Perceptions by the aged of crime, criminals, and the criminal justice system

A general fear of crime victimization led to modified activities in the community and feelings of relative safety in their own area for 132 elderly respondents on a 24-item questionnaire. They held sympathetic views of crime perpetrators as disadvantaged victims of society themselves, but came to the unlikely conclusions that more police control and harsher prison sentences are needed.     

A new quantitative approach to the assessment of stages of vigilance as defined by spatiotemporal EEG patterning

Electroencephalographically oriented research on vigilance needs valid measures for assessing the level of vigilance between wakefulness and sleep. When studying different psychologically, psychopathologically, and pharmacologically induced states, special attention has to be paid to minor alterations of the level of vigilance which are reflected, essentially, in topographical changes of alpha-activity (Stage A). Since vigilance is a dynamic process, brief fluctuations in the range of a few seconds must also be recorded. In our opinion existing methods of quantification do not fully meet these demands. We have, therefore, developed a relatively simple procedure which can be characterized as an attempt quantitatively to reconstruct visually, i.e., spatiotemporally defined patterns of vigilance. The usefulness of this method, which also has certain limitations, has been demonstrated in psychopharmacological studies.     

Effect of directed attention on cerebral asymmetries in stuttering adults

9 stutterers and 9 nonstutterers were administered a dichotic digits test under conditions of free recall and directed attention. Analysis indicated right-ear preference for both groups and no differences between the free recall and directed listening conditions. Results are discussed in relation to previous studies in which dichotic digit-stimuli were presented to stutterers.     

Effects of auditory masking by white noise on primary stressing during spontaneous speech

6 adult subjects (3 men, 3 women) produced highly similar spontaneous speech utterances in quiet and with 90-dB SPL white noise. The frequency of occurrence of perceptual judgments of primary stressing in an utterance was not affected by the masking noise. This finding supplements our previous report that variability for stress production of fundamental frequency (fo) during spontaneous speech was preserved under short-term auditory disruption. Also, it adds further support to the contention that fo is under open-loop regulation.     

Effect of moderate doses of alcohol on simple auditory reaction time in a vigilance setting

An experiment was performed with 11 voluntary male subjects to test the effects of moderate doses of alcohol on simple auditory RT in a vigilance setting. Subjects were tested during a 30-min. session, during which signals were presented with an average intersignal interval of 3.75 sec. Subjects responded by pressing a microswitch held in the preferred hand. Analysis indicated that absolute means increased as a function of alcohol dose. With time-on-task alcohol produced a faster increase in RT and especially affected the longest RTs. Number of extreme long reactions (blockings) and mean duration of these reactions increased under alcohol and were directly related to time on task; alcohol produced a much faster increase in number of blockings with time on task. Results were discussed in terms of attentional processes and habituation theory. Some practical implications of the results were pointed out.     

Children's perception of parental exercise: influence of sex and age

The purpose of the study was to document children's perception of parental exercise, relating these perceptions to (1) the self-reported parents' habits of exercise, and (2) the children's own activity patterns. The subjects were 198 students of both sexes, aged 12 to 14 yr. and enrolled in school Grades 7 to 9. A standard questionnaire assessed their perceptions of parental and personal physical activity. Both parents of each subject also reported their respective levels of habitual physical activity. Congruence between the children's perceptions and the self-reported exercise habits of the opposite-sex parent differed for boys and girls, increasing for boys and decreasing for girls between Grades 7 and 9. No significant associations were observed between the children's perception of parental exercise patterns and their own like habits. This suggests that during adolescence parental influences are minimized by other factors, personal or environmental.     

Context-dependent effects on analogical transfer

The role of context in facilitating analogical transfer was investigated in two experiments. In both experiments, subjects first read two stories that were analogous to Duncker’s (1945) radiation problem. Later, subjects attempted to solve the radiation problem. In Experiment 1, the radiation problem was presented in a different context than that of the stories, and followed them by 6 min. Transfer was observed in subjects who were prompted to use the earlier stories in solving the problem. However, the solution frequency of subjects not given such prompts did not differ from control levels. In Experiment 2, the radiation problem was presented in the same context as the earlier stories to some subjects, and in a different context to others. The timing of the radiation problem also was varied. When a 6-min interval separated the stories from the radiation problem, transfer was a function of context, with weak transfer being observed in the samecontext condition, and no transfer being observed in the different-context condition. At a 45-sec delay, transfer was again observed in the same~ontext condition, and a nonsignificant trend toward transfer was observed in the different-context condition. The results were interpreted as indicating that context facilitates the retrieval of relevant problem-solving schemas, and as suggesting that the possession of relevant schemas is not sufficient to produce analogical transfer.     

Locus of inhibition effects in the priming of lexical decisions: pre- or postlexical access?

The lexical decision task has been employed to investigate the effects of semantic context on word recognition. A frequent finding from the task is that “word” responses are slower when the target is preceded by an unrelated word than when it is preceded by a neutral stimulus. This inhibition effect has been interpreted as indicating that the unrelated prime interferes with word-recognition processes operating on the target. In three experiments, the effects of unrelated primes were compared for a lexical decision and word naming task. Although large inhibition effects were found for the lexical decision task in all experiments, no inhibition effects were observed for the naming task. The results are interpreted as demonstrating that inhibition effects in the lexical decision task are not on recognition processes; rather they are located at processes operating after recognition of the target has occurred.     

Latent trait models and dichotomization of graded responses

This paper discusses thecompatibility of the polychotomous Rasch model with dichotomization of the response continuum. It is argued that in the case of graded responses, the response categories presented to the subject are essentially an arbitrary polychotomization of the response continuum, ranging for example from total rejection or disagreement to total acceptance or agreement of an item or statement. Because of this arbitrariness, the measurement outcome should be independent of the specific polychotomization applied, for example, presenting a specific multicategory response format should not affect the measurement outcome. When such is the case, the original polychotomous model is called compatible with dichotomization.A distinction is made between polychotomization or dichotomization before the fact, that is, in constructing the response format, and polycho- or dichotomization after the fact, for example in dichotomizing existing graded response data.It is shown that, at least in case of dichotomization after-the-fact, the polychotomous Rasch model is not compatible with dichotomization, unless a rather special condition of the model parameters is met. Insofar as it may be argued that dichotomization before the fact is not essentially different from dichotomization after the fact, the value of the unidimensional polychotomous Rasch model is consequently questionable. The impact of our conclusion on related models is also discussed.