, such mismatches may occur between input data rates from sensors, processing programs, and archival storage on magnetic tape. To handle these situations, a continuous real-time data spooling system is now under development in our laboratory. Running under a multiprogramming executive, a spooling dispatcher schedules asynchronous device drivers and data manipulation programs in an attempt to maximize throughput without any loss of data.     

Some debugging strategies for assembler-based minicomputer operating systems

An assembler-based operating system can provide debugging features often found only on more advanced systems. These can include an interactive inspection program, an error-trap facility, and a real time, hard copy trace of important program events. These features, which can reduce the number of recompilation cycles needed for debugging, have been implemented in the FRIVLOS operating system for a 32K PDP-12.     

Traditional minicomputers: A continuing role in the laboratory

The traditional laboratory minicomputer was programmed in assembler, in a home-built language, or in a fast, compiled language with access to assembler-coded subroutines. This software strategy remains useful on inexpensive, microcomputer-based hardware for many applications in which the computer must respond to external events within a few milliseconds. The benefits of rapid response and sometimes lower hardware expense may require the cost of increased software development complexity and time.     

Women's Career Plans and Maternal Employment

Maternal employment, perceived maternal satisfaction and goodness of mothering, and sex role conceptions were studied as they relate to future life plans of college senior women. Twenty-five women in a working mother group and 26 in a nonworking mother group were administered the Strong Vocational Interest Blank for Women, the Sex-Role Stereotype Questionnaire, the Inventory of Feminine Values, the Maternal Satisfaction and Maternal Goodness scales, and the Life Plan Questionnaire. Daughters of working mothers scored higher on career orientation ( p <.01, Life Plan Questionnaire) than did daughters of nonworking mothers. High perceived maternal satisfaction and maternal goodness correlated with low career orientation for the nonworking sample (the averaged r across variable pairs =.48). For the working sample, perceived maternal dissatisfaction with feminine role values correlated significantly with higher career orientation (r =.42), while the other satisfaction measure showed no relation to career orientation. Daughters of working mothers displayed broader sex role conceptualizations (p <0.01).