Automatic and Controlled Processes in the Analytisis of Hierarchical Structure

Targets are identified faster if they appear at the same level (global vs. local) as the target on the previous trial. This effect has been attributed to a controlled attentional process wherein participants attend to the level containing the target on trial n − 1, thus facilitating performance if target level repeats on trial n. An alternative explanation (Lamb & Yund, 1966) is that automatic activation of level-specific neural mechanisms is responsible. The controlled-process hypothesis predicts better performance whenever target level is predictable, because participants can anticipate, and thus attend to, the appropriate level. The automatic-process hypothesis predicts better performance when target level repeats, regardless of target-level predictability. In the present studies, level repetitions facilitated performance regardless of target-level predictability. The data support the automatic-process explanation of level repetition and other attentional effects. The data illustrate how an automatic process can give rise to performance that seems to reflect more cognitive or strategic mechanisms.     

A rat's first bite: the nongenetic, cross-generational transfer of information.

Weanling rats, when first exposed to solid food, showed relatively elevated intake if offered the same diet as eaten by their foster dams. Maternal caretakers pass some specific food-related information to their offspring.     

Peripheral control of drinking: gastrointestinal filling as a negative feedback signal, a theoretical and experimental analysis.

The studies described here investigated the hypothesis that the osmotic postingestional satiety signal proposed by McCleary operates through a mechanism related to gut filling rather than by osmotically induced shifts of fluid from osmoreceptors in the brain. A control theory model is presented, which was designed to make quantitatively explicit the hypothesis under question. The results showed that when mannitol, which is not absorbed from the intestine, is added to a highly palatable saccharin-glucose mixture, the amount of fluid consumed decreased in inverse proportion to the mannitol concentration. Mannitol was also shown to block fluid absorption from the intestine at a low concentration (approximately .070 M) and at higher concentrations to lead to a net flux of fluid into the intestinal lumen. It was also shown that mannitol in concentrations that reduced the intake of the palatable solution did not induce thirst when the animals were in water balance. It did induce thirst, however, when the animals were tested in a state of negative water balance. The results of these studies, considered as a whole, support the view that McCleary's osmotic postingestional satiety signal acts as an intestinal distention signal rather than by inducing thirst. The model is found to be reasonably accurate as a first approximation, and suggestions are made for improvements.     

Transforming curves into curves with the same shape

Curves are considered to have the same shape when they are related by a similarity transformation of a certain kind. This paper extends earlier work on parallel curves to curves with the same shape. Some examples are given more or less explicitly. A generalization is used to show that the theory is ordinal and to show how the theory may be applied to measure sensation. The problem of actually transforming curves into curves with the same shape is reduced to the problem of rendering another set of curves parallel. Connections with groups and rings are developed to place the work in a familiar context. These connections and the earlier work on parallel curves are used to obtain necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of transformations, to study the uniqueness of transformations and to show how transformations can be calculated.     

Development and control of licking in the guinea pig (Cavia porcellus)

Guinea pigs were taught to lick an electronic lickometer by successive approximations brought about by a gradually receding lickerandum-liquid feeder mounted in their home cage. All Ss learned to lick and obtain their total liquid intake by tongue licking. An optimum deprivation schedule was determined, and the response was brought under schedule control comparable to that of the rat.     

Stability and Change in the Social Status of Occupations Over 21 and 42 Year Periods

Forty-two years ago, Counts (1925) surveyed the social status of occupations and found a well-defined prestige order, with banker at the top and ditch digger at the bottom. Because of changes wrought by the depression and World War II, Deeg and Paterson (1947) repeated Counts' study and found only minor relative changes in social status. Because of the extensive social and cultural changes since World War II, Counts' study was repeated again, and again only minor relative changes in the social status of occupations were found. The prestige order of the occupations surveyed is remarkably stable.     

Inheriting the Shadow: Unlived Lives,Unshed Tears

The determination and courage of those whose lives were destroyed by terror, whether the Holocaust or extermination, to move forward in a new life modeled for us, the children, an unspoken mandate to live in the present and to bury the shadows of the past. It has left many of us to face the challenge of finding our center, the anchoring of our being in our lives: personally, professionally, collectively, and culturally. The next generation is not able to mourn lives lost, and being in the present without a past, without links to ethnic cultures or heritage, isolates individuals and affects the collective—indeed, there is no collective except in the communal silences. This article explores the impact of dismembered personal and collective bonds and the need to re-member, resulting in relationships that can move into the future, into the center.