The examination of labels—a beginning

Unclear terminology is a major problem for the study of anomalies, and ambiguous definitions of reality and consciousness make it particularly difficult to discuss anomalous phenomena. Researchers have used the term near-death experience to describe four different kinds of incidents. To avoid confusion, we need new labels for experiences that differ in their relationship to death and near-death and in their transformative potential.     

Human adults and human infants show a “perceptual magnet effect” for the prototypes of speech categories,monkeys do not

Many perceptual categories exhibit internal structure in which category prototypes play an important role. In the four experiments reported here, the internal structure of phonetic categories was explored in studies involving adults, infants, and monkeys. In Experiment 1, adults rated the category goodness of 64 variants of the vowel /i/ on a scale from 1 to 7. The results showed that there was a certain location in vowel space where listeners rated the /i/ vowels as best instances, or prototypes. The perceived goodness of Iii vowels declined systematically as stimuli were further removed from the prototypic Iii vowel. Experiment 2 went beyond this initial demonstration and examined the effect of speech prototypes on perception. Either the prototypic or a nonprototypic IM vowel was used as the referent stimulus and adults’ generalization to other members of the category was examined. Results showed that the typicality of the speech stimulus strongly affected perception. When the prototype of the category served as the referent vowel, there was significantly greater generalization to other /i/ vowels, relative to the situation in which the nonprototype served as the referent. The notion of aperceptual magnet was introduced. The prototype of the category functioned like a perceptual magnet for other category members; it assimilated neighboring stimuli, effectively pulling them toward the prototype. In Experiment 3, the ontogenetic origins of the perceptual magnet effect were explored by testing 6-month-old infants. The results showed that infants’ perception of vowels was also strongly affected by speech prototypes. Infants showed significantly greater generalization when the prototype of the vowel category served as the referent; moreover, their responses were highly correlated with those of adults. In Experiment 4, Rhesus monkeys were tested to examine whether or not the prototype’s magnet effect was unique to humans. The animals did not provide any evidence of speech prototypes; they did not exhibit the magnet effect. It is suggested that the internal organization of phonetic categories around prototypic members is an ontogenetically early, species-specific, aspect of the speech code     

Fixation-point offsets reduce the latency of saccades to acoustic targets

If an observer’s fixation point is extinguished just prior to the onset of a peripheral target, the latency to saccade to that target is reduced. We show that this "gap effect" is not specific to visual targets. Observers made saccades to a light flash or to a white-noise burst. A warning tone was presented on every trial to control for the possible warning effect of the fixation-point offset. For both target modalities, saccade latencies were significantly reduced when the fixation point was extinguished 200 msec prior to the target onset. Implications of this outcome for interpretations of the gap effect are considered. It is argued that the presence of a gap effect for tones, in conjunction with previous findings, is consistent with the hypothesis that the gap effect is produced by a facilitation of premotor processes in the superior colliculus.     

The role of familiarity in determining typicality

Ashcraft (1978b) found that people tend to know more properties of instances they rate as typical of a category than of instances they rate as atypical. This suggests that variations in typicality result from variations in familiarity. Three experiments are presented that challenge or qualify this suggestion. Experiment 1 showed that subjects sometimes produce more properties for items they rate as low in typicality. Experiment 2 showed that in a large, random sample of items, there was a tendency to produce fewer properties for atypical items, but Experiment 3 indicated that part of the reason for this result was a response bias to assign low typicality ratings to unfamiliar words, rather than a reflection of low perceived typicality of the referents themselves. These results suggest that variations in typicality can exist independent of variations in familiarity, although familiarity may also play a role.     

Role saliency cues and children's sentence comprehension

Forty-eight children at four age levels (3, 4, 5, and 7 years) acted out active and passive sentences immediately after exposure to matching information, mismatching information, and no-information cues. The matching information cues yielded the highest comprehension scores, followed in order by the no-information and the mismatching information cues. Active sentences were easier to comprehend than passive sentences, and comprehension scores improved with age. Processing context information in the form of role saliency cues is a component of children's language comprehension and development. It was found that context is used differentially depending on age and linguistic knowledge. The results indicated that the analysis of children's comprehension skills is a multifaceted process not solely dependent upon syntactic processing.This research is in part a revision of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Kent State University, Kent, Ohio. A summarized version was presented at the Annual Convention of the American Speech and Hearing Association, San Francisco, 1978.     

Irrational beliefs as predictors of negative affective states

One effort to specify cognitive mediators related to dysfunctional emotional responses has been made by Ellis, who proposed that certain irrational beliefs elicit maladaptive emotional reactions. In order to test Ellis's hypotheses in a nonclinical sample, the Irrational Beliefs Test, two anxiety inventories, the MMPI-168, and a locus of control scale were completed by 32 male heavy social drinker undergraduates, who then kept daily records of their anxiety, anger, unhappiness, and drinking behaviors for 7 months. Four factors underlay the 10 beliefs but did not necessarily correlate with dysphoric affect. Certain irrational beliefs predicted daily unhappiness ratings over the 7-month period and daily anger ratings over 3 months, but the beliefs exhibited only a weak relationship with daily general anxiety ratings. Irrational beliefs, especially worrying about approval and competence, were strongly related to test anxiety and Spielberger's trait anxiety measure, were somewhat related to social anxiety and general anxiety, were minimally related to locus of control and social desirability, and were essentially unrelated to the MMPI-168's measures of depression and anxiety and to drinking behaviors. Although 2 of the irrational beliefs failed to exhibit relationships with negative affect, the other 8 show the predicted relationships to moods, providing support for a cognitive mediational model of maladaptive emotions in a nonpathological population.This research was partially supported by grants from the Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Institute, University of Washington, Seattle, from a National Institute of Mental Health small grant AA03947-01, and from a National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism postdoctoral training fellowship No. 1T32AA07171-01. We would like to thank Jean Chapman, Ph.D., for her advice on the statistics and Dorothy Knapp, Ph.D., for her painstaking scoring and coding of all the data records.     

Sources of organizational power for women: Overcoming structural obstacles

The ability of women (and men) to achieve success within organizational settings depends on their understanding structural and behavioral dimensions of power. However, the increased emphasis on educating women in the behavioral methods (e.g., assertiveness, aspirations, politics) of acquiring power invariably minimizes or omits the potential contribution of structural considerations. In their journey toward power acquisition, women must recognize and utilize the wide array of structural paths available to them. An analysis is undertaken of the main structural (organizational) sources of power — centrality, coping with uncertainty, and control over resources — with emphasis on their ramifications for women.The research cited in this article includes empirically based studies as well as observations, assertions, or admonitions that have not received extensive empirical validation. Nonetheless, the latter personal experiences and observations of these authorities may be valid.Management Analysis Company