The judgment operation of ratio production

The judgment operation that individuals perform when they set a sensory intensity in a predefined ratio to a standard sensory intensity is unknown. The present study was conducted to determine this operation by functional measurement. Participants first produced a sensory intensity for each combination of various predefined ratios and standard sensory intensities. Subsequently, they rated these produced intensities. Factorial graphs derived from these ratings were essentially parallel. This result shows that participants produced each sensory intensity by operating as if they were adding an amount of sensory intensity to the respective standard sensory intensity. It was found that this added amount varied nonlinearly with the predefined ratio, implying that ratio productions are nonlinear.     

Imagery intervention in open and closed tennis motor skill performance

To assess use of imagery intervention in performance of two tennis motor skills the quasi-experimental design included a pre- and posttest and a control group. The tennis service shot and service receiving skill were selected as representative of open and closed skills, respectively. 48 subjects, male tennis players, whose ages ranged from 16 to 18 yr. (M = 17.2), were divided into two groups: (1) Technical practice only which was used as control group and (2) Imagery group who received both imagery and technical practice. Analysis of covariance showed a significant main effect for the imagery intervention on the closed skill (p = .002). Findings suggest that imaging a positive outcome may be more powerful in improving performance of closed skill movements than of open skill movements.     

The Influence of Social Regard on the Customer–Service Firm Relationship: The Moderating Role of Length of Relationship

Purpose  

The authors examine the influence of employees’ social regard toward the customers on customer satisfaction, trust, and word of mouth. In addition, we analyzed the moderating role of length of relationship between the service provider and the customer on the effects of social regard on the customer relationship outcomes.     

TOWARD A SYNTHETIC PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY

The word "synthetic" in the title of this paper has three meanings, each of which highlights a fundamental problem with physiological psychology, and, at the same time, offers a solution. (1) Synthetic means artificial–made by man, not by nature. To separate physiological psychology from medicine, and to build a science of pure function in humans (which is what psychology is), apart from a science of the mechanics of living human tissue (which is what medicine is), synthetic physiological psychology adopts a physically achieved analytic approach to the design, not of people, but of robots that behave like people. This avoids the misuse of reductionism. (2) Analysis by itself is not adequate; every analysis must be validated immediately by synthesis. Some forms of physically achieved analysis and resynthesis, particularly appropriate for synthetic physiological psychology, are contrasted with the hypothetico-deductive method, as a complementary scientific method of arriving at simple facts about complex living systems. (3) Synthetic also means integrative—at present, the various subfields of psychology are not united by principles based on the action of common units of function, derived by a physically achieved analysis. A simple procedure is described that can provide them.     

Deflationary Metaphysics and the Construction of Laboratory Mice

The deflationist turn in recent philosophy of science has attracted attention, in part because it promises to end debates about scientific realism. In its recommendation that we leave metaphysics behind to look at practice, deflationism constructs itself as an end-of-philosophy philosophy, accepting knowledge and the evidence for it at face value. Meanwhile, recent work in philosophy, sociology, and history of science that has focused on practice has underscored problems of such an acceptance: much scientific knowledge is not straightforwardly about the natural world, and we would not want it to be. A concrete example from the history of comparative psychology illustrates this point, and illustrates the value of interpretive work on scientific knowledge. A focus on practice, then, does not end metaphysical discussion, but rather regrounds and reshapes it.     

An experimental comparison of three- versus four-surface phenomenal transparency

The three-surface transparency occurs when an object seen through a transparency does not jut out under the transparent surface. The four-surface transparency occurs when the object juts out. Observers rated the density of the transparent surface in both kinds of transparency. The results seem to show that the topological diversity between the two kinds of transparency has no functional significance. The stimulus conditions ruling the generation of judgments were detected and expressed in terms of an algebraic model.     

An experimental check on Stevens’s explanation of the partition paradox by successive doubling and bisecting

Scaling methods based on direct estimation of sensory ratios and intervals give discrepant results (the partition paradox). Stevens’s explanation of this discrepancy was tested here. Given a psychological magnitude, ψ, observers were required to select a magnitude 2ψ, and subsequently to bisect the interval between ψ and 2ψ. Stevens’s hypothesis predicts that the bisected psychological magnitude falls between 1.41ψ and 1.50ψ. The hypothesis is not substantiated, since a bisected magnitude of 1.55ψ was obtained. Furthermore, observers had to bisect the interval between ψ and an imagined magnitude of 2ψ. The results show that observers are able to producereliably both a visual and a representational double.