Alcohol breath tests: Criterion times for avoiding contamination by “mouth alcohol”

Using either a gas chromatography or an infrared absorption technique, series of blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) determined by breath tests were obtained from human subjects immediately subsequent to their having only oral contact with beverages ranging in ethyl alcohol concentration from 4% to 95% +. Times for total dissipation of mouth alcohol residuals to a level of practical nonsignificance ranged from 10 to 19 min. Dissipation rates were an inverse and approximately exponential function of the ethyl alcohol concentration of the beverage and were greatly shortened by rinsing the mouth with warm (34°C) water prior to testing. The results are discussed in terms of their relevance to the methodology of a number of research studies employing BAC breath-testing equipment.     

Beauty Is Only "Name" Deep: The Effect of First-Name On Ratings of Physical Attraction

College students ( n = 197) voted to select a beauty queen from among six photographs equivalent in physical attractiveness, as determined by rankings of 35 students from a separate university. Half the photographs bore a desirable first-name and half were assigned an undesirable first-name. As predicted, firstname had a significant effect on physical attraction: Girls with desirable firstnames received 158 votes to 39 for those with undesirable names. These data were discussed in terms of an additive, rather than an interactive, effect, due to the nature of the task. The strength of these findings was related to the study's ecological validity.     

The effects of a response cost treatment tactic on hyperactive children

In a pilot study, a multielement design was used to assess the effectiveness of a response cost procedure on a 7-year-old child's hyperactive behavior and academic performance across days. The procedure was effective in reducing off-task behavior and in increasing academic assignment completion. In Experiment 2, three strategies were compared to a no-treatment baseline in treating an 8-year-old hyperactive child: drug (Ritalin) alone, response cost alone, and drug plus response cost. The cost program alone and the cost program combined with medication were effective in reducing off-task behavior and in increasing academic performance. In both studies, the procedure was viewed by the teachers as practical and effective for use in a classroom setting. The subjects liked the cost system and believed that they completed more academic work when it was operative.     

Two subjective scales of number

The way in which the apparent magnitude of numbers grows with their absolute magnitude was measured with a modified version of the direct technique Marks and Slawson (1966) used to determine the psychophysical exponent for loudness. This modified technique required subjects to estimate how evenly and randomly a sequence of integers appeared to sample the numerical continuum. The results indicate that the apparent magnitude of numbers increases with a decelerated power function of their arithmetic magnitude when a series samples from an open-ended range. However, when an upper boundary of the range is specified, the subjective scale seems to be linear. Random productions of numbers parallel the results found with judgments of presented sequences. The two scales of number provide the basis for an interpretation of the difference between magnitude and category scales: that subjects use numbers differently when the response scale is open-ended Imagnitude estimation than when it has a fixed upper limit tcategory scale. Given the assumption that subjects use numbers in this way in the two tasks, the qualitative relation between magnitude and category scales is predicted.     

Environmental control and the perception of control

The perception of control may be established if an individual is provided with an opportunity to choose and if the outcome of the choice is moderately uncertain. In turn, perceived control has been shown to enhance motivation and performance. In the present experiment, the effects of uncertainty about environmental control were examined by measuring the speed with which choices were made. When control was implicitly provided, decision latencies were shorter than when control was either explicitly available or not available at all. Paradoxically, providing information about control may reduce uncertainty and thereby diminish the perception of control. The contribution of control and choice to the development of perceived control is discussed.This research is based on a thesis by the first author submitted in partial fulfillment of the master of science degree at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and was supported by a grant from the U.S. Army Research Office to the second author.     

Hemispheric asymmetries in faculty and student musicians and nonmusicians during melody recognition tasks

Current research has suggested that musical stimuli are processed in the right hemisphere except in musicians, in whom there is an increased involvement of the left hemisphere. The present study hypothesized that the more musical training persons receive, the more they will rely on an analytic/left-hemispheric processing strategy. The subjects were 10 faculty and 10 student musicians, and 10 faculty and 10 student nonmusicians. All subjects listened to a series of melodies (some recurring and some not) and excerpts (some actual and some not) in one ear and, after a rest, to a different series of melodies in the other ear. The task was to identify recurring vs. nonrecurring melodies and actual vs. nonactual excerpts. For student musicians, there was a right-ear/left-hemispheric advantage for melody recognition, while for student nonmusicians, the situation was the reverse. Neither faculty group showed any ear preference. There were no significant differences for excerpt recognition. Two possible explanations of the faculty performance were discussed in terms of physical maturation and a functionally more integrated hemispheric approach to the task.     

Duplex perception with musical stimuli

Duplex perception, a phenomenon previously demonstrated for speech stimuli, is demonstrated here for musical stimuli. In the first experiment, major and minor chords are produced by dichotic fusion of two simultaneous piano notes presented to one ear (perfect fifth) with a “natural” or “flat” single note presented to the opposite ear. Musically trained subjects perceive simultaneously both the single tone and a fused (major or minor) chord. The chords are labeled more consistently than the single notes, even though the fused chords differ solely in terms of the contralateral notes. In a second experiment, using pure tones in place of piano notes, other musically trained subjects individually exhibited categorical perception for either the fused chord or the single tones, but never for both types of stimuli. The duplex phenomenon is discussed in terms of its implications for its specific component modes of perception.