The Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor on Mental Patient Treatment Teams

This study asked the question: What are the role expectancies of treatment personnel in the treatment community and are they consistent across patients' emotional condition? An 83-item inventory was developed and administered under three different sets of instructions, each characterizing a different patient condition. Treatment staff and administrators were asked to rate items on the basis of the level of expectancy they held for their team vocational rehabilitation counselor. The analyses suggest that treatment staff and counselors do not agree on role expectations and that patient condition is a significant mediating variable.     

Retroactive inhibition as a function of similarity of meaning in free-recall learning

Summary Retroactive inhibition in free-recall learning was measured under six degrees of meaningful similarity: zero, low, low-medium, medium, medium-high, and high. For each degree of similarity, an experimental and a control group of 20 Ss each learned a list of 20 unrelated adjectives through three cycles of alternate study and unpaced free recall. Immediately thereafter, the experimental group learned a second list of 20 adjectives, while the control group rested. Finally, a single recall trial was administered to both groups to measure first-list retention. The results have revealed a relationship which is at variance with the relationships observed in both serial and paired-associate learning but conforms to the curvilinear function earlier formulated by Skaggs and Robinson. Fresh arguments are offered in defence of the Skaggs-Robinson hypothesis.     

Book reviews

Animal Discrimination Learning. Edited by R. M. Gilbert and N. S. Sutherland. London: Academic Press. 1969. Pp. xvi + 501. 1358.

Luce, R. D. and Tukey, J. W. (1964). Simultaneous conjoint measurement: a new type of fundamental measurement. J. math. Psychol. I, 1-27.

Discrimination Learning. By D. A. Riley. Boston: Allyn and Bacon Inc. 1968. Pp. 172. Paperback 21s.

Annual Review of Psychology. Vol. 20. Palo Alto: Annual Reviews Inc. 1969. Pp. ix + 544. $9.00.

Cutaneous Sensation. By David Sinclair. London: Oxford University Press. 1967. Pp. xii + 306. 63s.

Modelling of Thinking and the Mind.. By N. M. Amosov. Translated by L. Finegold. New York: Spartan Books. London: Macmillan. 11967. Pp. xiii + 192.

The Mind of Mnemonist. By A. R. Luria. London: Jonathan Cape. 1969. Pp. xi + 160. 25s.

Determinants of Infant Behaviour IV. Edited by B. M. Foss. London: Methuen. 1969. Pp. 303. £3 10s.

Brain and Behaviour. Volumes 1-4. Edited by Karl Pribram. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd. 1969. Pp. 496 +573 + 523 + 524. 12s. 6d. per volume.     

Are thresholds reduced by illusions? An attempt at replication

Three experiments are reported, which are attempts to replicate the finding of Ross and Gregory (1964) that difference thresholds for weights can be lowered by means of the size-weight illusion. Three different procedures were used, the first one (experiment I) being designed to show whether or not changes in a subject's judgement criterion could account for apparent changes in sensitivity. The second method (Experiment II) was a replication of Ross and Gregory's first procedure, in which the standard weight was judged before the comparison. In Experiments I and II a larger illusion was induced than in the original studies, but in Experiment III both the weights and container sizes were practically identical to those used by Ross and Gregory. The procedure was also the same as their most successful procedure (number 3) in which standard and comparison were judged simultaneously. The findings were uniformly negative: there was no evidence of criterion shift when the size-weight illusion was induced nor did we find the lowering of threshold previously reported.     

Synchronization and coupling of phases in periodic processes of conditioning

Locomotor avoidance conditioning and locomotor food conditioning in male albino rats demonstrated that locking of temporary connections is accomplished by coupling of phases of different synchronized periodic neural processes. Phase coupling was verified by the formation of parallel periodic courses of reaction times and motor reaction times in the process of elaboration of conditional avoidance reflexes, and by the curve of the corresponding correlation coefficients, which were calculated from the reaction times and motor reaction times in food conditioning measured every day during the period of stabilization. The authors hold the view that a locking mechanism based on the synchronization of periodic processes in conditioning is most compatible with efficient formation of conditional reflexes and can promote adaptation. Furthermore, it is assumed that information storage, too, occurs periodically, according to the principle of rotary storage.     

The organization of motivated and conditional reflex processes

Recent observations on the plasticity of brain and behavior relationships indicate that the temporary connections between environmental and neuroanatomical substrates have tremendous specificity but at the same time are very plastic. Establishment of a conditional reflex by stimulation of the hippocampal pyramidal layer and/or the mesencephalic reticular formation did not interfere with the differential stimulation of very near points in the same structures. These correlations between brain and behavior confirmed the earlier belief that the development of temporary connections between environment and brain is an elementary process of the central nervous system. Complex behavioral functions are organized through both neuronal and humoral afferentation. Data accumulated recently indicate that the descending forebrain influence is inhibitory in the brain stem and diencephalon and controls the sensory input in a somatomotor-specific and situation-specific manner. Humoral factors affecting thresholds can change the dynamic equilibrium existing between ascending excitatory and descending inhibitory systems; these alterations always follow the rule of situation and somatomotor specificity.     

Similarity judgments of line length

Nine Ss judged similarity of pairs of lines on a scale from 0 to 100, and 14 Ss made magnitude estimations of similarity of pairs of lines. The two scales of similarity were linearly related. Scale values for subjective length were obtained in one dimension using a nonmetric multidimensional analysis. Subjective length was found to be logarithmically related to objective length, and similarity was found to be an exponential