Attention and automaticity: Toward a theoretical integration

We sketch an initial version of a theory intended to account for the role of attention in the acquisition and expression of automaticity, and we test some initial predictions. The theory combines Logan's instance theory of automaticity and Bundesen's theory of visual attention, with Bundesen's theory determining what Logan's theory learns. We report four experiments that test the assumption that subjects learn what they report explicitly do not learn what they do not report explicitly. The experiments provide partial support for the predictions and encourage further development of the combined theory. Received: 4 September 1997 / Accepted: 12 January 1998     

"Scientific" Theology/"Theological" Science: Pannenberg and the Dialogue Between Theology and Science

Throughout his distinguished career, Wolfhart Pannenberg has sought to show that the Christian understanding of God is crucial to the pursuit of knowledge. As the essays in Beginning with the End indicate, Pannenberg has attempted to construct a bridge between theology and science via the idea of contingency and the concept of field. His interest in dialogue, however, arises out of a deeper theological foundation, which views theology as a public discipline and sees the human quest for truth as the quest for God. Although susceptible to criticisms that all objectivist approaches at-tract, this focus on "reasonable faith" provides a helpful point of departure for dialogue.     

Stress Inoculation Training For Impulsive Behaviors In Adults With Traumatic Brain Injury

A stress inoculation training program involving relaxation, self-instructional, and coping skills training was delivered to 5 persons with traumatic brain injury in an attempt to reduce the frequency of their impulsive behaviors. A multiple-baseline across subjects design was utilized to evaluate the effectiveness of the 10-week intervention. Dependent measures included frequency of impulsive behaviors as recorded by staff members at the residential facility where all 5 participants resided, ratings of role-play-probes, effectiveness ratings by the participants' rehabilitation counselors, and interview information obtained from the participants and their counselors. The data showed a small, but consistent reduction in impulsive behaviors across the 5 participants. Additionally, results indicated changes in role-play ratings did not correspond to changes in in-vivo behavioral frequency recordings for 4 of the 5 subjects. These findings suggest that individuals with moderate to severe impairments may require more salient behavioral contingencies and consistent cuing procedures to control their impulsive behavior.     

Logit models and logistic regressions for social networks: III. Valued relations

This paper generalizes thep* model for dichotomous social network data (Wasserman & Pattison, 1996) to the polytomous case. The generalization is achieved by transforming valued social networks into three-way binary arrays. This data transformation requires a modification of the Hammersley-Clifford theorem that underpins thep* class of models. We demonstrate that, provided that certain (non-observed) data patterns are excluded from consideration, a suitable version of the theorem can be developed. We also show that the approach amounts to a model for multiple logits derived from a pseudo-likelihood function. Estimation within this model is analogous to the separate fitting of multinomial baseline logits, except that the Hammersley-Clifford theorem requires the equating of certain parameters across logits. The paper describes how to convert a valued network into a data array suitable for fitting the model and provides some illustrative empirical examples.This research was supported by grants from the Australian Research Council, the National Science Foundation (#SBR96-30754), and the National Institute of Health (#PHS-1RO1-39829-01).     

What Will Become of Epiphanies? A Psychoanalytic Reading of James Joyce's “The Dead”

James Joyce's story, The Dead, is read in the tension between sameness, circularity, restraint, deadness as against possibilities for change, vitality, passion, and loving intimacy. The author plays two different readings of The Dead against each other to generate such tension in life and death struggles. Epiphanies are seen as beckoning us with the possibilities for radical transformation—an impossible illusion—but sufficient to tempt us to struggle against detachment, isolation, and restraint toward moments, of variable length, of intimate connectedness with ourselves and with others.     

Non-equilibrium dynamics as an indispensable characteristic of a healthy biological system

Healthy systems in physiology and medicine are remarkable for their structural variability and dynamical complexity. The concept of fractal growth and form offers novel approaches to understanding morphogenesis and function from the level of the gene to the organism. For example, scale-invariance and long-range power-law correlations are features of non-coding DNA sequences as well as of healthy heartbeat dynamics. For cardiac regulation, perturbation of the control mechanisms by disease or aging may lead to a breakdown of these long-range correlations that normally extend over thousands of heartbeats. Quantification of such long-range scaling alterations are providing new approaches to problems ranging from molecular evolution to monitoring patients at high risk of sudden death. We briefly review recent work from our laboratory concerning the application of fractals to two apparently unrelated problems: DNA organization and beat-to-beat heart rate variability. We show how the measurement of long-range power-law correlations may provide new understanding of nucleotide organization as well as of the complex fluctuations of the heartbeat under normal and pathologic conditions.     

Size contrast as a function of conceptual similarity between test and inducers

In four experiments, the effect of the semantic relationship between test and inducing stimuli on the magnitude of size contrast in an Ebbinghaus-type illusion was explored. In Experiments 1 and 2, the greatest illusion was found when test and inducing stimuli were identical in shape and differed only in size. Decreased size contrast was found when inducing stimuli were drawn from the same category as the test stimulus, but were not visually identical. Even less size contrast was found when inducing stimuli were from a near conceptual category, with the least effect when they were drawn from a completely different category. In Experiment 3, it was demonstrated that even if test and inducing stimuli are drawn with identical geometric elements, the size contrast illusion is greatly reduced if they represent apparently different conceptual categories (through the manipulation of orientation and perceptual set). In Experiment 4, any geometric or spatial confounds were ruled out. These results suggest that size contrast is strongly influenced by the conceptual similarity between test and inducing stimuli.     

Psychology of the scientist: LXIII. Perceiving scattergrams: is visual line fitting related to estimation of the correlation coefficient?

Visual line fitting and direct estimation of the correlation coefficient were carried out by 50 subjects using computer-generated scattergrams as stimuli. In visual line fitting, slopes of visual lines were generally greater than the corresponding regression slopes, in agreement with the hypothesis that visual lines are placed so as to bisect the cloud of displayed points at the cloud's major axis rather than to approximate a regression line. Subjects tended to underestimate the correlation coefficient, scaling their judgments of linear structure somewhat more as if they were judging the coefficient of determination. With the actual degree of linear structure partialed out, there were no strong relationships between measures of visual line fitting and measures of estimation. While both of these tasks offer quickly-obtained correlates of linear structure in scattergrams, users should be aware of their biases. We suggest that visual lines do not approximate regression lines very well and estimates of correlation do not approximate the correlation coefficient very well, because the perceptual processes involved perform operations other than regression and correlation. In the present data, these operations appeared to be independent of each other.     

Profile of Mood States: Australian normative data

The Profile of Mood States was administered to 90 Australian women, 30 depressed, 30 anxious, and 30 nonpsychiatric controls. Both clinical groups scored higher than the McNair, Lorr, and Droppleman (1971) normative samples on the negative mood states and scored lower on Vigor. The means for these groups are presented and compared with the 1971 normative data of McNair, Lorr, and Droppleman.