Vowel-contingent feature detection

Do vowel-contingent selective adaptation effects for place of articulation depend on vowel identity, or on the particular formant frequencies used? An experiment is reported here which tested the adaptation effects of consonants with exactly the same formant transitions before different diphthongs. In this experiment, the phonetic identity of the vowel and the formant frequencies of the consonant are not confounded as they have been in previous studies. In the contingent adaptation condition, no phoneme boundary shifts were observed, and this is interpreted along with previous evidencefor such phoneme boundary shifts when phonetic identity of the vowel and formant frequencies are confounded as indicating that adaptation operates on the spectral representation of the stimulus. Other evidence consistent with this conclusion is that adaptation with alternating adaptors from each end of the test series produced negligible shifts, and that a single adaptor from a diphthong series different from that of the test series produced phoneme boundary shifts as large as those with a single adaptor from the same test series.     

Meaning-dependent ratings of imagery,age of acquisition,familiarity, and concreteness for 387 ambiguous words

The problem of word ambiguity has generally been overlooked in compiling lists of words measured on various attributes. In this study, rating measures were obtained on the meanings of 387 words, the ambiguity of which had been established empirically. Imagery, age-of-acquisition, concreteness, and familiarity ratings are reported for each meaning, together with an index of meaning dominance. The results suggest that the most dominant meanings tend to be the most imageable, concrete, familiar, and earliest acquired. Generally satisfactory correlations with other norms were obtained.     

A mutual inductance shocker

A simple dc shock-generating device is described. The principle of operation relies upon the mutual inductance effect between the primary and secondary coils of a transformer.     

The effects of delayed and displaced visual feedback on motor control

Developments in television technology have made possible new approaches to the study of the role of visual feedback in motor control. In two experiments using a special videodisc recording and playback system, the effects of delaying for 66 msec a subject's view of his own hand during a target-directed movement was investigated. The observed effects of such visually delayed feedback compared to spatially distorted feedback produced by prisms led to three major conclusions: (a) despite the behavioral similarity (overshooting) induced by the two kinds of altered feedback, the role of each in the visual-motor control loop is different; (b) adaptation to and the after effect of the two kinds of altered feedback are based on different control mechanisms (c) the processing and use of visual information in hand control requires less time than previous experiments have indicated.     

Lexicographic additive differences

Several authors have identified sets of axioms for a preference relation ? on a two-factor set A × X which imply that ? can be represented by specific types of numerical structures. Perhaps the two best-known of these are the additive representation, for which there are real valued functions f_A on A and f_X on X such that (a, x) ? (b, y) if and only if f_A(a) + f_X(x) > f_A(b) + f_X(y), and the lexicographic representation which, with A as the dominant factor, has (a, x) ? (b, y) if and only if f_A(a) > f_A(b) or {f_A(a) = f_A(b) and f_X(x) > f_X(y)}. Recently, Duncan Luce has combined the additive and lexicographic notions in a model for which A is the dominant factor if the difference between a and b is sufficiently large but which adheres to the additive representation when the difference between a and b lies within what might be referred to as a lexicographic threshold. The present paper specifies axioms for ? which lead to a numerical model which also has a lexicographic component but whose local tradeoff structure is governed by the additive-difference model instead of the additive model. Although the additive-difference model includes the additive model as a special case, the new lexicographic additive-difference model is not more general than Luce's model since the former has a “constant” lexicographic threshold whereas Luce's model has a “variable” lexicographic threshold. Realizations of the new model range from the completely lexicographic representation to the regular additive-difference model with no genuine lexicographic component. Axioms for the latter model are obtained from the general axioms with one slight modification.     

Intervals and tenses

Concluding Remarks Neither question (1) nor question (2) posed on page 446 have been adequately answered in this paper. Regarding (1) we have merely given functor maps onto the object languages of physical theories and regarding (2) we have merely described the algebraic structure of observables. A more satisfactory treatment will most likely involve (1) a generalization to algebraic categories, universal algebra and model theory in such a way as to capture the full inference structure of (perhaps van Fraassen's modal) quantum logic, and (2) the introduction of the category of differentiable manifolds in order to capture the full symplectic structure of (perhaps Chernoff-Marsden's) Hamiltonian dynamics. (See van Fraassen [4] and Chernoff-Marsden [5] in Other References.)Finally, the intriguing suggestion of Finkelstein that category theory is to metaphysics what group theory is to physics deserves serious consideration. Indeed, although the theme has not been touched on explicitly in this paper it was central in motivating the project initially. However, it is more properly to be developed in a context external to a symposium on quantum logic.     

Processing of information about location during locomotion: Effects of a concurrent task and locomotion patterns

How maintenance of orientation during locomotion in unfamiliar environments is accomplished was investigated by having subjects walk behind a moving light line (1.12 m/sec) in a dark room and, from a stopping point, numerically estimate direction and distance to the starting point. Two linear distances (5.0–8.4 m) and the angle of direction change (45, 90, and 135 deg) were orthogonally varied as 12 locomotion patterns. Eight high-school students were assigned to each of three conditions, two in which the starting point was invisible, one in which it was visible. In one of the former conditions the subjects counted backwards rapidly during walking. Lower accuracy and longer latency times were found in the counting condition whilst the other two conditions differed only slightly. The results suggested that accurate maintenance of orientation is achieved by recurrent encoding, coordination and decoding of information about direction change and locomotion distance, processes which demand central processing capacity and therefore are interfered with by a concurrent task.     

Normative data on the Missouri Children's Picture Series and the Missouri Children's Behavior Checklist with southern black children

Normative data are presented for Southern black children on two objective personality inventories for children: the Missouri Children's Picture Series (MCPS), a child picture-sorting task, and the Missouri Children's Behavior Checklist (MBCL), a parent rating scale. The MCPS was administered to 615 black children attending public schools in a low socioeconomic area of the southeast United States. Parents returned the MBCL on 437 of the children. Means and standard deviations on eight MCPS personality scales and six MCBL behavior rating scales are presented for black males and females at ages 5 through 16, and effects of age, sex, and various scale intercorrelations are discussed. Results suggest systematic age and sex differences on the various scales for black children that are quite atypical when compared with the MCPS in other samples. Various empirical questions regarding the validity of these instruments when used with Southern black children are raised.     

The effect of set size on hemifield asymmetries in letter recognition

Single letters were presented tachistoscopically in the left or right hemifield to right-handed observers. Superior recognition of letters on the right was found for letters chosen from subsets containing four items, but no differences were found when any letter, or any symmetrical letter, could appear. In a second experiment, the right hemifield advantage was found under conditions requiring the subject to determine the subset only when the subset chosen was appropriate. Results were discussed in terms of the adequacy of language-based explanations of hemifield asymmetries in letter recognition.