Quantifying the interactions between allo- and egocentric representations of space

Under many circumstances, humans do not judge the location of objects in space where they really are. For instance, when a background is added to a target object, the judged position of a target with respect to oneself (egocentric position) is shifted in the opposite direction as the placement of such a background with respect to the body midline. It is an ongoing debate whether such effects are due to a uni- or bi-directional interaction between allo- and egocentric spatial representations in the brain, or reflect a response strategy, known as the perceived midline shift. In this study, the effects of allocentric stimulus coordinates on perceived egocentric position were examined more precisely and in a quantitative manner. Furthermore, it was investigated whether the judged allocentric position (with respect to a background) is also influenced by the egocentric position in space of that object. Allo- and egocentric coordinates were varied independently. Also, the effect of background luminance on the observed interactions between spatial coordinates was determined. Since background luminance had an effect on the size of the interaction between allocentric stimulus coordinates and egocentric judgments, and no reverse interaction was found, it seems that interactions between ego- and allocentric reference frames is most likely only unidirectional, with the latter affecting the former. This interaction effect was described in a quantitative manner.     

Written emotional expression and emotional well-being: the moderating role of fear of rejection

Empirical research shows that individuals high in fear of rejection typically report low levels of perceived social support and are more vulnerable to stressful experiences. At the same time, writing about stressful experiences in an emotional way seems to help people adapt to current stressors and not-yet-assimilated stressful experiences. Therefore, the authors suggest that written emotional expression may be a particularly effective strategy to manage negative emotions for individuals high in fear of rejection. Three studies were conducted to test these assumptions. Study 1 found that high fear of rejection is linked to a lack of perceived social support. Longitudinal Studies 2 and 3 supported our main hypothesis, demonstrating that written emotional expression is linked to lower levels of negative mood among individuals high (but not among individuals low) in fear of rejection.     

Fitting one matrix to another under choice of a central dilation and a rigid motion

A least squares method is presented for fitting a given matrixA to another given matrixB under choice of an unknown rotation, an unknown translation, and an unknown central dilation. The procedure may be useful to investigators who wish to compare results obtained with nonmetric scaling techniques across samples or who wish to compare such results with those obtained by conventional factor analytic techniques on the same sample.Part of this work was done while the senior author held a visiting research fellowship at the Educational Testing Service, Princeton, New Jersey.     

Varisim: A new machine method for orthogonal rotation

The derivative of Kaiser's Varimax criterion, if set to zero, yields a set of equations which are quite similar to those obtained for a least-squares problem of the Procrustes type. This similarity suggested an iterative technique for orthogonal rotation, dubbed Varisim, which was programmed for the IBM 7094 in FORTRAN. An empirical comparison between Varimax and Varisim, which was based on a number of data sets taken from the literature yielded three major results so far: (i) Varisim is slower than Varimax, roughly by a factor of 3, (ii) Varisim yields factors which in general contribute more evenly to the common test variance than Varimax factors, and which (iii) line up more closely with oblique configurations obtained with Binormamin than Varimax factors.This paper is based on parts of a thesis submitted to the Graduate College of the University of Illinois in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a degree in Psychology. Some of its contents were read at the joint meeting of the Psychonomic and the Psychometric Society, Niagara Falls, Ontario, 1964. Most of the computer-bound work was carried out while the author was employed by the Statistical Service Unit, University of Illinois; it was written up while the author held a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Psychometric Laboratory of the University of North Carolina. Although space limitations forbid more complete acknowledgments, I am bound to record my deep gratitude to my advisor, Prof. H. F. Kaiser.     

Expression and interpretation of emotions in multilingual psychotherapy: A literature review

This review aimed at presenting the findings of 19 original studies that were published in the period from 2000 to 2022 in order to outline the current state of the art in the field of emotion communication (i.e., expressing and interpreting emotions) in multilingual psychotherapy. This analysis involves in particular the studies that investigate multilingual phenomena (e.g., code-switching and language-mixing) that occur during psychotherapeutic sessions when client and therapist can speak more than one language, as well as the articles that research emotion communication in this multilingual setting. With this in mind, the articles selected for this review are divided into two main categories: linguistic phenomena in multilingual psychotherapy and emotion communication in multilingual psychotherapy. Results of the studies in the current analysis reveal that code-switching remains one of the main linguistic phenomena that arises in the area of multilingual psychotherapy. Switching languages in therapy tends to be considered as beneficial for both client and therapist. Besides, findings suggest a connection between speaking L1/LX and one's identity (e.g., feeling different depending on the language). Additionally, studies that investigate emotion communication in multilingual psychotherapy show that an individual's first language (L1) is predominantly viewed as more emotionally charged than their language(s) learned later in life (LX). However, some studies also demonstrate that the relationship between L1 and LX is more fluid and context-dependent than it has traditionally been regarded. Propositions are given for future research in the field of emotion communication in multilingual psychotherapy.     

The relationship between the frequency and the processing complexity of linguistic structure

In this paper the relative frequencies of the possible resolutions of ambiguities involving noun phrase attachment sites are compared to the results of off-line psycholinguistic measurements of syntactic complexity. A lack of correlation between the two is observed. It is therefore argued that the comprehension system is distinct from what is driving the frequencies in the corpora. A production heuristic separate from the comprehension system is proposed to account for the observed frequencies.We would like to thank Susanne Tunstall for providing linguistic judgments in the corpus analyses reported in Sec. 3.3. We also wish to thank the following people for helpful, comments and discussions on earlier presentations of this paper: the audience at the Eighth Human Sentence Processing Conference, in Tucson Arizona, Maria Babyonyshev, Tom Bever, Martin Corley, Danny Fox, Don Mitchell, Edson Miyamoto, Janet Nicol, Colin Phillips, Gregg Solomon, Michael Spivey-Knowlton, James Thomas, and Tom Wasow. All remaining errors are our own. The second author was supported by the Research Training Grant Language: Acquisition and Computation awarded by the National Science Foundation (U.S.) to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (DIR 9113607), and by a fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.     

Frame-critical policy analysis and frame-reflective policy practice

Our primary purpose in this article is to explore some of the issues, practical and conceptual, that arise in the attempt to study and cope with public policy controversies. We have organized the article into four sections. The first considers what problems a frame-critical approach seeks to address and explores, in particular, why social science methods seem unable to contribute to the resolution of public controversies. The second section asks what “frames” are and why they are critical to the study of controversy. Section three gives an overview of the elements in a frame-critical policy analysis and of the relationships between it and frame-reflective policy practice. In conclusion, section four examines the main issues that need to be addressed in analyzing and coping with policy controversies.     

Fitting a simplex symmetrically

A method for fitting a perfect simplex [Guttman, 1954] is suggested which, in contrast to Kaiser's [1962], is independent of the order of the manifest variables. It is based on a procedure for scaling a set of points from their pairwise distances [Torgerson, 1958; Young & Householder, 1938] which is reviewed in compact notation in the Appendix. The method is extended to an iterative algorithm for fitting a quasi-simplex. Some empirical results are included.This work was done while the author held a Visiting Research Fellowship at the Educational Testing Service. The gracious hospitality of this institution, as well as its scenic surroundings, are beyond praise. An earlier version of this paper (ETS Research Bulletin RB-68-31) was reviewed by Drs. Karl G. Jöreskog and Bruce Bloxom who contributed to its improvement. For a critical reading of the final draft, I owe thanks to Miss Ming-Mei Wang.