Changes in information as a function of a culturally appropriate smoking cessation community intervention for Hispanics

Tested a 7-month, media-based, community intervention among Hispanics in San Francisco designed to change levels of information on the damaging effects of cigarette smoking and on the availability of culturally appropriate cessation services. Three community-wide surveys of Hispanics were conducted with independent random samples, two as baselines (n = 1,660 and 2,053) and one postintervention (n = 1,965). Results showed that changes in the level of awareness of cessation services had taken place after implementation of the intervention. Furthermore, those changes took place primarily among the less acculturated Spanish-speaking Hispanics who were the target of the intervention. The changes in information reported here demonstrate that a culturally appropriate information dissemination campaign that utilizes multiple channels can produce changes in a community's level of information even when the campaign is implemented for a relatively short period.     

Rate variables and automatized naming in developmental dyslexia

The rate variable in rapid automatized naming (RAN) was investigated in 50 adolescent and 40 adult students with developmental dyslexia, in matched normal controls, and in learning-disabled students without reading difficulties. Visual stimuli depicting familiar colors and common objects were presented in isolation at three film speeds and three exposure times. Film speed and exposure time contributed as independent variables to error rate; and dyslexic subjects of both age groups made significantly more naming errors than controls. Dyslexic subjects also responded with longer naming latencies than controls when the same RAN stimuli were presented in a continuous sequential mode as a matrix of rows and columns. Naming latencies in the sequential presentation were highly correlated with naming errors in the film version. The implications of reduced naming rates for nongraphological stimuli in developmental dyslexia are discussed.     

On the relation between metacontrast masking and suppression of visible persistence

Does the introduction of additional contours in a display sequence (an operation known to reduce the strength of suppression in metacontrast) also reduce suppression of visible persistence? In three experiments, duration of visible persistence was estimated by a method in which successful performance depends on the temporal integration of a pattern whose elements are displayed in two successive frames. In this procedure, the arrival of the trailing frame is known to exert a suppressive influence on the visible persistence of the leading frame. Embedding the elements of the leading frame within additional contours (a line grid) reduced the degree of suppression exerted by the trailing frame. This did not occur when the grid was part of the trailing display. We conclude that suppression of visible persistence and metacontrast masking belong to the same class of events.     

Retraction of Ross and LoLordo findings concerning blocking in serial feature-positive discriminations.

Findings concerning the effectiveness of stimuli from various conditioning procedures in blocking conditioned excitation and occasion-setting functions of an added stimulus in a serial feature-postive discrimination training procedure (LoLordo & Ross, 1987; Ross & LoLordo, 1986, 1987) are retracted. Videotapes on which the published data were based were rescored by 2-5 people, most of whom were uninformed about group memberships of the subjects. In no case did the rescoring confirm any of the orginal findings of blocking. Possible factors contributing to the discrepancies are discussed. The experiments should be repeated with feature stimuli that are less similar to each other and with several scorers, at least one of whom is unaware of the group assignment of the subjects.     

Prediction and prejudice

Evidence that supports a theory may be available to the scientist who constructs the theory and used as a guide to that construction, or it may only be discovered in the course of testing the theory. The central claim of this essay is that information about whether the evidence was accommodated or predicted affects the rational degree of confidence one ought to have in the theory. Only when the evidence is accommodated is there some reason to believe that the theoretical system was ‘fudged’ to fit the evidence in a way that weakens support. This weakening is an objective matter, but not one that can be conclusively determined by examining the contents of the theory and its logical relationship to the evidence. Consequently, there is less reason to believe a theory on the basis of that evidence when it is known that the evidence was accommodated than there would be if it was known instead that the same evidence had been predicted.     

Scotching the Dutch Book Argument

Consistent application of coherece arguments shows that fair betting quotients are subject to constraints that are too stringent to allow their identification with either degrees of belief or probabilities. The pivotal role of fair betting quotients in the Dutch Book Argument, which is said to demonstrate that a rational agent's degrees of belief are probabilities, is thus undermined from both sides.     

Inquiry into intentional systems I: Issues in ecological physics

Summary The role of intention in guiding the behavior of goal-directed systems is a problem that continues to challenge behavioral science. While it is generally agreed that intentional systems must be consistent with the laws of physics, there are many obvious differences between inanimate, physical systems and sentient, intentional systems. This suggests that there must be constraints over and above those of physics that govern goal-directed behavior. In this paper it is suggested that generic properties of self-organizing mechanisms may play a central role in the origin and evolution of intentional constraints. The properties of self-organizing systems are first introduced in the context of simple physical systems and then extended to a complex (biological) system. Whereas behavior of an inanimate physical system is lawfully determined by force fields, behavior of an animate biological system is lawfully specified by information fields. Biological systems are distinguished from simple physical systems in terms of their ubiquitous use of information fields as special (biological and psychological, social, etc.) boundary conditions on classical laws. Unlike classical constraints (boundary conditions), informational constraints can vary with time and state of the system. Because of the nonstationarity of the boundary conditions, the dynamic of the system can follow a complex trajectory that is organized by a set of spatially and temporally distributed equilibrium points or regions. It is suggested that this equilibrium set and the laws that govern its transformation define a minimal requirement for an intentional system. One of the benefits of such an approach is that it suggests a realist account for the origin of semantic predicates, thereby providing a basis for the development of a theory of symbolic dynamics. Therefore, the principles of self-organization provide a comprehensive basis for investigating intentional systems by suggesting how it is that intentions arise, and by providing a lawful basis for intentional behavior that reveals how organisms become and remain lawfully informed in the pursuit of their goals.     

Transparency: relation to depth, subjective contours, luminance, and neon color spreading

The perception of transparency is highly dependent on luminance and perceived depth. An image region is seen as transparent if it is of intermediate luminance relative to adjacent image regions, and if it is perceived in front of another region and has a boundary which provides information that an object is visible through this region. Yet, transparency is not just the passive end-product of these required conditions. If perceived transparency is triggered, a number of seemingly more elemental perceptual primitives such as color, contour, and depth can be radically altered. Thus, with the perception of transparency, neon color spreading becomes apparent, depth changes, stereoscopic depth capture can be eliminated, and otherwise robust subjective contours can be abolished. In addition, we show that transparency is not coupled strongly to real-world chromatic constraints since combinations of luminance and color which would be unlikely to arise in real-world scenes still give rise to the perception of transparency. Rather than seeing transparency as a perceptual end-point, determined by seemingly more primitive processes, we interpret perceived transparency as much a 'cause', as an 'effect'. We speculate that the anatomical substrate for such mutual interaction may lie in cortical feed-forward connections which maintain modular segregation and cortical feedback connections which do not.     

Linear Analogue Self-Assessment and Procrustean Measurement: A Critical Review of Visual Analogue Scaling in Pain Assessment

Visual analogue scales (VASs) are one of the most widely used self-report measures of clinical pain. This article reviews the empirical literature on linear analogue self-assessment (LASA) and critically examines the features that appear to have made it such an attractive measurement option in pain assessment. It is concluded that analogue scaling does not withstand critical scrutiny as a primary measure of either pain intensity or pain affect and that, in most circumstances, the overall clinical utility of VASs is inferior to that of more structured pain indices.