A reanalysis of two scales of tolerance of ambiguity

Important reviews of the tolerance of ambiguity literature have shown that the concept has become overextended and its elements remain unsupported by the confused data collected, and scales with inadequate psychometric performance have been used. In the present study 631 subjects responded to Budner's (1962) test of Intolerance of Ambiguity and MacDonald's (1970) revision of Rydell and Rosen's (1966) Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale. These scales were chosen because they seemed somewhat less suspect than others. Tests of other personality dimensions which the literature reviews suggested were likely correlates of intolerance of ambiguity were also included. Initial results were uneven and inconclusive. After using item analysis to reduce the tests, more logical and consistent results were obtained. These help to clarify the concept, differentiating sharply between its supposed primary and secondary elements. Three studies in which the reduced tests were used with desirable results are reported.     

Validity and quantification in intuitionism

We distinguish three different readings of the intuitionistic notions of validity, soundness, and completeness with respect to the quantification occurring in the notion of validity, and we establish certain relations between the different readings. For each of the meta-logical notions considered we suggest that the most natural reading (which is not the same for all cases) is precisely the one which is required by the recent intuitionistic completeness theorems for IPC.This paper was partly written while the first author, H. C. M. de Swart, was a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University for the academic year 1976–1977. This opportunity was given to him by the Niels Stensen Stichting in Amsterdam, the department of philosophy of the Catholic University in Nijmegen and by Princeton University. He is happy to express his appreciation for that opportunity.     

A comparison of parent and teacher reports of selected adaptive behaviors of children

Assessment of children's adaptive behavior has been recommended for full multidimensional and nondiscriminatory evaluations. Additionally, previous research has reported discrepancies between teacher and parent reports on adaptive behavior. The purpose of this study was to compare mother and teacher reports on two scales from the Adaptive Behavior Inventory for Children of the System of Multicultural and Pluralistic Assessment (SOMPA). Black students from second through fourth grades (N = 24; 4 males and 4 females per grade) in an urban, parochial school were selected. The interviewers were two trained female graduate students (one white, one black). Each child's mother and teacher were interviewed in accordance with SOMPA assessment procedures. The results indicated that there was little agreement (.38 to .64) between mother and teacher reports. Additionally, mothers tended to provide higher ratings of adaptive behaviors than did teachers, irrespective of grade level. Implications of these findings for the assessment of children's adaptive behaviors are discussed.     

Spatial localization does not require the presence of local cues

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that rats can rapidly learn to locate an object that they can never see, hear, or smell provided it remains in a fixed spatial location relative to distal room cues. Four groups of rats were permitted to escape from opaque water onto a platform which was either just above or just below the water surface, and in either a fixed or varied location. Learning occurred rapidly except for the group for whom the escape platform was below the water surface and moved about from place to place. Transfer tests revealed that a spatial location search strategy was employed by the group for whom the platform was below water but in a fixed location. A second experiment investigated this learning further, revealing instantaneous transfer when the rats were required to approach the platform from a novel starting position. The data of both studies are discussed in relation to recent work on spatial memory in the rat. The concept of the “acuity” of spatial memory is introduced and the procedures used may provide a new approach to comparing spatial memory with classical and instrumental conditioning.     

The effects of modifying consummatory behavior on the topography of the autoshaped pecking response in pigeons

The autoshaped responses of two debeaked pigeons that had developed modified eating behavior were compared to the autoshaped responses of three control subjects that ate grain normally. The control subjects exhibited keylight responding that was judged normal by two independent raters. The debeaked subjects pecked the key and ate grain with both normal and modified responses. The results of this study demostrate that an autoshaping procedure using grain as an appetitive stimulus may be used to establish a response that is not biologically preorganized.     

Pastoral intervention in a temporary burn unit

In February, 1978 a tank car exploded in Waverly, Tennessee. Nine of those severely burned in the fire were brought to Vanderbilt University Medical Center. The author describes his role as chaplain as defined by the patients' primary and secondary adaptive behaviors. Integrating this basic data in psychodynamics with his own understanding of ministry, he characterizes his ministry as both clinically and community based.He also serves as an adjunct faculty member of The Divinity School, Vanderbilt University.     

Right-left confusion in the adult: A verbal labeling effect

Directional judgments are typically slower when relative location is described by the words “east” and “west” or “right” and “left” than when described by the words “north” and “south” or “up” and “down.” A series of experiments are reported that disentangle verbal from perceptual encoding explanations for right-left difficulty. Overall, our results support a verbal encoding explanation for right-left confusion in the adult. Experiments 1-3 demonstrate that in a response-differentiation task, it is response to the labels “north,” “east,” “south,” and “west” that is responsible for right-left confusion. In addition, Experiments 4-6 demonstrate that right-left difficulty in a mirror image discrimination task is contingent on the use of directional labels. (The data also suggest that it may be more difficult to deal with “up,” “down,” “left,” and “right” than with “north,” “south,” “east,” and “west”) The data are interpreted as inconsistent with a bilateral symmetry explanation for right-left confusion.