Grammatical determinants of ambiguous pronoun resolution

Crawley et al. (1990) argue for the primacy of a subject assignment strategy for pronoun assignment during reading, and against the notion of parallel function (Sheldon, 1974). However, most of their items deviated from parallel structure, and none included subject pronouns. In four experiments with subject and nonsubject pronouns, strong parallel function effects emerge when a potential antecedent has the same syntactic role as the pronoun and when the two clauses have the same attachment site and constituent structure. Attachment nonparallelism causes the greatest ambiguity, while the other types lead to more subject assignment overall, although there is always an overlaid parallel function effect. These observations support a model of pronoun assignment according to which potential antecedents are checked for morphological, syntactic and semantic feature matches with the pronoun, and priming/reactivation of syntactic structure across clauses facilitates parallel assignment.This research was supported in part by research grant 410-89-0395 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. A preliminary version of the paper was presented at the 1992 meetings of the Canadian Linguistic Association in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. I would like to thank Elizabeth Cowper, Keren Rice, Rosemary Stevenson, and an anonymous reviewer for their comments.     

Attentional bias to threat: Roles of trait anxiety, stressful events, and awareness

Attentional biases for threat stimuli were assessed in high and low trait anxious subjects (n = 66) using a probe detection task. To examine the effects of trait anxiety and situational stressors, each subject was tested three times: Under no stress, laboratory-induced stress, and examination-induced stress. To evaluate the role of awareness, half the word stimuli were presented very briefly (14 msec) and masked, and the other half were presented for 500 msec without a mask. Results showed that high trait anxious subjects under exam stress showed an attentional bias towards unmasked threat stimuli compared with low trait subjects. This effect was not found under lab-induced stress, suggesting that the attentional bias for unmasked threat in high trait subjects may be a function of a prolonged stressor, rather than a transient increase in state anxiety. The results from the masked exposure condition were not predicted; high trait anxious subjects shifted attention towards the spatial location of threat words despite lack of awareness of their lexical content, but this bias was only apparent in the no-stress condition. The results are discussed in relation to recent cognitive theories of anxiety.     

Object recognition contributions to figure-ground organization: Operations on outlines and subjective contours

In previous research, replicated here, we found that some object recognition processes influence figure-ground organization. We have proposed that these object recognition processes operate on edges (or contours)detected early in visual processing, rather than on regions. Consistent with this proposal, influences from object recognition on figure-ground organization were previously observed in both pictures and stereograms depicting regions of different luminance, but not in randomdot stereograms, where edges arise late in processing (Peterson & Gibson, 1993). In the present experiments, we examined whether or not two other types of contours—outlines and subjective contours—enable object recognition influences on figure-ground organization. For both types of contours we observed a pattern of effects similar to that originally obtained with luminance edges. The results of these experiments are valuable for distinguishing between alternative views of the mechanisms mediating object recognition influences on figure-ground organization. In addition, in both Experiments 1 and 2, fixated regions were seen as figure longer than nonfixated regions, suggesting that fixation location must be included among the variables relevant to figure-ground organization.     

Comment on "personality organization as an aspect of back pain in a medical setting".

The methodology and results of a recent investigation by Louks, Freeman, and Calsyn (1978) are reviewed. It is demonstrated that the results may have been confounded by inappropriate experimental procedures. Regardless of the methodological deficiencies associated with the experimental procedures, the results do not provide adequate support for the continued differentiation of individual low back pain patients with respect to the etiology of their pain. It is suggested that psychologists may best contribute to the assessment and treatment of individual pain patients by developing actuarial rules regarding the pain-related behavioral characteristics shared by members of various patient subgroups and the specific treatments to which subgroup members best respond.     

Counseling Past and Present: Is There a Future?

Major criticisms directed at counseling are identified and prominent suggestions for their elimination are described through an analysis of the counseling literature of the past 10 years. A brief outline of the history of counseling offers a historical perspective to the discussion. One suggestion to improve counseling, that counselors become change agents in their institutions, is examined and described with steps for its implementation. The implementation of the change-agent role for counselors would address much of the substantive criticism directed at counseling, and would remold the profession to more effectively meet today's needs.     

A comparison of Canadian and Israeli separation and divorce

A nonrandom sample of 86 cases of Israel separation and divorce cases is compared with a Canadian sample of 369 having this experience. Impacts of sex-role changes, jobs and careers, children and sexuality are compared in these two national cases which exhibit many similarities and many differences. Sex-role conflicts were more frequent in Israel as were violence in separation and divorce in the Israeli sample. Adultery, though problematic in both cases, was frequently cited as a cause of divorce. Social-structural restraints and freedoms in each case are discussed as well as historical-cultural differences that help explain differing expectations and outcomes in both Israel and Canada.     

Self-esteem and cognitive consistency effects on self-other evaluation

Reactions to bogus evaluations of one's self, either positively or negatively discrepant from one's own self-evaluation, were investigated among subjects differing in self-ideal discrepancy. All subjects exhibited greater acceptance of the source of favorable information than the source of unfavorable information, and changed their self-evaluation more toward the favorable than unfavorable position. However, among low self-ideal discrepancy subjects, the change in self-evaluation was accompanied by a similar change in friend evaluation, thereby maintaining their standing in relation to this friend after receiving either positive or negative evaluations. In contrast, high discrepancy subjects downgraded the friend more and upgraded the friend less than themselves, thereby enhancing their relative standing as a result of the feedback. These findings indicated that defensive or self-enhancing effects on self-evaluation processes are determined by self-ideal discrepancy.     

IDENTIFYING THE EDUCATIVE AND SUPPRESSIVE EFFECTS OF POSITIVE PRACTICE AND RESTITUTIONAL OVERCORRECTION

Two major features of the overcorrection procedure, restitution and positive practice, were analyzed for their educative and suppressive properties in the treatment of profoundly retarded adults. Positive practice techniques that were topographically similar and dissimilar to the target behavior were studied. Eating behavior and puzzle performance were observed. Restitutional overcorrection and both forms of positive practice were effective for suppressing inappropriate behaviors. Even when appropriate behaviors had been acquired by positive practice, restitution and dissimilar positive practice were generally ineffective for increasing their rate of occurrence. However, topographically similar positive practice was successful as a means of teaching new appropriate behaviors.