Visual on- and off-latencies and handedness

Ten Ss served in this experiment, five right-handed and five left-handed. Every S was tested in a perceived-order situation and by the up-and-down method to determine the relative on-latency for a visual test stimulus. i.e, (ON-Lat for lest stimulus involving right hemisphere- ON-Lat for standard stimulus involving left hemisphere) and to determine a similarly defined relative off-latency for the same test stimulus. The algebraic difference between the relative on-latency measure and the relative off-latency measure was then found. Data from a previous study had suggested that this “on-off difference” was characteristically positive for left-handed Ss and negative for right-handed Ss. The present data agree. The left-handed Ss were found to differ significantly from the right-handed Ss in the magnitude of the on-off difference. This outcome appears important as a possible clue to functional interhemispheric differences related to handedness.     

The I-E scale,ideological bias,and political participation1

This study was undertaken to examine ambiguities in the ability of the I-E scale to predict complex social behavior. An analysis of the items in the I-E scale suggested that the scale might contain a conservative bias Further, it was suggested that responses to the items may be determined by the individual's political and social ideology, which in turn are influenced by the political and social norms to which he has been exposed The sample consisted of one parent and a college-aged child from 60 upper-middle-class families in which the parent was visible in the community for political and social participation, half the parents interviewed were liberal, and half conservative in their political views A number of measures of political and social participation were administered, along with a shortened version of the I-E scale The findings of the study supported the contention that the “internal” items on the I-E scale are more congenial to persons holding conservative political views than for those holding liberal views. Perceived internal causality, as measured by the I-E scale, was found to be nonsignificantly correlated with any of the measures of political participation for the parent sample, with five of the six correlations being in the opposite direction from that predicted by social learning theory The results of the study were discussed in terms of White's distinction between the “moralizer” and “reformer” approach to social problems The validity of the I-E scale as a measure of a stable personality trait was called into question, as was its usefulness in predicting complex social behavior     

The war and military obligation: Private attitudes and public actions1

The relationship between attitudes toward the Vietnam war and willingness to sign a strongly worded and publicized antiwar resolution was studied in a random sample of 131 male college seniors at a selective liberal arts college. Level of opposition to the war did not fully explain why many strongly antiwar subjects did not sign the resolution. With level of opposition to the war held constant, personality measures and other attitudes differentiated between signers and nonsigners It is hypothesized that the disposition to act publicly in support of private attitudes is a separate variable, which may be independent of the content and intensity of attitudes Studies of “activism” should distinguish more sharply between private attitudes and public actions.     

Reinforcement duration and the peak shift in post-discrimination gradients

Pigeons were trained to key-peck for food, first with single-stimulus training and then with successive discrimination (multiple schedule) training. In the multiple schedule, two different wavelengths were each correlated with equally frequent variable-interval reinforcement but different durations (6 sec vs. 2 sec) of access to grain. For some birds, the different durations of feeding cycle were cued by different intensities of the food hopper light. For some of these “cued” birds, single-stimulus training had been carried out with 6-sec feedings and when multiple-schedule training was introduced, the novel stimulus was correlated with 2-sec feedings. For the others, 2-sec feedings were originally used, and the novel stimulus was then present during the 6-sec reinforcement duration. The cueing procedure enhanced discrimination performance, and was necessary for the consistent production of a peak shift. In addition, the condition in which original training had been carried out with 6-sec feedings, and thus reinforcement duration was reduced in the presence of the novel stimulus, led to the best performance.     

Syntactic structure modifies attention during speech perception and recognition

The present paper demonstrates the interaction of syntactic structure and speech perception with a response task which minimizes the effects of memory: reaction time (RT) to clicks during sentences. (1) In 12-word unfamiliar sentences each with two clauses, RT is relatively slow overall to clicks located at the end of the first clause but decreases as a function of clause length. Clicks at the beginning of the second clause are not affected by length of the preceding clause. (2) In familiar sentences, RT is relatively fast to clicks located at the end of a clause while RT to clicks at the beginning of clauses is relatively unaffected by familiarity. (3) RT is not fastest overall to clicks located between clauses either in novel or familiar sentences. (4) As in previous studies, the subject's subsequent judegment of the location of the click tone are towards the clause break. (5) We could find no systematic interaction between RT and subjective click location. Findings (1) to (3) are consistent with the view that perceptual processing alternates between attending to all external stimuli and developing an internal representation of the stimuli. Finding (3) is in conflict with an “information channel” view of immediate attention to speech, which would predict high sensory attention to non-speech stimuli between clauses. However, findings (4) and (5) indicate that the channel view of perception may be correct for that perceptual processing which occurs after the immediate organization of the speech stimulus into major segments.     

Similarity of cardiac CR forms in the rhesus monkey during several experimental procedures

Cardiac rates of rhesus monkeys were observed in a variety of different conditioning procedures, each of which involved a visual stimulus (CS) followed by an electric shock (US). With a 30-sec CS, cardiac rate accelerated rapidly after CS onset, reached a maximum in the middle of CS, and decelerated thereafter, with a terminal CS rate often at the level of, or below, pre-CS levels. A similar biphasic cardiac rate response in CS was also observed under subsequent exposure to intermittent pairings of CS and US, avoidance of US, response-produced termination of US, and when CS-US pairings were superimposed upon an avoidance baseline, even when CS duration was varied from 12 to 60 seconds. The unusual regularity of cardiac rate responses in several different procedures may result from one or more of these factors: (a) characteristics of the rhesus monkey, (b) initial exposure to Pavlovian conditioning, or (c) the uniformity of measurement of cardiac rate employed in this study.     

Size and distance judgments under reduced conditions of viewing

Magnitude estimations of the size and distance of a variable relative to a standard were obtained in the absence of distance cues. Estimates were provided by different groups under three conditions: (a) physical size and distance variant, visual angle of the variable constant and equal to the standard, (b) physical size constant, physical distance and visual angle of variable changing, and (c) physical distance constant, physical size and visual angle of the variable changing. The results in both experiments were very similar. In each case both size and distance estimates conformed to relative visual angle. The results are applied to an analysis of size-matches that are obtained when distance cues are eliminated.     

The character in the hole experiment: Interaction of forward and backward masking of alphabetic character recognition by dynamic visual noise (OVN)

In the present study we consider the question of interaction between the forward and backward masking effects of dynamic visual noise (DVN) on the recognition of alphabetic characters composed of the same type of dots as those composing the DVN. The results of our experiments indicate that the two effects strongly interact so that both the duration and magnitude of the combined effect is far greater than would have been predicted by an algehraic model. Speculations about possible explanatory assumptions are presented.