Classifying by dimensions and reading: a comparison of the auditory and visual modalities

Children have difficulty learning to read alphabetic writing systems, in part, because they have difficulty segmenting spoken language into phonemes. Young children also have difficulty attending to the individual dimensions of visual objects. Thus, children's early difficulty in reading may be one sign of a general inability to selectively attend to the parts of any perceptual wholes. To explore this notion, children in kindergarten through fourth grade (Experiments 1, 3, and 4) and adults (Experiment 2) classified triads of spoken syllables and triads of visual objects. Classifying speech by common parts was positively related to reading and spelling ability (Experiments 1 and 4), but usually not to classifying visual stimuli by common parts under free classification instructions (Experiments 1 through 3). However, classification was more consistent across the visual and auditory modalities when the children were told to classify based on a shared constituent (Experiment 4). Regardless of instructions, performance on the visual tasks did not usually relate to reading and spelling skill. The ability to attend selectively to phonemes seems to be a "special" skill--one which may require specific experiences with language, such as those involved in learning to read an alphabetic writing system.     

Rorschach assessment of purging and nonpurging bulimics

Research in bulimia has flourished in recent years, and yet minimal attention has been devoted to explorations of the bulimic's basic personality organization. We utilized the Rorschach to differentiate between purging and nonpurging bulimics and controls. There were 15 subjects in each group. The Comprehensive System (Exner, 1986) was used for the scoring of the protocols. Statistically significant differences were not found between the two bulimia groups, but interesting trends were detected in the areas of depression, anger, and self-preoccupation. Results appear to be constrained by the low rate of purging behavior. Comparisons between the combined bulimia groups and the controls resulted in solidly characterizing the bulimics as displaying perceptual inaccuracies, disordered thinking, a vulnerability to interpersonal problems, a damaged self-image, and a pessimistic outlook. The strengths of the study were its use of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd ed., rev. [DSM-III-R]; American Psychiatric Association, 1987) nonpatients bulimic subtypes and a control group that was comparable in terms of demographics. Future Rorschach studies with bulimics displaying higher frequencies of binging and purging behaviors are suggested.     

The spiritual well-being and need of parishioners

In this study we compare the spiritual well-being and need of healthy and ill parishioners, creating data that pastors can use as background in assessing pastoral need within their parishes. Three questionnaires generate the data, and the results demonstrate increased need of parishioners in the hospital. Specifically, women hospitalized for problem pregnancies demonstrate statistically more need than healthy parishioners, and these data suggest that pastors should assess their needs carefully. A group of patients who fight their metastasized cancer create scores statistically similar to healthy parishioners. Demographic variables also have an impact on spiritual well-being and need, particularity the parishioner's age and level of education.This research was supported in part by the Section of Graduate Education and Research, the Department of Family Medicine, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.The PIL and SONG were obtained through the Institute of Logotherapy in Saratoga, California. The Spiritual Well-Being Scale was used with permission of Craig W. Ellison.     

Incubated reminiscence effects

Reminiscence, the recall of material that was not successfully recalled on a previous attempt, was examined in three experiments as a function of the interest (incubation) interval. Incubation intervals inserted between successive recall tests resulted in increased reminiscence, but the effect was seen primarily in the first retested minute. Neither the duration of the initial test (1-4 min), nor the incubation activity (maze problems vs. rest) affected this incubated reminiscence effect. The results support models in which recall tests cause output interference, but incubation intervals reduce it.     

German philosophy: Language and style

Conclusion Why, then, has so much of German philosophy for so long and so intensively felt itself bound to texts and authorities? And why is philosophy in Germany so often a matter of philosophizing through an author (whether Kant or Hegel or Heidegger)? Why is German philosophy to such a large extent a philosophy wherein questions such as What problems are you dealing with, then ? or Is what you say here true ? or What, then, is your own view on this matter? are unable to gain a foothold?The textual orientation of the mainstream of German philosophy is certainly in part dictated by the fact that this philosophy was always, in the middle ages as also in the modern era, to a very high degree a product of the universities. The most important philosophical movements in England, in contrast (as also in France), arose initially against the opposition of the universities. German-speaking university philosophers were thereby able to take over the teaching forms and methods of their scholastic predecessors in unbroken continuity, and the commentary, whether spoken or written, was in German philosophy faculties a prescribed form until as late as 1800. Even Kant gave lectures always in the form of commentary on other works, never on his own philosophy.Gradually, of course, philosophy came to be a matter for the universities in the Anglo-Saxon countries as well. The teaching of philosophy in these countries has however to a much greater extent than on the Continent been tied not to the formalized lecture(-commentary) but rather to tutorials and seminars involving comparatively small numbers of active participants. The job of philosophizing is learned thereby in Anglo-Saxon universities principally through the activity of argument and discussion.In German universities, in contrast, philosophy continues to be learned, in general, through lectures or homilies involving little or no discussion, so that the student of philosophy is rarely called upon to become active in his philosophizing. This is marked in the fact that in German one still refers to those enrolled in a lecture course as hearers (Hörer), whereby one often gains the impression that the hearers of lectures in philosophy are not in fact familiar with the desire to understand the content of what they hear.Even the teaching of the history of philosophy becomes impossible under such conditions, at least if this is understood in the Anglo-Saxon sense as an objective and as it were atomistic treatment of the ideas and arguments and problems which have arisen at different times and places. Rather we have an outcome in which philosophy, history of philosophy and textual commentary have become fused together into a single whole. To philosophize is to insert oneself into this whole, in order to contribute thereby to its further growth. Sometimes there will come along a philosopher (Hegel, Gentile, Heidegger) who will conceive it as his task to bring this development to a climax. The whole enterprise may thereby from time to time acquire a certain vital teleology. On the other hand, however, the conception of philosophy as a slowly growing textual mass can on occasion skid out of control, as the dadaistic posturings of Derrida et al. have made all too abundantly clear.     

