Modification of depth judgment following exposures to magnification of uniocular image: Are changes in perceived absolute distance and registered direction of gaze involved?

Two studies were designed to determine whether the perceptual learning that has been demonstrated to occur during exposure to uniocular image magnification can be explained by either a modification in the perception of egocentric distance or the direction of gaze. Experiment 1 was designed to determine whether exposure to uniocular image magnification produces changes in perceived absolute distance. Experiment 2 tested the possibility that exposure to uniocular image magnification modifies the registration of direction of gaze. The results showed that, despite the occurrence of adaptive shifts in perceived depth, no significant changes in perceived absolute distance or in registered direction of gaze occur. These findings bolster confidence in the hypothesis that adaptation to uniocular image magnification is the result of a recalibration of retinal disparity.     

INTERINDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN SIMILARITY ESTIMATES OF PAINTINGS

KÜNNAPAS, T. & NORMAN, M. Intel-individual differences in similarity estimates of paintings. Scand. J. Psychol. , 1971, 12, 161–167.–Nine paintings by Cézanne were studied by the method of multidimensional similarity analysis. Three different groups of painters, students, and art school pupils participated in three experiments. Three factors were found: Factor I is called 'Complex horizontally arranged motive'; Factor II, 'Vertical central figure'; and Factor III, 'Central figure without background'. Comparison of different groups showed (1) that for paintings with the greatest loading in one of these factors no differences were obtained, (2) that differences between the groups are smallest in Factor I and greatest in Factor III, (3) that differences between the painters and students are greater than those between the painters and pupils, or between the pupils and the students, and (4) that interindividual differences between the groups are due, at least partly, to the formal artistic aspect which is most dominant in painters, in lower degree in pupils, and very little in students.     

Personality differentiation and prediction of persistence in physical science and engineering

Discriminant analyses techniques were applied to freshmen California Psychological Inventory (CPI) and Holland Vocational Interest Inventory (VPI) data for 914 male students and were used to predict curricular membership after two years of university education. The results suggest that those who persist in physical science, engineering or other curriculum are significantly discriminable from one another on the basis of freshman personality data, and that these personality variables show reasonable predictive stability when applied to a cross validation sample. Physical scientists appear to be markedly differentiated from engineers or others along an introspection-intellectual versus social conventional dimension. The predictive power of CPI and VPI personality variables while statistically exceeding chance is considerably less than that previously reported for ability or interest measures.     

On data-limited and resource-limited processes

This paper analyzes the effect on performance when several active processes compete for limited processing resources. The principles discussed show that conclusions about the interactions among psychological processes must be made with caution, and some existing assumptions may be unwarranted. When two (or more) processes use the same resources at the same time, they may both interfere with one another, neither may interfere with the other, or one may interfere with a second without any interference from the second process to the first. The important principles are that a process can be limited in its performance either by limits in the amount of available processing resources (such as memory or processing effort) or by limits in the quality of the data available to it. Competition among processes can affect a resource-limited process, but not a data-limited one. If a process continually makes preliminary results available even before it has completed all its operations, then it is possible to compute performance-resource operating characteristics that show how processes interact. A number of experiments from the psychological literature are examined according to these processing principles, resulting in some new interpretations of interactions among competing psychological processes.     

Generalization of relative competence mediating conformity across differing tasks

Subject correctness and group agreement were initially varied for college subjects performing a multiple-choice informational task (Canadian Knowledge Inventory). On a subsequent perceptual task (Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices), the dependent variable of conformity was assessed to examine generalization of relative competence formed on the informational task. It was seen that: (1) Those who perceived themselves to be less competent than the group on the first task exhibited the greatest level of conformity on the second task, thus replicating previous research on perceived relative competence as a determinant of conformity; (2) suspicion reduced conformity.     

Multidimensional comparisons of structures of vocally and facially expressed emotion

Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics - The cognitive structure of vocally expressed emotion was examined using a nonmetric multidimensional scaling analysis and a factor analysis of seven...     

Decision-Making in Married and Unrelated Couples

The decision-making performance of 20 married and 20 synthetic couples, all college students, was compared using the Ferreira-Winter Questionnaire technique. Married couples showed (a) greater spontaneous agreement with each other prior to conjoint discussion, (b) less politeness, (c) more intrusive interruptions, and (d) a lesser exchange of explicit information between husband and wife. Although married couples arrived at more "democratic" or representative decisions in a faster time, this was due to their greater degree of prior shared values and interests. The effects of the history and context of the relationship between subjects upon their pattern of communication and possible contrasts between normal and abnormal couples are discussed.     

A theory of consistency of ordering generalizable to tailored testing

Measures of consistency and completeness of order relations derived from test-type data are proposed. The measures are generalized to apply to incomplete data such as from tailored testing. The measures are based on consideration of the items-plus-persons by items-plus-persons matrix as an adjacency matrix in which a 1 means that the row element, whether item or person, dominated the column element. From this the number of item-item and person-person dominance relations can be derived. Indices of consistency are developed which compare the number of dominance relations in a matrix to the number that would occur if it were perfectly consistent and to the number in a random matrix; relations to other indices are noted.The research reported here was supported by the Office of Naval Research, Contract N00014-75-C-0684, NR150-373. The author wishes to thank Dr. Thomas J. Reynolds for a number of helpful discussions of this material.