A new approach to the generation of visual stimuli for eye-movement research

An interactive, computer-controlled, visual stimulus generator is described, suitable for both psychophysical and neurophysiological experimentation on human subjects. The system core is a wide-screen electrostatic cathode-ray tube, which can be used both as a television monitor, to display standard video pictures, and as anx-y oscilloscope, so that a bright dot can be moved around the display by electrical signals. In addition, a third working mode is provided, according to which a time-compressed video picture of limited size (fast picture) plays the role that is typical of the spot in a standard oscilloscope. Through computer-assisted time compression, the frame period of the video signal is reduced to about one tenth of its standard value. The fast picture can accordingly be driven by even the fastest eye movements, and it can be displayed as a stabilized image, or, more generally, in the altered retinal feedback condition. Moreover, as compared with a standard video picture, the fast image can be “flashed” over much shorter time periods. Since a standard input video signal is used for both standard and fast video pictures, all the image processing facilities of commercial videographic systems can be fully exploited by the proposed device.     

Whatever Happened to Culturalism: From Horney to Lacan

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Non-heart-beating organ donation: a reply to Campbell and Weber.

In the preceding commentary, Campbell and Weber raise two valid and important issues concerning non-heart-beating organ donation (NHBOD). First, because the procedure links withdrawal of life support and the potential for subsequent organ donation, the desire for organs may create a situation in which care of the dying individual has relatively less importance and the dying may receive suboptimal care. Second, even if concerns about care of the dying were dealt with adequately, there will not be enough non-heart-beating donors to significantly decrease the organ shortage that exists, making the procedure not worth the risk. We agree that attention to the important details of caring for the dying are, and must be, the primary concern of all health care workers caring for those individuals. Ensuring the patients' comfort, dignity, and autonomy, and providing for family and social support are the mainstays of this care. All policies for NHBOD should clearly support and mandate these concepts. Regarding the second concern, we agree that NHBOD is currently rare; however, evidence is increasing that this type of donation has great potential. Continued growth of the practice in this country will depend largely on public acceptance, which we believe will be directly influenced by whether the public perceives that care of the dying is not compromised by this procedure.     

Modifications of the Poggendorff effect as a function of random dot textures between the verticals

In the present research, we investigated the modification of the strength of the Poggendortf illusion as a function of different densities ofrandom dot textures failing the space between the verticals. The results ofExperiment 1 show that the illusory effect is a nonlinear function ofthe texture parameterr, the ratio of black pixels to white and black pixels, with a minimum forr=0.5, approximately, and a maximum forr=0 andr=1. The results may be interpreted by an analytical model of perceptual space dynamics, in which the effect dependson the amount of interaction between points of different light intensity. A computer simulation performed by applying the analytical model to different values ofr shows a good agreement between the predictions and the experimental data. To test the hypothesis underlying the model, a second experiment was carried out to measure the magnitude of the expansion ofthe space between the verticals as a function of the parameterr. The results are consistent with the hypothesis of the model. The overall data are discussed in terms of their implications on various theories proposed for the Poggeadorff illusion.     

Beyond belief bias: Reasoning from conceptual structures by mental models manipulation

Mental models constitute an alternative to the rule-based systems in the explanation of human reasoning (Johnson-Laird, 1983). In this paper, we claim that the concept of believability generally used to categorize content and context effects is of little use within a semantic theory. Thus, we propose the use of categories that are directly extracted from subjective relations among concepts within the reasoning problem. We demonstrate that manipulations based on this kind of categorization produce predictable patterns of responses in reasoning problems. We present two experiments to test our predictions, using conditional and syllogistic reasoning problems, and in both cases, we demonstrate the influence of conceptual knowledge not only in natural contexts, but also in experimentally created artificial contexts.     

Epistemic needs and learned helplessness

This study assesses the impact of non-specific epistemic needs—the need for structure and the fear of invalidity—on expectancy of control and performance following unsolvable problems. Subjects answered a questionnaire tapping their non-specific epistemic needs and were exposed to either no feedback or failure in unsolvable problems. Then their expectancies of control and performance were assessed. The results showed that a high need for structure was associated with a transfer of the expectancy of uncontrollability and worse performance following failure. The results are discussed in terms of Kruglanski's lay epistemic theory.     

Public acceptance of Covid-19 lockdown scenarios

By mid-March 2020, most countries had implemented nationwide lockdown policies aimed at decelerating the spread of SARS-CoV-2. At that time, nobody knew how long these policies would have to remain in force and whether they would have to be extended, intensified or made more flexible. The present study aimed to illuminate how the general public in Germany reacted to the prospect of increasing the length, the intensity and/or the flexibility of distancing rules implied by different lockdown scenarios. Endorsement of and compliance with five specific lockdown scenarios were assessed in a large (N = 14,433) German sample. Results showed that lockdown length affected respondents' reactions much more strongly than intensity or flexibility. Additional analyses (i.e., mixture distribution modelling) showed that half of the respondents rejected any further extensions or intensifications, while 20% would endorse long-term strategies if necessary. We argue that policy-makers and political communicators should take the public's endorsement of and compliance with such scenarios into account, as should simulations predicting the effects of different lockdown scenarios.