TESTING A HIERARCHICAL MODEL OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE

Abstract— A priming procedure (e g, Klein, Loftus Trafton, & Fuhrman, 1992) was used to lest a hierarchical model of self-knowledge. According lo this model, people simultaneously hold multiple representations of themselves that differ bath in their context specificity and in the type of knowledge of which they consist Specifically, context-independent self-knowledge is assumed to be represented abstractly without reference to any particular behaviors, whereas the representation of context-dependent self-knowledge includes knowledge of one's behavior in specific situations. Our results support a hierarchical model. Subjects accessed abstract knowledge when describing their context-independent personality characteristics, but accessed behavioral episodes when describing themselves in a specific context Possible implications of this research are discussed, as a the relation of a hierarchical model of self-knowledge to a mixed model of self-knowledge (e g, Klein & Loftus, 1993b).     

How Christian ethics became medical ethics: the case of Paul Ramsey.

Over the last century Christian ethics has moved from an attempt to Christianize the social order to a quandary over whether being Christian unduly biases how medical ethics is done. This movement can be viewed as the internal development of protestant liberalism to its logical conclusion, and Paul Ramsey can be taken as one of the last great representatives of that tradition. By reducing the Christian message to the 'ethical upshot' of neighbour love, Ramsey did not have the resources to show how Christian practice might make a difference for understanding or forming the practice of medicine. Instead, medicine became the practice that exemplified the moral commitments of Christian civilization, and the goal of the ethicist was to identify the values that were constitutive of medicine. Ramsey thus prepared the way for the Christian ethicist to become a medical ethicist with a difference, and the difference simply involved vague theological presumptions that do no serious intellectual work other than explaining, perhaps, the motivations of the ethicist.     

BEHAVIORAL ASSESSMENT AND TREATMENT OF CHRONIC FOOD REFUSAL IN HANDICAPPED CHILDREN

In this study, we examined the eating behavior of four handicapped children, none of whom exhibited self-feeding skills. All children had a history of food refusal and were nutritionally at risk; one child received all nourishment by way of a gastrostomy tube. Baseline data taken during mealtimes indicated that all children accepted very little food, expelled food frequently, and engaged in a number of disruptive behaviors. Treatments consisted of one or more of the following contingent events: social praise, access to preferred foods, brief periods of toy play, and forced feeding. Results of multiple-baseline and reversal designs showed marked behavioral improvement for each child and increases in the amount of food consumed. Further improvements were noted at follow-up, which ranged from 7 to 30 months posttreatment.     

Structure of intelligence in intellectually precocious children and in their parents

Students representing the top 0.03% of their age group in intellectual ability, who were identified by the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (Benbow & Stanley, 1980), were tested along with their parents using a battery of specifically designed cognitive tests. These highly intelligent children had less intelligent, but yet quite bright parents. Vernon's (1961) model of intelligence best fits our results. His following two factors explained most of the variance in the performance of the students and parents: verbal-educational and practical-spatial-mechanical. Moreover, there was potential evidence for a general factor. Among the children, who were mostly past puberty, age related to development of verbal abilities, but not spatial or mechanical abilities. Sex differences favoring the males were found on the spatial ability and mechanical comprehension tests.     

The classification and integration of edges as critical to the perception of reflectance and illumination

A pattern of luminances equivalent to that of a traditional simultaneous lightness display (two equal gray squares, one on a white background and the other on an adjacent black background) was presented to observers under two conditions, and matches were obtained for both perceived reflectance and perceived illumination level of the squares and their backgrounds. In one condition, the edge dividing the two backgrounds was made to appear as the boundary between a white and a black surface, as in the traditional pattern. The squares then were perceived as almost the same shade of middle gray. In the other condition, a context was supplied that made the edge between the backgrounds appear as the boundary between two illumination levels, causing one square to appear black and the other white. These results were interpreted as a problem for local ratio theories, local edge theories, and lateral inhibition explanations of lightness constancy, but as support for the concepts of edge classification, edge integration, and the retinal image as a dual image.     

Two-part stimulus integration and specific reading disability.

29 dyslexics and 29 control children were presented with two halves of a black cross, one-half being presented at varying interstimulus intervals after the other half. Both dichoptic and binocular presentations were used and separation thresholds were at greater interstimulus intervals for the dichoptic condition. Dyslexics had thresholds at greater intervals than controls. These differences were significant and there was no significant interaction of group by dichoptic condition. The relative magnitudes of difference between dyslexics and controls were as previously reported by Stanley and Hall (1973) and support the notion that dyslexics have longer visual persistence than controls.