High blushing propensity: fearful preoccupation or facial coloration?

Twenty-seven women with high scores on the Blushing Propensity Scale (BPS) and 26 women with low BPS scores were exposed to two different video segments. One video showed the subject's own singing, recorded in a previous session and the other video showed a segment of Hitchcock's movie Psycho. During the experiment, facial coloration, facial temperature, and skin conductance level were measured. In addition, subjects' blushing intensity was judged by raters. Finally, subjects were asked to rate their blushing intensity and fear of blushing during the video presentations. Subjects generally blushed more during the presentation of their singing than during comparison stimulation, as measured physiologically. There were no between group differences in this respect. No differences were found between the two groups on raters' judgements about blushing intensity. However, high BPS subjects dramatically overestimated their blushing intensity and were more afraid of blushing than low BPS subjects. During the mere presence of the raters, high BPS subjects tended to show a relatively strong coloration. Thus, the BPS seems to reflect both a fearful preoccupation and a stronger facial coloration.     

Binocular rivalry with moving patterns

Binocular rivalry between a horizontal and a vertical grating was examined in six experiments. The gratings could be presented in a static form or dynamically so that either one or both gratings moved. The motion consisted of a symmetrical transformation of the gratings about their centers, so that the lines moved outwards or inwards. During rivalry, a moving pattern was visible for about 50% longer than an equivalently oriented static pattern (Experiments 1, 2, and 4). When both gratings were in motion (Experiments 3 and 5), the course of rivalry was similar to that found for two static gratings. The duration of dominance of the moving grating was influenced by its velocity (Experiment 6). The results are interpreted in terms of the stimulus strengths of the static and dynamic patterns.     

Upper bounds for Kruskal's stress

In this paper the relationships between the two formulas for stress proposed by Kruskal in 1964 are studied. It is shown that stress formula one has a system of nontrivial upper bounds. It seems likely that minimization of this loss function will be liable to produce solutions for which this upper bound is small. These are regularly shaped configurations. Even though stress formula two yields less equivocal results, it seems to be expected that minimization of this loss function will tend to produce configurations in which the points are clumped. These results give no clue as to which of the two loss functions is to be preferred.This study has been supported by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Zuiver-Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Pure Research), under grant 56-146.Comments by Willem Heiser and Frank Critichley have been very helpful.The second author presently is employed by the Netherlands Central Bureau of Statistics, Voorburg.     

Properties of the recombination of one-dimensional motion signals into a pattern motion signal.

We have examined the human ability to determine the direction of movement of a variety of plaid patterns. The plaids were composed of two orthogonal sine-wave gratings. When the plaid components are of unequal spatial frequency or sometimes of unequal contrast, observers judge the direction of movement incorrectly. In terms of the two-stage model of Adelson and Movshon (1982), these errors may result from either a misjudgment in the perceived speeds of each of the components or a failure in the combination of one-dimensional component movements into a coherent direction of motion of the two-dimensional plaid pattern, or both. A comparison of the perceived direction of motion of plaids with the relative perceived speeds of the plaid component gratings suggest that both failures occur, but in different circumstances. The relative perceived speed of the plaid components was measured with a spatial and a temporal forced-choice technique, the former leading to larger differences. Our results support the notion that the visual system decomposes a moving plaid into oriented components and subsequently recombines the component motions.     

Spouse involvement in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive patients

Twelve married obsessive-compulsive patients were randomly allocated to either selfcontrolled exposure or partner-assisted exposure. Treatment in both conditions consisted of homepactice.The results at the Post-test showed that both versions of exposure in vivo resulted in significant improvements but the partner-assisted group improved more. After a 1-month treatment-free period no significant differences between conditions were found due to a continuing improvement in the selfcontrolled exposure condition. Results were maintained at a 6-month follow-up.It was concluded that home-practice is a cost-effective treatment procedure for obsessive-compulsives and that couple training may be useful with selected patients.     

Cerebral organization in left-handers

We have analyzed the verbal and spatial performances of 141 left-handed and 130 right-handed patients having unilateral hemispheric lesions and that have been grouped according to whether familial sinistrality (FS) is present or not. The present results confirm those of previous studies establishing a relation between FS on one hand and the ambilaterality of the functional representations of language and the lesser intrahemispheric focalization on the other. Such a relation has not only been found with left-handers but, to a lesser extent, with right-handers as well. On the contrary, this type of hemispheric organization does not prevail with respect to spatial functions. These results also allow for the exclusion of any relation between the strength of left-handedness and the pattern of cerebral organization. One finds, nevertheless, some indications that favor the influence of sex on cerebral organization, although it is impossible to specify the interference of this factor.     

Play behaviors of handicapped preschool children in the presence and absence of nonhandicapped peers

Sixteen minimally handicapped children and 18 nonhandicapped children were observed playing as separate classes and as a combined group on their preschool playground. Play behaviors directed toward self, toys, teachers, and peers were recorded using a time sampling procedure. Repeated measures analyses revealed that: (1) handicapped children engaged in less peer-directed and more teacher-directed behaviors than the similar chronological age but developmentally more advanced normal children; (2) a comparison between a subsample of normal and handicapped children who were approximately equivalent on developmental age suggested that the normal children only vocalized more often; (3) when integrated with the normal children, handicapped children engaged in more peer-directed and less teacher-directed behaviors than when playing in the non-integrated situation; (4) during the combined group play situation, normal children directed more behaviors to their own classmates while handicapped children directed approximately equal amounts of behavior to their own classmates and to their normal peers. These results suggest that the normal children were not negatively affected and the handicapped children were positively affected by the integrated play situation.