A double neon colour illusion

A new visual illusion is presented. When two neon-coloured illusory bands overlap each other, the filling-in at the region of overlap is perceived as different from those of the overlapping bands, resulting in an additional illusory shape at the region of overlap. An experiment with ten na?ve participants was performed to measure the illusory percept. The results show that illusory surfaces may interact with each other, and, to a certain extent, create new illusory percepts.     

Behavior of college baseball players in a virtual batting task

A baseball batting simulation was used to investigate the information used to hit a baseball. Measures of spatial and temporal swing accuracy were used to test whether batters (a) use speed to estimate pitch height, (b) initiate a constant swing duration at a fixed time to contact, (c) are influenced by the history of previous pitches and pitch count, and (d) use rotation direction. Batters were experienced college players. Pitch speed variance led to predictable spatial errors, and spatial accuracy was worse than temporal accuracy. Swing duration was generally variable. The history of the previous 3 pitches and the pitch count had significant effects on accuracy, and performance improved when rotation cues were added. There were significant effects of expertise on hitting strategy.     

An investigation into the counselling-type work of Roman Catholic priests: a survey of one diocese in Northern Ireland

Professional counselling has been criticised as being the preserve of the elite, and neither available nor affordable for the vast majority of society. However, there are other sources of help which people avail themselves of in times of need. One such source has been the local clergyman. This study looked at the helping service provided by Catholic priests working in pastoral situations in a Northern Irish diocese. Based on a questionnaire survey of 32 Catholic priests (25% of the diocese) the study looked first at the types of problems being presented to clergy, and how they responded to them. It examined their training for this work, as well as their attitudes to it, support for Catholic priests in this aspect of their work and also at their referral practices. Findings in respect of problems presented and training were in line with previous research. A wide variety of problems was encountered by Catholic priests where the most common were bereavement, alcohol or substance abuse, marital disharmony, relationship problems and terminal illness. Despite very positive attitudes towards counselling-type work and its importance in their ministry, Catholic priests' initial training in this area was reported as largely irrelevant to their current needs and there was a prevailing view of dissatisfaction. A level of self-confidence was displayed that seemed incongruent with the training in this field. Responses in respect of support and referral were contrary to previous studies. Priests seemed to be engaging in referral and reported high levels of personal but mainly informal support for this work.The findings are discussed in relation to priests continuing to undertake counselling-type work.     

Intergenerational Transmission: Individuation and Intimacy Across Three Generations

This study examined the transmission of intergenerational family processes across three generations, employing Williamson's construct of Personal Authority in the Family System (PAFS) as a theoretical back-drop. From a PAFS perspective, psychological health is viewed as directly related to the degree of individuation and intimacy (PAFS) experienced within the family of origin. Overall, the results provided a degree of support for the intergenerational transmission hypothesis. The strongest predictor of the transmission process was from the participant/parent relationship to the participant/spouse relationship (spousal fusion/individuation). Separate male and female analyses of the Spousal Fusion/Individuation model found a moderate effect for females and a large effect for males. A small effect was found in predicting nuclear family triangulation from parent and spouse variables, although there was no gender effect. The findings suggest that degree of individuation and its related constructs are more critical in the transmission process than is intimacy.     

Examination of the mediational influences of peer norms, environmental influences, and parent communications on heavy drinking in athletes and nonathletes.

The present study used perspectives from the general literature on college alcohol consumption to examine mediational influences of peer, environmental, and parental variables on heavy drinking for student athlete and nonathlete samples. Eight hundred thirty-five freshmen who differed in organized sports involvement were compared on heavy drinking outcomes, peer norms, environmental influences, and parental communication. College athletes reported significantly more heavy drinking experiences than nonathletes. Peer norms, environmental influences, and parental communication were all significant mediators of the athlete-heavy drinking relationship. Athletes reported a higher perception of peer drinking, peer approval of drinking, higher alcohol availability, and direct drink offers, which, in turn, were related to higher rates of heavy drinking. Parental communication mediated the athlete-heavy drinking relationship differently, depending on the specific topic of conversation. Discussion surrounding the importance of incorporating a variety of interventions aimed at reducing collegiate athlete drinking on the basis of the peer, environmental, and parental influences observed in the present analyses are presented. Limitations and directions for future research are also noted.     

