Sex differences and sex-role stereotyping in clinical psychologists' reports: a research note

This paper presents an empirical study of sex differences and sex-role stereotyping in clinical psychologists' reports. The results of numerous analyses showed no significant evidence at any point of sex differences or sex-role stereotyping in the form or the subject matter of the clinical reports.

     

Signal value and preliminary processes in or elicitation

The evoked cardiac response (ECR) of heart rate deceleration, respiratory pause, the peripheral pulse amplitude response (PPAR) of vascular constriction, and the galvanic skin response (GSR) were recorded from 20 subjects presented with a series of brief target and nontarget stimuli in a random order. Prestimulus vigilance was equivalent for the two types of stimuli since each had to be identified as target or nontarget before being processed, or ignored, respectively. This difference in signal value following identification affected only the GSR, supporting a conceptualization of preliminary processes in orienting response (OR) elicitation rather than Sokolov’s unitary OR concept.     

The effect of auditory input on cerebral laterality

Cerebral laterality was examined for third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade deaf and hearing subjects. The experimental task involved the processing of word and picture stimuli presented singly to the right and left visual hemifields. The analyses indicated the deaf children were faster than the hearing children in overall processing efficiency, and that they performed differently in regard to hemispheric lateralization. The deaf children processed the stimuli more efficiently in the right hemisphere, while the hearing children demonstrated a left-hemisphere proficiency. This finding is discussed in terms of the hypothesis that cerebral lateralization is influenced by auditory processing.     

Framework for formal ontology

The discussions which follow rest on a distinction, first expounded by Husserl, between formal logic and formal ontology. The former concerns itself with (formal) meaning-structures; the latter with formal structures amongst objects and their parts. The paper attempts to show how, when formal ontological considerations are brought into play, contemporary extensionalist theories of part and whole, and above all the mereology of Leniewski, can be generalised to embrace not only relations between concrete objects and object-pieces, but also relations between what we shall call dependent parts or moments. A two-dimensional formal language is canvassed for the resultant ontological theory, a language which owes more to the tradition of Euler, Boole and Venn than to the quantifier-centred languages which have predominated amongst analytic philosophers since the time of Frege and Russell. Analytic philosophical arguments against moments, and against the entire project of a formal ontology, are considered and rejected. The paper concludes with a brief account of some applications of the theory presented.     

Cognitive advantage in sport: the nature of perceptual structures

To extend and clarify the nature of the perceptual processes used by sport experts to perceive schematic sport information, two experiments used schematic football diagrams that varied in structure (structured vs. unstructured) and complexity (complex vs. easy). The primary objective was to examine and characterize the nature of the perceptual structures (chunks) that are initially encoded, stored, and subsequently retrieved. In Experiment 1, compared with nonexperts, experts recalled larger perceptual structures following the initial stimulus presentation of structured stimuli only, replicating the recall findings of previous research in other skill domains. Experiment 2 used a long-term memory recognition task and a sorting task. Experts had superior recall and recognition of structured stimuli only, along with more discriminating sorting criteria of perceptual structures within long-term memory. This suggests that experts possess a highly refined semantic network or organized, structured schematic information. This research extends and clarifies the similarities between the perceptual processes of experts in sport (i.e., football) and experts in skill domains that require obvious cognitive involvement (i.e., chess). The results are discussed with reference to the perceptual and conceptual chunking hypotheses. It is proposed that sport experts' knowledge of a conceptual category enables them to retrieve elements using a "generate-and-test process."     

Self-Consciousness and Strategic Self-Presentation

ABSTRACT People who are publicly self-conscious have been characterized as being especially concerned about their social identities and oriented toward gaining approval and avoiding disapproval. In two experiments, it was found that “pure publics” (i.e., those high in public and low in private self-consciousness) were the most concerned about matching their deeds and words. These subjects presented themselves to a partner consistently with their publicly known, prior performance on a supposedly valid test of social sensitivity. However, they presented themselves in a uniformly positive manner if the test could be dismissed as invalid and/or if their performance was unknown. In contrast, subjects low in public or high in private self-consciousness did not display these strategic patterns and presented themselves positively in all cases. Pure publics are thus the most likely to engage in patterns of self-presentation that have been shown to maximize approval and minimize disapproval in social interactions.