Perception of interpolated position and orientation by vision and active touch

Vision and active touch lead to similar patterns of constant error for the perception of interpolated position in twodimensional and one-dimensional regions, though the errors for touch are larger than those for vision. The error patterns for the orientation of a radius of a semicircle are more complex, but can be interpreted as due to the interaction of two sets of anchors rather than the single pair available for the linear interpolation. The greater size of the touch errors is interpreted as due to a relative overestimation of larger distances by active touch or of smallerdistances by vision.     

The uniqueness and significance of simple structure demonstrated by contrasting organic “natural structure” and “random structure” data

The study compares the extent to which naturally structured data and artificial, relatively random data (both with the same basic parameters) produce simple structure factors which are uniquely determined. Two examples of unstructured matrices were compared with the ball problem matrix. The results show that an oblique position of maximum hyperplane count in the structured data differs from that in the unstructured by reaching a significantly more unique position in terms of the exactitude with which it is re-discoverable when starting from different positions, and by reaching (at the maximum) a significantly higher hyperplane count.     

Changeover delay and concurrent schedules: some effects on relative performance measures

The pigeon and the rat partition total response output between both schedules of a concurrent variable-interval pair. The quantitative nature of a partition seems critically dependent on the relative rates with which the two schedules provide reinforcements for responding, in addition to the changeover delay. The manner in which the changeover delay controls the partition was studied by varying the duration of the changeover delay from 0 to 20 sec with each of two pairs of concurrent variable-interval schedules, viz., Conc VI 1.5-min VI 1.5-min and Conc VI 1-min VI 3-min. Rats served as the subjects and brain stimulation was employed as the reinforcer. When the schedules were Conc VI 1.5-min VI 1.5-min, relative response rate approximated 0.50 at all values of the changeover delay. When the schedules were Conc VI 1-min VI 3-min, relative response rate, computed with respect to the VI 1-min schedule, increased when the duration of the changeover delay increased. Changeover rate decreased when the duration of the changeover delay increased. The decrease was the same for both VI schedules of the Conc VI 1.5-min VI 1.5-min pair but was more rapid for the VI 3-min schedule of the Conc VI 1-min VI 3-min pair.     

Reviews of current books

Pastoral Psychology -     

The minimal transformation to orthonormality

The solution is presented to the problem of finding that orthonormal matrix closest in the least-square sense to a given matrix of full rank. An application is shown to the problem in multiple regression analysis of determining the importance of each independent variable.     

Superior Students' Occupational Preferences and Their Fathers' Occupations

The relationship between the occupational preferences of 147 superior students and their fathers' occupations was traced over the 4-year period that the students attended high schools in Wisconsin. Analysis of the data indicated that both male and female superior students tended to state vocational preferences at the professional level early in high school and to maintain this preference throughout. Their occupational preferences were generally at a higher level than those of their fathers. There was no trend away from general preferences for work at a professional level toward naming of specific occupations within that level. The results suggest that theories of vocational development that imply that stages are passed through during later adolescent periods do not apply to the superior student population of this study.     

The effect of the square root of time on continuing perceptual tasks

When an observer is confronted with a stimulus pattern that in some aspect does not change over time, perception of that aspect of the pattern does change. This paper documents several different types of change, all of which progress linearly with the square root of the observing time. Examples are drawn from studies of figurai after-effects, motion after-effects, vigilance, motion neutralization, visibility of the stabilized retinal image, effects of contours on visibility and fluctuations in the perceptual organization of ambiguous figures.