Gender, Internalization of Expressive Traits, and Expectations of Parenting

This study examined parental role salience, expectations and intentions, and the extent to which the internalization of gender associated traits may be related to these parenting variables within emerging adults. Childless undergraduates at a western Canadian university (N?=?236; 119 women) completed a self-report questionnaire. As predicted, role salience and expectations were positively correlated with intentions. Internalization of expressive/feminine traits, but not instrumental/masculine traits, was positively correlated with all three parenting variables, although gender moderated this relation. While femininity was unrelated to the expectations of women, men possessing more expressive traits held more positive views than their less expressive male counterparts. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of the parental roles anticipated by young women and men.     

Career writing: Creative,expressive and reflective approaches to narrative identity formation in students in higher education

This study investigates whether creative, expressive, and reflective writing contributes to the formation of a narrative career identity that offers students in higher education a sense of meaning and direction. The contents of writing done by students who participated in 2 two-day writing courses before and after work placements and of a control group were compared. Employers were also asked to evaluate students' performance. Writing samples were analyzed using the Linguistic Index Word Count program and an instrument based on Dialogical Self Theory. Work-placement self-reports were gathered, examined, and used as anecdotal evidence presented in the form of case studies. The results show that career writing can promote the development of career identity and holds promise as a narrative career guidance approach.     

‘Ought’, ‘Can’, and Fairness

According to the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’, it is never the case that you ought to do something you cannot do. While many accept this principle in some form, it also has its share of critics, and thus it seems desirable if an argument can be offered in its support. The aim of this paper is to examine a particular way in which the principle has been defended, namely, by appeal to considerations of fairness. In a nutshell, the idea (due to David Copp) is that moral requirements we cannot comply with would be unfair, and there cannot be unfair moral requirements. I discuss several ways of spelling out the argument, and argue that all are unsatisfactory for a variety of reasons.     

Feedback training for facial image comparison

People are typically poor at matching the identity of unfamiliar faces from photographs. This observation has broad implications for face matching in operational settings (e.g., border control). Here, we report significant improvements in face matching ability following feedback training. In Experiment 1, we show cumulative improvement in performance on a standard test of face matching ability when participants were provided with trial-by-trial feedback. More important, Experiment 2 shows that training benefits can generalize to novel, widely varying, unfamiliar face images for which no feedback is provided. The transfer effect specifically benefited participants who had performed poorly on an initial screening test. These findings are discussed in the context of existing literature on unfamiliar face matching and perceptual training. Given the reliability of the performance enhancement and its generalization to diverse image sets, we suggest that feedback training may be useful for face matching in occupational settings.     

Recognizing familiar objects by hand and foot: Haptic shape perception generalizes to inputs from unusual locations and untrained body parts

The limits of generalization of our 3-D shape recognition system to identifying objects by touch was investigated by testing exploration at unusual locations and using untrained effectors. In Experiments 1 and 2, people found identification by hand of real objects, plastic 3-D models of objects, and raised line drawings placed in front of themselves no easier than when exploration was behind their back. Experiment 3 compared one-handed, two-handed, one-footed, and two-footed haptic object recognition of familiar objects. Recognition by foot was slower (7 vs. 13 s) and much less accurate (9 % vs. 47 % errors) than recognition by either one or both hands. Nevertheless, item difficulty was similar across hand and foot exploration, and there was a strong correlation between an individual’s hand and foot performance. Furthermore, foot recognition was better with the largest 20 of the 80 items (32 % errors), suggesting that physical limitations hampered exploration by foot. Thus, object recognition by hand generalized efficiently across the spatial location of stimuli, while object recognition by foot seemed surprisingly good given that no prior training was provided. Active touch (haptics) thus efficiently extracts 3-D shape information and accesses stored representations of familiar objects from novel modes of input.