Response bias and hemispheric differences in dot localization

A series of studies investigated the accuracy of dot localization in left and right visual fields. The left visual field superiority previously reported for this task was found to be small and statistically inconsistent. It was unaffected by the presence of a frame of reference, the location of the response card, or the sex of the subject. It was observed, however, that the majority of subjects showed a response bias favoring the report of items in the left visual field. This suggests that the right hemisphere is less critical than the left in its assessment of incoming information, and may provide a basis for understanding previous reports of right hemispheric superiority on dot localization. It is concluded that dot localization does not provide a reliable measure of right hemisphere performance.     

Conditioning of striatal dopamine metabolism with methadone,morphine or bulbocapnine as an unconditioned stimulus

Psychotropic drugs such as methadone, morphine and bulbocapnine produce increments in dopamine metabolism as an unconditioned reflex. When a buzzer noise is used as a conditioned stimulus (CS) with these drugs as unconditioned stimuli, the buzzer CS acquires the properties of the drugs in increasing dopamine metabolism. These results suggest that the brain, like other visceral organs, can be conditioned in terms of neurotransmitter release or metabolism.     

Role and justice considerations in the attribution of responsibility to a rape victim

This study was designed to assess the extent to which social role and “just world” considerations would affect perceptions and attributions of responsibility to a rape victim. The rape victim was either a topless-bottomless dancer, a social worker, or a Catholic nun, and she was either acquainted or unacquainted with her assailant. In the acquainted condition, the dancer was attributed the greatest and the nun the least amount of responsibility, indicating that social role factors can govern the range of attributional judgments which might be made in any given instance. However, unacquainted victims were ascribed more responsibility for the rape than were acquainted victims, a difference which was significant when the victim was the nun. The latter findings are discussed in terms of Lerner's just world hypothesis. Significant sex differences were found in subjects' perceptions of and responses to the rape incident and, contrary to earlier findings, no relationship was found between victim attractiveness and punitiveness toward the wrongdoer.     

Separate "what" and "where" decision mechanisms in processing a dichotic tonal sequence.

Right-handed subjects were presented with a dichotic tonal sequence, whose basic pattern consisted of three 800-Hz tones followed by two 400-Hz tones on the channel and simultaneously three 400-Hz tones followed by two 800-Hz tones on the other. All tones were 250 msec in duration and separated by 250-msec pauses. On any given stimulus presentation, most subjects reported the sequence of pitches delivered to one ear and ignored the other. They further tended significantly to report the sequence delivered to the right ear rather than to the left. However, each tone appeared to be localized in the ear receiving the higher frequency, regardless of which ear was followed for pitch and regardless of whether the higher or lower frequency was in fact perceived.     

Influence of linguistic complexity,rate of presentation,and interphrase pause time on auditory-verbal comprehension of adult aphasic patients

Among the variables affecting comprehension of linguistic stimuli by aphasic subjects are syntactic complexity and processing time. Comprehension performance of 15 aphasic adults was studied while altering the rate of speech presentation and varying the pause time between the major phrases within sentences of increasing grammatical complexity.Simple Active Affirmative Declarative Sentences, Negative, and Passive sentences were presented (1) at the rate of 150 words per minute (wpm) with 1-sec interphrase pause time (IPT); (2) 150 wpm with no pauses; (3) 120 wpm with 1-sec IPT; (4) 120 wpm with no pauses added.Performance was seen to vary with increasing syntactical complexity and as a function of processing time. Greater comprehension was seen with active affirmative than negative; greater with passive affirmative than with active negative. Clinical implications are discussed. Subjects demonstrated greater comprehension when sentences were presented at slower than normal rate; addition of interphrase pause time intervals aided comprehension. Combining slower rate of presentation and IPT intervals provided greatest increase in auditory processing time and showed concomitant increase in comprehension performance.     

The effects of urine on aggressive responses by male golden hamsters

Twenty adult male golden hamsters were isolated into individual cages for a period of six weeks, at the end of which time they had introduced into their home cages, on three occasions, a castrated male intruder. On each occasion the castrated intruder was daubed on the anogenital region with urine from one of three sources: (1) intact females, (2) other castrated males, and (3) intact males. Urine from a different source was applied to the castrated intruder on each of the three tests. Resident males consistently showed more aggression, sniffing, and following and less defensive behavior than the intruders. However, aggression by the resident males showed a significant variance over the three urine treatments given to the intruder. It is concluded that like male mouse urine, male hamster urine contains attack-provoking cues, but that unlike that of the mouse, female urine does not appear to be attack-inhibiting in this species.     

Perceptual comparisons of adolescent stutterers' and nonstutterers' fluent speech

Numerous investigators have reported that listeners are able to perceptually differentiate adult stutterers' and nonstutterers' fluent speech productions. However, findings from similar studies with children ranging in age from 3 to 9 yr have indicated that perceptual discrimination of child stutterers is difficult. A logical extension of this line of investigation would be to determine when during maturation from childhood to adulthood stutterers' fluent speech becomes perceptibly different than nonstutterers'. Therefore, in this study similar fluent speech samples from seven 12–16-yr-old adolescent male stutterers and seven matched nonstutterers were analyzed perceptually in a paired stimulus paradigm by 15 sophisticated listeners. Individual subject analyses using signal detection theory revealed that five of the seven stutterers were discriminated. When averaged for subject group comparison, these findings indicated that listeners successfully discriminated between the fluent speech of the two groups. Therefore, the perceptual difference in fluent speech production reported previously for adults appears to be present by adolescence.     

Hyperphagia resulting from gut denervation in the sea slug, Pleurobranchaea

Previous research suggests that gut distension by ingested bulk plays an important role in the regulation of food intake in gastropod molluscs. The present study tested whether the bilateral stomatogastric nerves which innervate the esophagus and crop in Pleurobranchaea form a neural pathway carrying information about gut distension to the central nervous system. The posterior branches of the paired stomatogastric nerves were surgically exposed and sectioned in seven experimental animals while the nerves were simply exposed and not sectioned in seven sham-operated control animals. In three, subsequent, daily feeding sessions, the experimental subjects consumed a greater amount of food in terms of percentage of body weight than the control subjects. The experimental animals also gained a greater percentage of body weight and later were found to contain much more food within their guts. The results support the hypothesis that stretch receptors which innervate the gut and which have axons in the stomatogastric nerves form an important negative feedback pathway for the control of feeding in the sea slug.