The Role of General and Specific Psychomotor Tracking Ability in Validity

A study of 1,099 males and females in pilot training was conducted to investigate the relative importance of general and specific factors of psychomotor tracking ability in the prediction of several pilot training criteria. Measures of psychomotor tracking ability were derived from the Basic Attributes Test (Carretta and Ree 1994). The criteria were the dichotomous passing or failing pilot training and the average of six flying work samples. Comparisons of linear models indicated that general psychomotor tracking ability was the source of most of the validity and that only the specific measure of reaction time was incremental. Reaction time, although part of the psychomotor taxonomy, has frequently been identified as a measure of cognitive ability.     

A Comparison of Distractors for Controlling Distress in Young Children During Medical Procedures

Distraction is a strategy that has been shown to be effective and safe in the control of pain and distress. We assessed the utility of two simple distraction procedures for reducing children's pain and distress. Three conditions, control, brief film, and short story, were delivered during repeated medical procedures in a randomized sequence to eight young children with cancer. Scores on the Observational Scale of Behavioral Distress (OSBD-R) as well as observer ratings of overall behavioral distress showed that the short story procedure was more effective than either the control condition or the cartoon film. These results argue for the utility of simple parent–child interactive distraction tasks to ameliorate children's procedural distress.     

Abortive responding during punishment of bar holding

A continuous chain of homogeneous responding was established in rats by training animals to hold a lever down for 10 sec or longer before releasing it for food reinforcement. When criterion releases were subsequently punished, completed holding chains were greatly suppressed, aborted chains increased markedly, while the rate of chain initiations remained unchanged.     

Identifying rotated letter-like symbols

Previous research has shown that the identification of rotated alphanumeric symbols seems to be performed via the extraction of critical features encoded invariant to the symbol’s orientation. The present research argued that the use of such feature extraction processes might be a function of, first, a subject’s familiarity with the symbols, and second, the number of symbols from which a presented symbol is sampled. Earlier research has used highly over learned alphanumerics, in sets of six symbols; this practice is argued here as being seemingly conducive to feature extraction. In two experiments, the generality of a feature extraction interpretation, in contrast to one of mental rotation, was tested by having subjects previously trained to relative high- vs. low-familiarity criteria identify novel symbols in conditions in which a presented symbol was 1 of either 5 or 20 possibilities. Identification response times were found to be constant across all nonstandard orientations of presented symbols, irrespective of symbol familiarity or symbol set size. The findings support the generalization of a feature extraction interpretation to varying numbers of novel symbols of varying familiarity.     

Human spatial orientation in the pitch dimension

Two experiments were conducted. In Experiment I, each of eight Ss attempted to place himself at 13 different goal orientations between prone and supine. Deviations of achieved body pitch angles from goal orientations were determined. In Experiment II, each of eight Ss attempted to align a visual target with his morphological horizon while he was placed at each of the 13 goal orientations. Changes in settings of the target were examined. Results indicate that Ss underestimate body pitch when they are tilted less than 60 deg backward or forward from the vertical, overestimate body pitch when they are nearly prone, and accurately estimate body pitch when they are nearly supine. In contrast, Ss set the visual target maximally above the morphological horizon when they are tilted 30 deg forward from the vertical. The findings are discussed in terms of common and different physiological mechanisms that may underlie judgments of these types.     

Distance discrimination in a simulated space environment

The just noticeable difference (JND) for distance was investigated by a paired-comparisons method using successive comparisons. The research utilized an optically simulated large target located in a textureless environment at distances along the saggital plane out to 12, 800 ft. The value of ΔD/D varied from less than 3% at 200 ft to about 7% at 12, 800 ft. The results confirmed a power function relationship between distance threshold and observation distance.     

Value Inquiry: On concepts of good and evil in ethical theories

Editorial

Value Inquiry: On concepts of good and evil in ethical theories     

Critical incidents for psychology students in a refugee camp: Implications for counselling

Malawi is host to over one million refugees from the Mozambican war. Although there are no recognized positions for professional counsellors in Malawi, the need for counselling war affected refugees has been recognized. The experience of two psychology students who worked with war affected children is investigated, using the technique of Critical Incidents Analysis. Key characteristics of this work are identified as a means to creating a training curriculum to prepare students for future placement in refugee camps.