On the Strategic Weighting of Spectral Information in Consonant Identification

When identifying speech sounds, do listeners direct attention specifically to those frequency regions in which distinctive phonetic information is located? Scharf, Dai, and Miller (1988) concluded that they do, based on an experiment that involved listeners identifying the members of a pair of voiced stop consonants differing primarily in their third-formant transitions. Adding extra contrastive acoustic energy to the third-formant region of one of the consonants enhanced performance more than did adding energy to a region where the consonants were otherwise identical. The present experiments extended this paradigm to reveal evidence of an interaction between the frequency region in which extra distinctive energy was added and the class of consonant to which it was added. The results were more consistent with an account in terms of the effects of added energy on phonetic identity than one based on spectral selective attention.     

An approach ton-mode components analysis

As an extension of Lastovicka's four-mode components analysis ann-mode components analysis is developed. Using a convenient notation, both a canonical and a least squares solution are derived. The relation between both solutions and their computational aspects are discussed.The first draft was written while Wansbeek was with the Netherlands Central Bureau of Statistics. We thank Jaap Verhees for performing the computations and for many discussions on the subject, John Lastovicka for kindly making available his data to us, and the Editor, the referees, Jeroen Weesie and Pieter Kroonenberg for their useful comments.     

Attributional style in depression: a meta-analytic review

In this article we report meta-analyses of the relation of attributional styles to depression. In 104 studies involving nearly 15,000 subjects, several attributional patterns had reliable associations with depression scores. For negative events, attributions to internal, stable, and global causes had a reliable and significant association with depression. Studies in which the attribution factors of ability and luck were measured also showed a reliable association with depression. For positive events, attributions to external, unstable, and specific causes were associated with depression. Ability and luck attribution factors for positive events were also associated with depression. The relations for positive events, however, were weaker than the corresponding ones for negative events. In general, these patterns of relations were independent of a number of potential mediators suggested by authors in this literature, including the type of subject studied (psychiatric vs. college student), the type of event about which the attribution is made (real vs. simulated), the depression measure used, or the publication status of the research report. These conclusions are compared with those of other reviews. Implications for attributional models of depression are discussed.     

A survey of university counselling in the united kingdom and some observations on evaluation

Universities were surveyed about their counselling services during 1987 using a postal questionnaire. Information is presented from 44 universities and includes the extent of counselling provision in relation to the number of students, the staffing and accountability of the services, the needs of the clients and how they are met, and some theoretical and professional concerns mentioned by the counsellors. Finally, some observations are made on the need for more systematic evaluation of the services.     

Development and analysis of a community-based resource recovery program

Five studies were conducted over a 10-month period to determine the effectiveness of specific procedures in encouraging recycling among residential neighborhoods. Results indicated that: (a) initial levels of participation in neighborhoods were frequently related to housing values; (b) weekly recycling pick-ups that coincided with garbage collection days resulted in higher levels of participation than pick-ups that occurred at other times; (c) notifying homes about the recycling program through distributed door-to-door brochures was more effective than soliciting participation through newspaper ads; (d) distributing containers to help residents separate recyclable from nonrecyclable material proved to be an effective procedure, especially when combined with frequent prompting (prompting alone did not have much effect); and (e) procedures that facilitated the greatest levels of participation were not always cost-effective. The subsequent combination of these procedures into a package program resulted in high levels of neighborhood participation that were cost-effective and maintained over a 6-month period.     

Effects of lines of progress and semilogarithmic charts on ratings of charted data

The extent to which interrater agreement and ratings of significance on both changes in level and trend are affected by lines of progress and semilogarithmic charts was investigated. Thirteen graduate students rated four sets of charts, each set containing 19 phase changes. Set I data were plotted on equal interval charts. In Set II a line of progress was drawn through each phase on each chart. In Set III data points were replotted on semilogarithmic charts. In Set IV a line of progress was drawn through each phase of each Set III chart. A significant main effect on interrater agreement was found for lines of progress as well as a significant 2-way interaction between lines of progress and change type. Three main effects (chart type, lines of progress, and type of change) and a significant 3-way interaction were found for ratings of significance. Implications of these data for visual analysis of charted data are discussed.     

A procedure for evaluating portable heart monitors

Portable heart rate monitors are potentially useful for regulating exercise intensity. This paper describes procedures to evaluate these devices while subjects are resting, cycling, or running. Of the five monitors tested, all performed reasonably well while subjects were at rest; however, with one exception, performance deteriorated when the monitors were used during exercise. Even so, depending on the level of accuracy required, some of the monitors remained useful during cycling, but only one monitor was consistently accurate while subjects were running. This evidence indicates that, before selecting a particular monitor, potential users of such equipment should carefully consider many things, including the circumstances under which the equipment will be employed. The procedures reported in this paper should be generally useful in evaluating the performance of a variety of devices for monitoring heart rate.