Naming the Snodgrass and Vanderwart Pictures: Effects of Age of Acquisition, Frequency, and Name Agreement

Independent measures of age of acquisition (AoA), name agreement, and rated object familiarity were obtained from groups of British subjects for all items in the Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) picture set with single names. Word frequency measures, both written and spoken, were taken from the Celex database (Centre for Lexical Information, 1993). The line drawings were presented to a separate groupof participants in an object naming task, and vocal naming latencies were recorded. A subset of 195 items was selected for analysis after excluding items with, for example, low name agreement. The major determinants of picture naming speed were the frequency of the name, the interaction between AoA and frequency, and name agreement. (The main effect of the AoA of the name and the effect of the rated image agreement of the picture were also significant on one-tailed tests.) Spoken name frequency affects object naming times mainly for items with later-acquired names.     

Peak shift revisited: a test of alternative interpretations

In Experiment 1, 2 groups of human subjects were trained to respond to 1 of 2 light intensity stimuli, S2 or S4, and then were tested for generalization with a randomized series of increasing values from S1 to S11. Both groups, including the group trained to respond to dimmer value, showed peak shifts to a brighter more centrally located test stimulus. In Experiment 2, which used line angle stimuli, both the size of the difference between S+ and S- and the range of test stimuli that extended beyond S+ were varied. The larger the S(+)-S- separation and the larger the range, the greater was the peak shift obtained. In Experiment 3, training involved an S- (line angle) surrounded by 2 S+ values with testing symmetrical about the training values and covering either a narrow or a wide range. The wide range produced greater peak shifts in both directions from S-. All 3 experiments support an adaptation-level interpretation of intradimensional discrimination learning and generalization test performance in human subjects. Related work with animals suggests the presence of similar processes.     

Element and compound matching-to-sample performance in pigeons: the roles of information load and training history

Pigeons were trained to match color and line orientation element or compound samples in a symbolic matching-to-sample task. In subsequent test sessions with element and compound samples, there was an initial superiority of element matching for the element-trained group and of compound matching for the compound-trained group. This difference persisted over the course of 100 test sessions for the element-trained group, whereas element- and compound-matching accuracy converged for the compound-trained group. In a second experiment, in which sample duration was manipulated, element-matching accuracy was superior to compound-matching accuracy for both groups. Thus, element-matching accuracy was superior to compound-matching accuracy under conditions that rule out generalization decrement and training history as explanations. The data are interpreted as supporting the view that the dimensions of visual compound stimuli compete for a limited cognitive resource.     

The touch screen system in the pigeon laboratory: An initial evaluation of its utility

The touch screen system has been employed as a device for the measurement of responses and presentation of stimuli in pigeon laboratories for 4 years. Its contributions to the study of the pigeon’s behavior include the addition of response location information and an increase in the versatility of stimulus presentation. Along with the advantages of this system come some cautions. Limitations on response registration and time to construct stimuli are both concerns. Using response location as a dependent variable and distance of response registration from the pecking surface as an independent variable, the affordance of the touch screen system is investigated.     

Working with shame in psychoanalytic treatment

Shame is a central human affect, reflecting feelings of defect, inferiority, and failure of the self. It is, therefore, a proper focus for psychoanalytic treatment. Beginning with Freud's seminal attention to narcissism and the ego ideal, the possibility for studying shame and its relation to the ego ideal (i.e. the loving function of the superego) was inherent in psychoanalytic theory, but Freud's pursuit of intrapsychic conflict and the punitive superego postponed further elaboration of shame. Interest in the relation of the ego ideal to the superego (Hartmann, 1950; Reich, 1954), and in the ideal self (Sandler et al., 1963; Schafer, 1960, 1967) opened the way to further study of shame. Kohut's contributions, with their focus on narcissism and self-pathology, have given a language and perspective on self-deficits allowing elaboration of shame's place in psychoanalytic treatment. In this paper, I have focused on the treatment of shame in two patients. I suggest that shame lies at the very center of the narcissistic patient's pathology, with primary internal shaming (directed at the self's failures and inadequacies) permeating all aspects of the treatment. For the neurotic patient, shame is more circumscribed, reflecting partial failures of the self; it tends to be reactive, relating to passive withdrawal from internal conflict and castration fears, and is intermixed with oedipal manifestations. I have described clinical sequences that demonstrate my approach to working with shame in each of these patients. In both cases, the task is to recognize, acknowledge, accept, and investigate the patient's shame. Only after such empathic investigation can underlying conflictual and genetic derivatives be productively pursued. This sequence is often intuitively followed in analysis, but in this paper I have attempted to articulate more systematically shame's role in psychoanalytic treatment.     

How young children pour equal quantities: A case of pseudocompensation

Two experiments are reported on how 3- to 4.5-year-old children pour equal liquid quantities. An apparent precocity and a decline with age in the ability to judge correctly when different-sized glasses contain the same amount of liquid is demonstrated in Experiment 1. Children of different ages use different strategies to make judgments of equality and this is revealed in Experiment 2. The most primitive strategy fortuitously led the youngest children to make a correct response in Experiment 1 but led to incorrect responses in Experiment 2. Possible explanations of these results are discussed.     

A LISP program to determine similarity relations in letter displays

Similarity relations between letters are important in displays used in tacbistoscopic recognition experiments. A LISP program is described that calculates similarity relations on the basis of an empirical letter-similarity matrix or on the basis of feature sharing in a feature-set definition supplied by the user. With either derivation method, there are three options for the type of average to be calculated for target display: (1) the average for the whole target, (2) the average for each letter in the target paired to all other letters in the target, and (3) the average of each letter in the target paired with its immediate neighbors.     

The effects of response-dependent and response-independent methods on delayed alternation

Two frequently used methods of producing delayed alternation were compared at two ITI levels, 20 see and 6 min. One method alternated reward according to a fixed schedule (response independent), while the other demanded placement of reward opposite to the S’s previous response (response dependent). The response-dependent method produced a higher number of correct responses and alternations at both ITIs. Increasing the ITI duration from 20 sec to 6 min produced reliable decreases in the number of correct choices and alternations produced by Ss trained according to either procedure.     

Peripheral visual processing

An attempt was made to examine the development of the ability to identify stimuli presented to peripheral vision in several different tasks. Five- and 8-year-old children and college adults saw, for 20 msec, either a single figure at 1°, 2°, 4°, or 6° of visual angle from the fovea (singleform condition) or an off-foveal figure with an additional figure at the fovea (double-form condition). In the double-form conditions, the subjects were required to identify either the peripheral figure only (double-form presentation) or both figures (double-form report). The main effects of Age, Distance, and Form Condition were significant. Accuracy improved with increasing age and with decreasing distance. The Form Condition effect reflected lower accuracy in the two double-form conditions than in the single-form condition. Interestingly, there was no difference between the two double-form conditions, suggesting that the mere presence of a foveal stimulus, with instructions to ignore it, produces as much decrement in peripheral performance as when subjects are told to fully process and report the foveal stimulus. Also, there was no interaction between Form Condition and Distance, suggesting that the label “tunnel vision” may be misleading, since the presence of the foveal stimulus seems to have an equal effect on all peripheral locations and does not really “restrict” the size of the effective visual field.