Internal versus external references with respect to perception of stimuli on the body surface

Previous studies on the determinants of locus of perception of stimuli on the body have suggested that the position of the stimulus has a significant effect whether a subject perceives a tactile pattern as seen from inside or outside the body. However, it is possible that previous investigators confounded stimulus location--dorsal or frontal--and experimenter's position--behind or in front of the subject. Using 42 male subjects in a 2 X 2 design, the effects of experimenter's position and stimulus location were studied by a new technique for inferring locus of perception. Experimenter's position, rather than stimulus location, affects subjects' locus of perception. Perception of stimuli on the body involves three independent factors, the demand characteristics of the experiment, the manner in which an individual perceives the boundaries of his own body, and an individual's ability to adopt the experimenter's perceptual standpoint.     

Surrender-and-catch and phenomenology

Revision of a lecture given on November 10, 1982, in the course of a faculty seminar at Memorial University of Newfoundland. The present version owes much to the participants in the rational, undistorted discussion which followed, as well as to written comments by Erazim Kohák, his book, Idea and Experience: Edmund Husserl's Project of Phenomenology in IDEAS I (1978), discussions with Mildred Bakan, Helmut R. Wagner's response to a related paper, and a critical reading by George Psathas. I am deeply grateful.     

Attitudes among adolescents in a Swedish city toward some sexual crimes

Using data from a representative sample of adolescents in grade ten in Uppsala, the fourth largest city in Sweden, attitudes toward a number of (criminal) sexual acts are studied. These data are contrasted with those from a sample of patients at a school gynecological clinic. It is found that for both samples, only a very limited number of the eight discussed acts are considered to be criminal by the adolescents. Although at least seven or eight acts are criminal in Swedish law, only two acts are considered criminal by about half of the respondents. These acts are pedophilia and rape after petting. The same questions were used by Kutchinsky in 1969 when on behalf of the U.S. Congress Commission on Obscenity and Pornography he studied inhabitants in Copenhagen, Denmark. When comparing data from Uppsala Sweden 1978 with data from Copenhagen, Denmark 1969 we find that Swedish adolescents in the late seventies, on the whole are much less likely to call the discussed acts criminal. The only exception is rape after petting, which in Copenhagen in the late sixties was the act least often seen as criminal but in the Uppsala study in the late seventies it was one of the two acts most often claimed to be criminal. Finally, the effects of coital experience and the effect of sexual knowledge on the percieved criminality of the acts are considered.     

Experimental analysis of pedophilia

It was hypothesized that the population of pedophiles differs from that of males who prefer physically mature partners, in respect of the proportion of bisexual members in each group. Bisexuality was assessed by means of a verbal scale and by recording penile volume changes during the presentation of movie clips of nude males and females. Results supported the hypothesis.An earlier finding of a difference between pedophiles and males who prefer physically mature partners, in respect to feminine gender identity, was retested using the Feminine Gender Identity Scale (for males). It could be confirmed only for homosexual males and therefore cannot be accepted as a general difference between pedophiles and persons who prefer physically mature partners.     

Wundt's psychological experiment in the light of his philosophy of science

Summary Wundt initiated the first systematic psychological research programme. This achievement occurred at the same time as his elaboration of a philosophy of science which was anti-inductivist and stressed the priority of explanatory motives. Specifically psychological explanations depended on concepts of psychological causality as manifested in apperceptive or volitional processes. The major differences between the Wundtian and other models of psychological experimentation can be understood in the light of this general approach. Thus experimenters and subjects had to be enlightened collaborators and the role of introspection was more significant in an explanatory than in a purely observational context. Wundt's special requirements for the psychological experiment led him to reject other early models as exemplified by the hypnotic experiment in which the experimenter-subject relationship was closer to what was to become the norm in the twentieth century.     

The new sovietPhilosophical Encyclopedia. IV

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The new sovietPhilosophical Encyclopedia. IV

     

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