Acquisition of spatial knowledge under conditions of temporospatial discontinuity in young and elderly adults

Summary Young and elderly adults acquired route information from a sequence of slides depicting a walk through an actual environment. The accuracy of their distance knowledge after viewing the slides was compared for a normal presentation and a presentation with temporospatial discontinuity. No differences between age groups were noted under normal presentation conditions, but young adults were more accurate under conditions of temporospatial discontinuity. Results were interpreted in terms of an age-related decrement in the operational capacity of working memory. They were also viewed as supportive of a constructivist-representational theory of spatial learning.This research was conducted while the senior author served as Principal Investigator for National Institute on Aging Grant No. 1 ROI AG05169, Aging and Spatial Cognition, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA     

Hispanics in Ivy: Assessing identity and perceived threat

Membership in social groups is an important aspect of the self-concept, as a number of theorists such as Tajfel (1981) have recognized, and ethnic identity is a major exemplar of such groupings. In the present research, we focus on the particular case of Hispanic identity and the degree to which that identity may be threatened for first-year Hispanic students who enter a predominantly Anglo university. Forty-five Hispanic students (17 female, 28 male) at two Ivy League universities were interviewed early in their first year to assess Hispanic identity, collective self-esteem (Luhtanen & Crocker, 1988), and perceived threats to Hispanic identity. In addition, we considered the degree to which strength of cultural background relates to self-esteem and to perceptions of threat. The majority of students claimed Hispanic as an important identity. Strength of cultural background generally acted as a buffer to perceived threat, particularly for men. Cultural background was also related to collective self-esteem for men but not for women, even though Hispanic identity was more important for women than men. The results attest to the importance of both gender and ethnicity to self-definition and self-esteem, as well as to the complexity of the relationships among these variables.We thank Tracey Revenson as well as the members of the Identity Research Seminar at the CUNY Graduate Center for their comments on an earlier version of this paper.     

Operate your own World-Wide Web server

Although many researchers wishing to use the World-Wide Web for academic purposes rely on centralized Web services, they should be aware that it is neither expensive nor difficult to operate their own server. Doing so provides research-related benefits such as complete control over their host name and documents provided, the guaranteed ability to execute common gateway interface and server-side include programs, immediate access to their collected data, and the ability to better control who participates in their experiments. This paper surveys Web-server software features likely to be of interest to psychologists and conceptually summarizes their operation and use. The basic steps required to set up a Web server on popular microcomputers are reviewed, and security issues concerning Web-server operation are discussed. An accompanying resource Web page can assist users in setting up their own servers.     

A Behavior Systems View of Conditioned States during Long and Short CS–US Intervals

In the behavior systems view, a long CS–US interval should differentially condition a general search mode and related behavior, while a short CS–US interval should differentially condition a focal search mode and related behavior. Two experiments paired a long or a short CS with food, and then, during an extinction test, compounded the CS with an unconditioned probe-stimulus of a rolling ball-bearing. Presuming that the long CS differentially conditions a general search mode, and that unconditioned contact of a moving stimulus is characteristic of that mode, presentation of the long CS should facilitate interaction with the ball-bearing. Similarly, presuming that a short CS differentially conditions a focal search mode, and that feeder-directed responses are characteristic of this mode, presentation of a short CS should facilitate nosing in the food-tray. Consistent with these predictions, ball-bearing contact increased in rats receiving the long CS, while nosing in the food-tray was higher with the short CS.     

Book reviews

Enlightenment East and West Leonard Angel, 1994 Albany, State University of New York Press 388 pp.

Visions of Power: Imagining Medieval Japanese Buddhism Bernard Faure, trans, by Phyius Brooks, 1996 Princeton, Princeton University Press 329 pp.

Pāli Buddhism. Curzon Studies in Asian Philosophy Frank J. Hoffman & Deegaixe Mahinda (Eds), 1996 Richmond, Curzon Press xiii + 233 pp., ISBN 0 7007 0359 4, hb £40

Friendship East and West: philosophical perspectives Oliver Leaman (Ed.), 1996 Richmond UK, Curzon Press ix + 288 pp., ISBN 0 7007 0358 6, hb £40

Heidegger's Hidden Sources: East Asian Influences on his work Reinhard May, trans, by GRAHAM PARKES, 1996 London, Routledge xviii+ 121 pp., hb £35.00, pb £11.99

The Social Self in Zen and American Pragmatism Steve Odin, 1996 Albany, SUNY Press xvi + 482 pp., ISBN 0 9714 2492 8, pb $24.95

The Art of living. Aesthetics of the Ordinary in World Spiritual Traditions Crispin Sartwell, 1995 Albany, State University of New York Press xiv+ 163 pp., hb

East‐West Encounters in Philosophy and Religion Ninian Smart & B. Srinivasa Murthy (Eds), 1997 London, Sangam Books xxiii + 411 pp., ISBN 0 8613 2375 0, hb £24.95

Confucianism and Christianity: a comparative study of Jen and Agape Xinzhong Yao, 1996 Brighton, Sussex Academic Press viii+ 164 pp., ISBN 1 8987 2325 7, hb £35 and $55     

Cotherapy treatment of phobias: A case study

A case study is presented of the treatment of a woman who had suffered from claustrophobia for over 13 years, by cotherapists using a combination of desensitization and flooding techniques. By assuming specific roles, the therapists expedited the therapeutic process to a successful conclusion in a brief period of time.     

Participant roles and the processing of verbs during sentence comprehension

This paper explores the nature of thematic information made available when a verb is accessed during sentence comprehension. Following Shapiro, Zurif, and Grimshaw (1987), a cross-modal lexical decision (interference) task was employed to examine whether either the number of argument structures or the number of participant (thematic) roles inherent in a verb cause an increase in processing load upon access of the verb. It was determined that there was no evidence for such an increased processing load covarying with the number of argument structures of the verb, at least for those verb types examined in this study. However, there was an increase in processing load as a direct function of the number of participant roles carried by the verb. It is concluded that the participant roles (thematic roles associated with the central meaning of the verb) are stored with the representation of a verb and are made immediately, available upon access of the verb for further processing during comprehension.The first author gratefully acknowledges discussion and advice from Adele Goldberg and the support of grant T32 DC 00041 in pursuing this work. The second author acknowledges the support of NIH grant RO1 DC00494 for the work presented in this paper, and the helpful comments and criticisms of a reviewer.     

MENSTRUAL JOY The Construct and Its Consequences

Fifty female college students participated in a study of women's health. In a counterbalanced design, half of the participants completed the Menstrual Joy Questionnaire (MJQ) and the Menstrual Attitude Questionnaire (MAQ) in the first testing session. A week later they completed the Menstrual Distress Questionnaire (MDQ) and the Menstrual Attitude Questionnaire. The other participants completed the MDQ and MAQ in the first session and the MJQ and MAQ in the second. A multivariate analysis of variance revealed that those who received the MJQ first reported more positive cyclic changes on the MDQ and more positive attitudes on the MAQ. A follow-up study of 40 college students examined their responses to the MJQ. Participants reported that they were surprised or incredulous; most had not previously considered positive aspects of the menstrual cycle. Thirty percent reported that the MJQ had caused them to look at menstruation in a different way.