Conditional withholding of proboscis extension in honeybees (Apis mellifera) during discriminative punishment.

Proboscis extension conditioning of honeybee workers was used to test the ability of bees to respond to appetitive and aversive stimuli while restrained in a harness that allows subjects to move their antennae and mouthparts (Kuwabara, 1957; Menzel, Erber, & Masuhr, 1974). Subjects were conditioned to discriminate between two odors, one associated with sucrose feeding and the other associated with a 10 V AC shock if they responded to the sucrose unconditioned stimulus (US) in the context of that odor. Most Ss readily learned to respond to the odor followed by sucrose feeding and not to the odor associated with sucrose stimulation plus shock. Furthermore, in the context of the odor associated with shock, significantly more subjects withheld or delayed proboscis extension on stimulation with the sucrose US than they did in the context of the odor associated with feeding. Thus, restrained honeybees can readily learn to avoid shock according to an odor context by withholding proboscis extension to a normally powerful releaser. Analysis of individual learning curves revealed that subjects differed markedly in performance on this task. Some learn the discrimination quickly, whereas others show different kinds of response patterns.     

The examination of labels—a beginning

Unclear terminology is a major problem for the study of anomalies, and ambiguous definitions of reality and consciousness make it particularly difficult to discuss anomalous phenomena. Researchers have used the term near-death experience to describe four different kinds of incidents. To avoid confusion, we need new labels for experiences that differ in their relationship to death and near-death and in their transformative potential.     

The role of familiarity in determining typicality

Ashcraft (1978b) found that people tend to know more properties of instances they rate as typical of a category than of instances they rate as atypical. This suggests that variations in typicality result from variations in familiarity. Three experiments are presented that challenge or qualify this suggestion. Experiment 1 showed that subjects sometimes produce more properties for items they rate as low in typicality. Experiment 2 showed that in a large, random sample of items, there was a tendency to produce fewer properties for atypical items, but Experiment 3 indicated that part of the reason for this result was a response bias to assign low typicality ratings to unfamiliar words, rather than a reflection of low perceived typicality of the referents themselves. These results suggest that variations in typicality can exist independent of variations in familiarity, although familiarity may also play a role.     

Irrational beliefs as predictors of negative affective states

One effort to specify cognitive mediators related to dysfunctional emotional responses has been made by Ellis, who proposed that certain irrational beliefs elicit maladaptive emotional reactions. In order to test Ellis's hypotheses in a nonclinical sample, the Irrational Beliefs Test, two anxiety inventories, the MMPI-168, and a locus of control scale were completed by 32 male heavy social drinker undergraduates, who then kept daily records of their anxiety, anger, unhappiness, and drinking behaviors for 7 months. Four factors underlay the 10 beliefs but did not necessarily correlate with dysphoric affect. Certain irrational beliefs predicted daily unhappiness ratings over the 7-month period and daily anger ratings over 3 months, but the beliefs exhibited only a weak relationship with daily general anxiety ratings. Irrational beliefs, especially worrying about approval and competence, were strongly related to test anxiety and Spielberger's trait anxiety measure, were somewhat related to social anxiety and general anxiety, were minimally related to locus of control and social desirability, and were essentially unrelated to the MMPI-168's measures of depression and anxiety and to drinking behaviors. Although 2 of the irrational beliefs failed to exhibit relationships with negative affect, the other 8 show the predicted relationships to moods, providing support for a cognitive mediational model of maladaptive emotions in a nonpathological population.This research was partially supported by grants from the Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Institute, University of Washington, Seattle, from a National Institute of Mental Health small grant AA03947-01, and from a National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism postdoctoral training fellowship No. 1T32AA07171-01. We would like to thank Jean Chapman, Ph.D., for her advice on the statistics and Dorothy Knapp, Ph.D., for her painstaking scoring and coding of all the data records.