A Framework for the Improvement of Test Interpretation in Counseling

Frequent counselor errors in test interpretation include presenting test results too soon, interpreting them without reference to clearly defined criteria, erroneously assuming their validity, and failing to present them in terms the student can understand. These errors can be reduced through emphasis on the student's felt need for information, helping him state his questions operationally, basing interpretive statements on empirical validity, and by communicating test results in an understandable manner. Observations of behavior to determine student acceptance of the interpretation as well as self-report to determine recall and understanding of the interpretation should be used. The focus of evaluation should be on student recall, understanding, and acceptance of predictions derived from test results.     

The effect of repetition on the perception of single letters)

Single letters were presented for from one to five flashes, with S required to report what he saw after each f1ash. The clarity of the letter increased sharply with repetition. Since the letters were no larger than one-third of a degree in size, clarity could not have .been increased by S making different fixations from f1ash to f1ash and combining them into a total percept. Nor was S guessing, since this could be ruled out by other indicators. Thus, it was concluded that repetition of the stimulus can have a direct effect on the clarity of a S’s percept of that stimulus.     

Unstable ocular dominance and reading ability

An ocular anomaly, unstable ocular dominance, has been shown to be associated with poor reading performance in clinically selected subjects. A study is reported in which this anomaly was examined in a nonclinical sample. Two groups of children of similar reading performance and IQ but differing in chronological age were selected. The older children had a mean discrepancy between their reading and chronological age of 19 months. Unstable ocular dominance was more frequent in these poor readers. The hypothesis that this instability would lead to more errors and longer decision times for distinguishing left-right mirror-image figures was not supported. If unstable ocular dominance is to be established as anything other than a correlate of specific reading retardation, it is necessary to establish the processes through which it is operative. These have yet to be determined.     

Machine Interpretation of Emotion: Design of a Memory-Based Expert System for Interpreting Facial Expressions in Terms of Signaled Emotions

As a first step in involving user emotion in human-computer interaction, a memory-based expert system (JANUS; Kearney, 1991) was designed to interpret facial expression in terms of the signaled emotion. Anticipating that a VDU-mounted camera will eventually supply face parameters automatically, JANUS now accepts manually made measurements on a digitized full-face photograph and returns emotion labels used by college students. An intermediate representation in terms of face actions (e.g., mouth open) is also used. Production rules convert the geometry into these. A dynamic memory (Kolodner, 1984; Schank, 1982) interprets the face actions in terms of emotion labels. The memory is dynamic in the sense that new emotion labels can be learned with experience. A prototype system has been implemented on a Sun 2/120 system using POPLOG. Validation studies on the prototype suggest that the interpretations achieved are generally consistent with those of college students without formal instruction in emotion signals.