Some statistical treatments compatible with individual organism methodology

Consider experimental treatments with consequences so irreversible that baseline performance cannot be recovered. The conventional method of assessing the effects of such treatments by statistical means involves separate experimental and control groups. An alternative proposed here is to administer the experimental treatment to each subject, one subject at a time and in a random order; whenever any subject receives the experimental treatment, those subjects which have not yet received it receive a control treatment. This procedure permits results significant at the one-tailed 0.05 level to be obtained with four subjects; if a two-group procedure evaluated by means of the U test is used, a minimum of six subjects is needed for the same significance level. More generally, the procedure permits equal sensitivity to any experimental effect with over 30% fewer subjects than a two-group procedure. Extensions of the basic method are made to a variety of levels of the experimental treatment and to treatments without irreversible effects, and limitations of the method are discussed.     

Personality Types and Vocational Choice: A Test of Holland's Theory

In order to test the adequacy of Holland's theory of vocational choice with reference to a broad segment of entering college students, a sample of the freshman class entering the Pennsylvania State University evaluated themselves in terms of the six personality styles of Holland's theory. Relationships between the personality styles and vocational choices were studied for groups of Decided, Tentative, and Undecided students. While several inversions in the data are evident, the data possess sufficient consistency to indicate that the personality identifications these students made in Holland's frame of reference were related to their initial vocational choices.     

Oculomotor adaptation to wedge prisms with no part of the body seen

When S looks at a visual target through prisms, adaptive shifts in reaching behavior occur even though he sees no part of his body through the prisms. These shifts are caused by a change in the judgment of the direction of gaze (oculomotor change), which in turn is caused by two secondary prismatic effects: (a) asymmetry of the visual display and (b) apparent rotation about a vertical axis of a panel or wall facing S. The “asymmetry” factor contributes 22% of the total oculomotor change, and the “rotation” effect contributes the remaining 78%. Oculomotor change is not facilitated by eye-movement activity. The adaptive oculomotor change induces a non-adaptive proprioception change about one-tenth as large as the oculomotor change. These findings are capable of accounting for the previously unexplained results reported by Wooster in 1923, and also for the current controversy about the role of reafferent stimulation in sensorymotor adaptation.     

Oculomotor adaptation to wedge prisms with no part of the body seen

When S looks at a visual target through prisms, adaptive shifts in reaching behavior occur even though he sees no part of his body through the prisms. These shifts are caused by a change in the judgment of the direction of gaze (oculomotor change), which in turn is caused by two secondary prismatic effects: (a) asymmetry of the visual display and (b) apparent rotation about a vertical axis of a panel or wall facing S. The “asymmetry” factor contributes 22% of the total oculomotor change, and the “rotation” effect contributes the remaining 78%. Oculomotor change is not facilitated by eye-movzment activity. The adaptive oculomotor change induces a non-adaptive proprioception change about one-tenth as large as the oculomotor change. These findings are capable of accounting for the previously unexplained results reported by Wooster in 1923, and also for the current controversy about the role of reafferent stimulation in sensorymotor adaptation.     

Cognitive habilitation in schizophrenia: A theoretical review and model of treatment

Evidence has accumulated for information processing deficits in schizophrenia. The functional significance of these deficits is only beginning to be understood. There are indications that these deficits may respond to intervention. Training on deficient functions has been demonstrated to relate to improvements in performance. A treatment program of cognitive rehabilitation is deduced from the literature and induced from clinical experience. The treatment is designed to impact directly on the information processing deficits of schizophrenic patients and indirectly to ameliorate functional deficits.     

Grading the ‘cultural literacy’ project

The essay examines the argument advanced by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., for instituting ‘cultural literacy’ as a fundamental priority of schools. A number of confusions and equivocations in Hirsch's reasoning are identified, and the propensity of his project to indoctrinate is exposed. Among the features of Hirsch's argument shown to be troubling are his shifting construal of ‘language’, his inconsistency about the requirements of cultural literacy, and his uncritical relation to traditional images of the American past and present. The upshot is to raise the question why Hirsch's project has elicited wide support and praise.     

Racial Attitudes and the Death Penalty1

This study investigated the relationship between overt and subtle forms of racism with Whites' recommendations for capital sentencing of Black and White offenders convicted of murder. White participants (n= 104) viewed 5 other “jurors” (all Whites or 4 Whites and 1 Black) on videotape individually presenting their decisions to vote for the death penalty in the case. It was hypothesized that the bias of high prejudice-scoring participants would be overt, but that the pattern for low prejudice-scoring participants would be more complex. As predicted, among high prejudice-scoring participants, Black defendants received stronger recommendations for the death penalty than did White defendants. Among low prejudice-scoring White participants, Black offenders received stronger recommendations for the death penalty only when a Black juror advocated the death penalty.     

Religious Coping and Heart Transplantation: From Threat to Health

Previous research has established the existence of homogeneous religious coping profiles in cardiac-transplantation candidates labeled as the deferring/collaborators, self-directors, and the eclectic religious copers. However, their prospective impact on outcome has not yet been established. This paper examines potential differences between pre-cardiac transplantation religious coping cluster groups on post-cardiac transplantation quality of life (physical functioning, mental health, and general health). Results indicated that the religious coping profiles of deferring/collaborators and self-directors had significantly better scores on mental health and general health than did the eclectics. Implications for religious-coping research and clinical practice are discussed.