Cortical localization of finger spelling and oral language: A case study

Finger spelling of letters and words was mapped by means of the cortical stimulation procedure in a hearing patient undergoing a left dominant anterior temporal lobe resection for relief of a seizure disorder. Finger spelling was disrupted at five sites: three overlapping with one or more oral language functions at sites in the classical posterior language area, two relating only to finger spelling in the anterior temporal region. Following the resection which included these latter sites, both short- and long-term postoperative deficits in finger spelling are described. Implications for the organization of manually based communication behavior in the left hemisphere are discussed.     

The relationship between interests-job incongruity and selection of avocational activity

The present paper presents two independent studies (n₁ = 240, n₂ = 66, respectively) conducted in two different countries, and which were designed to investigate the function of leisure activities for people with varying degrees of vocational congruence. The results of the studies showed similar trends and thus, provided a cross validation to the findings. Following S. Parker (The future of work and leisure. New York, Praeger, 1971), a distinction was made between extension compensation, and neutral functions for avocational activity choice, with corresponding inventories measuring each of them. Little more than a third of the people reported their leisure activities to be neutral avocations pursued for relaxation and tension release. Taken together, the results show the following trends: (1) people tend to select leisure activities congruent with their personality pattern; (2) people in congruent occupations were vocationally satisfied and conceived their preferred activities as an extension of the type of activities they do at work; (3) people in incongruent occupations are vocationally dissatisfied, and compensate for this by selecting compensatory leisure activities and they tend to show higher salience for their avocational activities. The distinction amongst the various leisure activity functions seems to be crucial for further research in selection of avocational activities; this may prove useful in counseling people to choose an appropriate leisure activity. It may especially benefit those in incongruent occupations.     

Goals of male and female college students: Do traditional sex differences still exist?

Importance ratings of reasons for attending college were obtained from male and female undergraduates. Responses were compared for sex differences and were compared to the responses of subjects in the Constantinople (1967) study. The picture of college students that emerged is very different from those of previous studies. Current females did not emphasize career goals less, nor social goals more, than males. Current males were more interested in social aspects of college than were their male predecessors. Male and female concepts of success seemed to differ. To females challenge and accomplishment were most important; to males, complying with parental pressures and economic success were most important.The authors thank Phillip Shaver for his helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.     

Choice and source attractiveness in exposure to discrepant messages

The effects of choice, source attractiveness, and discrepancy size on the acceptance of a message about a tuition increase were investigated under high involvement conditions. In keeping with dissonance theory predictions, the results showed that when subjects chose to expose themselves to the discrepant message, the message from an unattractive source produced the most opinion change. Under no choice conditions, more change was produced by the message from the attractive source. However, this effect only occurred at the highest message disrepancy level. The results were interpreted in terms of the prevailing real-life conditions under which the study was run in line with an expectancydissonance approach.     

An automated system for primate instruction for behavioral neurophysiology

This paper describes a flexible hardware/software system developed for use with a PDP-8I computer for conducting research in behavioral neurophysiology. A real time monitor was designed to facilitate development, debugging, and modification of programs to run experiments. It relieves the programmer of the burden of dealing with hardware dependent functions such as interrupt handling and input/output. In addition, it provides the user with a large library of callable routines to perform functions commonly needed for conducting experiments. The monitor is modular in design and could be expanded or modified for use with many configurations of the PDP-8 family of computers.     

Modification of nasal resonance in cleft-palate children by informative feedback

Vibration of the walls of the nasal cavities during production of an English vowel or diphthong defined a hypernasal response. A crystal transducer on one side of the nose activated a voice-operated relay when vibration exceeded an arbitrary limit to provide an apparatus definition of the response. During training sessions, responses without nasal vibration turned on a white light in the sound-treated chamber. Subject 1 had a repaired cleft palate and mild hypernasal speech. Introduction of the differential feedback, reversal, and reinstatement of the feedback conditions resulted in a rapid decrease, increase, and decrease in percentage of nasalized productions of the /eI/ sound Subject 2 had a cleft of the soft palate and severe hypernasal speech. Introduction of feedback produced a gradual decline in the percentage of hypernasal productions of the /##/ sound over 22 sessions. Removal and reinstatement of feedback resulted in a rapid increase and decrease respectively in the percentage of nasalized responses.     

Magnetic tape operating systems for the PDP-8

A magnetic tape operation system (TMS) based on Digital Equipment Corporation’s 4K disk monitor system (DMS), but reconfigured to improve speed and performance on a magnetic tape, is described. The TMS is compared in organization to the DMS configured to run from DECtape. A magnetic tape system device handler for Digital Equipment Corporation’s OS-8, to allow this operating system to be ran from magnetic tape, is included.