How to make your own response boxes: A step-by-step guide for the construction of reliable and inexpensive parallel-port response pads from computer mice

Psychological research is based in large parts on response latencies, which are often registered by keypresses on a standard computer keyboard. Recording response latencies with a standard keyboard is problematic because keypresses are buffered within the keyboard hardware before they are signaled to the computer, adding error variance to the recorded latencies. This can be circumvented by using external response pads connected to the computer's parallel port. In this article, we describe how to build inexpensive, reliable, and easy-to-use response pads with six keys from two standard computer mice that can be connected to the PC's parallel port. We also address the problem of recording data from the parallel port with different software packages under Microsoft's Windows XP.     

Support vector machines categorize the scaling of human grip configurations

In previous work (Cesari & Newell, 2002), we used a graphical dimensional analysis to show that grip transitions obey the body-scaled relation K = lnL(o) + InM(o)h/(a + bM(h) + cL(h)), where L. and Mo are the object's length and mass, and Lh and Mh the length and mass of the grasper's hand. However, the generality of the equation was limited by the ad hoc graphical method that defined the lines for grip separation and by the assumption that these lines be negatively sloped and parallel to one another. This article reports an independent test of this relation by the geometrical and statistical categorization of body-scaled invariants for the transition of human grip configurations through support vector machines (SVMs). The SVM analysis confirmed the fit of linear, negatively sloped, and approximately parallel transition boundaries in the scaling of human grip configuration within a single hand. The SVM analysis has provided a theoretical refinement to the scaling model of human grip configurations.     

Formal Schooling Influences Two- but Not Three-Dimensional Naming Skills

The modulatory influence of literacy on the cognitive system of the human brain has been indicated in behavioral, neuroanatomic, and functional neuroimaging studies. In this study we explored the functional consequences of formal education and the acquisition of an alphabetic written language on two- and three-dimensional visual naming. The results show that illiterate subjects perform significantly worse on immediate naming of two-dimensional representations of common everyday objects compared to literate subjects, both in terms of accuracy and reaction times. In contrast, there was no significant difference when the subjects named the corresponding real objects. The results suggest that formal education and learning to read and to write modulate the cognitive process involved in processing two- but not three-dimensional representations of common everyday objects. Both the results of the reaction time and the error pattern analyses can be interpreted as indicating that the major influence of literacy affects the visual system or the interaction between the visual and the language systems. We suggest that the visual system in a wide sense and/or the interface between the visual and the language system are differently formatted in literate and illiterate subjects. In other words, we hypothesize that the pattern of interactions in the functional-anatomical networks subserving visual naming, that is, the interactions within and between the visual and language processing networks, differ in literate and illiterate subjects.     

Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS)

Guided by the idea that alexithymia and other psychopathological phenomena are connected with decreased sensitivity to internal emotional states, Lane and Schwartz (1987) presented a cognitive-developmental theory describing different “Levels of Emotional Awareness”. In 1990, Lane et al. developed a performance measure to identify different states of sensivity to internal emotional states, the “Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale” (LEAS). Subjects are asked to describe anticipated own feelings and those of another person in 20 scenes in a short written answer. We present the results of a study using the German version of the LEAS, the 20-item-version of the Toronto Alexithymia-Scale (TAS 20) and the state-version of the State-Anxiety-Inventory (STAI) on 338 Students of medicine of the Cologne university. The study is discussed with regard to a similar study conducted in the USA (Lane et al. 1996). Theoretical background and psychometric charateristics of the LEAS are related to actual trends in research on alexithymia.     

Memory deficits in young schizophrenics with normal general intellectual function

The aim of the present study was to examine different dimensions of memory functioning in young schizophrenics with normal general intellectual abilities. Thirty-three patients with schizophrenia and 33 healthy controls were included in the study. The results suggest that immediate short-term memory is intact, though there emerged a working memory deficit in the schizophrenia group. Deficient encoding of verbal material was observed in some, but not in other, testing conditions. There also seemed to be a retrieval deficit for verbal material in schizophrenia, though no storage deficit was indicated. Impaired memory for non-verbal material was also revealed. These results occurred in a context of intact executive functioning as measured by the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. The results indicate that temporal and frontal structures, as well as their interconnections, may be compromised in schizophrenia.     

An Integrative Model for Ethnocultural Counseling and Psychotherapy of Victims of Organized Violence

The author researched sociocultural factors related to psychotherapy with victims of organized violence from different perspectives: a refugee counseling center in a metropolis (Frankfurt, 1991–95) and refugee camps in neighboring countries (Uganda, 1994–96). At first the psychopathology of victims of organized violence is described. Then a review of treatment approaches follows and a conceptual model for integrative psychotherapy is developed. On the basis of qualitative analysis of client–therapist interactions, case discussions, supervision, evaluation of treatment, and literature review, an eclectic model for ethnocultural counseling and psychotherapy was developed. This eclectic model can be divided into (1) therapeutic relationship and transference, (2) modeling techniques, (3) extrapsychic techniques, (4) somatic techniques,(5) working through traumatic/grief/repressive experiences, and (6) reeducative and supportive techniques.     

Intra‐sentential context effects on the interpretation of logical metonymy⋆

Verbs such as enjoy in the student enjoyed the book exhibit logical metonymy: enjoy is interpreted as enjoy reading. Theoreticalwork [Computational Linguistics 17 (4) (1991) 409; The Generative Lexicon, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1995] predicts that this interpretation can be influenced by intra‐sentential context, e.g., by the subject of enjoy. In this article, we test this prediction using a completion experiment and find that the interpretation of a metonymic verb is influenced by the semantic role of its subject. We present a Bayesian model that accounts for the interpretation of logical metonymy and achieves a good fit on our experimental data. We show that the parameters of the model can be estimated from completion data or from corpus data.