A Muscle Awareness Model for Changes in Rorschach Human Movement Responses

The present series of studies sought to provide evidence that M would increase under any conditions which make an S more aware of his muscles. The studies demonstrated that at least in women, M increased over a variety of conditions involving heightened muscle awareness. Specifically M increased in conditions utilizing muscle activation, deactivation, hypnosis, and focusing thoughts on the body musculature. The muscle awareness model unlike the sensory-tonic model accounts for increases in M following hyperactivity as well as inhibition.     

Natural religion,common notions,and the study of religions: Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1583–1648)

While the seminal role of Lord Herbert in the early modern study of religion has long been recognized, his legacy has most often been mistakenly identified with ‘natural religion’. This article provides evidence for Lord Herbert's repudiation of ‘natural religion’ and its inconsistency with his own theory of common notions. It also identifies those basic tools still used in the study of religions which emerged as unintended by‐products of his theory of common notions.     

Demand Transitions and Sustained Attention

A recent report by the National Research Council (Huey & Wickens, 1993) has identified transitions in task demand as an important dimension for study in vigilance research. This experiment tested the possibility that the effects of such transitions follow a relatively simple psychophysical rule—they are characterized by contrast effects. Transitions in task demand were achieved by shifting subjects from single-task to dual-task monitoring and vice versa. These transitions produced changes in subjects' sensing and decision-making functions that were far more intricate than simple contrast effects. The demand transition issue offers a complex research challenge on both basic and applied levels and warrants further investigation.     

Bocheński on divine ineffability

Section 11 of Józef Bocheński’s The Logic of religion (1965), is devoted to the question of divine ineffability: Is it possible to speak of God? Bocheński shows that even if the assertion of God’s ineffability is not contradictory, it can be contested. Bocheński seems to think ineffabilism is based primarily on a confusion, viz., on the claim that faith is dependent on an extraordinary experience, and it is this extraordinary experience which is supposed to be ineffable. The ineffabilist is unable to say who he is addressing in his prayers and praises so long as he maintains that nothing can be said of Him to whom they are addressed. Any meaningful language is minimally referential, whether the ineffabilist likes it or not. This could be the basis for a critique of Jean-Luc Marion’s account of apophatism. This criticism shows the fecundity of Bocheński’s account of ineffability.     

Public Attitudes Toward the Use of Bioremediation to Clean Up Toxic Contamination

Bioremediation is an innovative approach to environmental management that uses microorganisms or plants to clean up toxic contamination in the environment. This research examines public attitudes toward the use of bioremediation at 2 sites in California: an urban site (Avila Beach) and a natural site (Guadalupe Dunes). At both sites, the study participants preferred excavation of the contaminated soil to bioremediation. The survey results help to explain the reasons why there is limited support for the use of bioremediation.     

A naturalistic longitudinal evaluation of counselling in primary care

This study evaluated the effectiveness of generic counselling in a primary healthcare setting during three months of counselling and followed up the patients' progress after counselling had finished for the next twenty-one months. Questionnaires were completed by patients within the Dorset Primary Care counselling service on referral to counselling and at set points afterwards. A naturally occurring waiting-list group was compared with patients receiving counselling at baseline and three months. Measurements were taken of patients' psychiatric symptomatology, quality of life (QOL) and self-esteem. Patients who received counselling made highly significant improvements compared with those on the waiting list. These improvements were maintained throughout the long-term follow-up. This would indicate that generic counselling has positive effects that can be maintained for a long period of time after counselling has been completed.     

The relationship between performance-based self-esteem and self-reported work and health behaviors among Danish knowledge workers

Since knowledge intensive work often requires self-management, one might fear that persons who are dependent on work success for self-esteem will have difficulties in finding a healthful and sustainable balance between internal needs and external demands. Accordingly, we examined to what degree work-related performance-based self-esteem (PBS) was linked to work and health behaviors in 392 knowledge workers (226 women, 166 men). In the women group, multiple binary logistic regression analyses with repeated measurements showed that the PBS score was associated with 10 of the 17 examined work and health behaviors. For men the corresponding figure was 3 of 17. In both men and women, higher PBS scores were positively associated with reports of efforts and strivings for work as well as attending work while ill. In conclusion, statistically significant relationships between PBS and work and health behaviors were more clearly visible among women than men. Whether this gender difference is dependent on the study design, or on true inherent differences between women and men, cannot be concluded with any certainty. However, persons who described themselves as being relatively more dependent on work accomplishments for a high self-esteem, as expressed by the PBS score, seem to display work behaviors that may lessen their restitution time. In addition, they also seem to be more prone to work while sick.     

It depends on how you look at it: Scanpath comparison in multiple dimensions with MultiMatch, a vector-based approach

Eye movement sequences??or scanpaths??vary depending on the stimulus characteristics and the task (Foulsham & Underwood Journal of Vision, 8(2), 6:1?C17, 2008; Land, Mennie, & Rusted, Perception, 28, 1311?C1328, 1999). Common methods for comparing scanpaths, however, are limited in their ability to capture both the spatial and temporal properties of which a scanpath consists. Here, we validated a new method for scanpath comparison based on geometric vectors, which compares scanpaths over multiple dimensions while retaining positional and sequential information (Jarodzka, Holmqvist, & Nystr?m, Symposium on Eye-Tracking Research and Applications (pp. 211?C218), 2010). ??MultiMatch?? was tested in two experiments and pitted against ScanMatch (Cristino, Math?t, Theeuwes, & Gilchrist, Behavior Research Methods, 42, 692?C700, 2010), the most comprehensive adaptation of the popular Levenshtein method. In Experiment 1, we used synthetic data, demonstrating the greater sensitivity of MultiMatch to variations in spatial position. In Experiment 2, real eye movement recordings were taken from participants viewing sequences of dots, designed to elicit scanpath pairs with commonalities known to be problematic for algorithms (e.g., when one scanpath is shifted in locus or when fixations fall on either side of an AOI boundary). The results illustrate the advantages of a multidimensional approach, revealing how two scanpaths differ. For instance, if one scanpath is the reverse copy of another, the difference is in the direction but not the positions of fixations; or if a scanpath is scaled down, the difference is in the length of the saccadic vectors but not in the overall shape. As well as having enormous potential for any task in which consistency in eye movements is important (e.g., learning), MultiMatch is particularly relevant for ??eye movements to nothing?? in mental imagery and embodiment-of-cognition research, where satisfactory scanpath comparison algorithms are lacking.