Classical and bayesian inference in certain latency processes

Certain aspects of point estimation are treated for two kinds of exponential latency processes. The first unitary process is represented by a simple exponential density in which the rate parameter may be viewed as an unknown constant or as a random variable. If a second, slower exponential process is grafted onto the first, there results a postulated two-component latency between stimulus and response. Moments estimators are derived for the two parameters of this latter density, and the relevance of the second parameter to decision time is emphasized.This research was supported in part by National Institutes of Health Grant MH-04439-05. The author would like to express his appreciation to James Baker of Oregon Research Institute for certain helpful comments concerning aspects of this work.     

Job Satisfaction Researches of 1964–65

This annual review of job satisfaction researches is the 23rd in a series and covers reports published in 1964–65 plus earlier studies not previously dealt with in this journal. The format—findings and conclusions, topics investigated, per cent dissatisfied, current emphases, and summaries of studies—has become standard in this series of articles.     

Oculomotor adaptation to wedge prisms with no part of the body seen

When S looks at a visual target through prisms, adaptive shifts in reaching behavior occur even though he sees no part of his body through the prisms. These shifts are caused by a change in the judgment of the direction of gaze (oculomotor change), which in turn is caused by two secondary prismatic effects: (a) asymmetry of the visual display and (b) apparent rotation about a vertical axis of a panel or wall facing S. The “asymmetry” factor contributes 22% of the total oculomotor change, and the “rotation” effect contributes the remaining 78%. Oculomotor change is not facilitated by eye-movement activity. The adaptive oculomotor change induces a non-adaptive proprioception change about one-tenth as large as the oculomotor change. These findings are capable of accounting for the previously unexplained results reported by Wooster in 1923, and also for the current controversy about the role of reafferent stimulation in sensorymotor adaptation.     

Further experiments on movement masking

Voluntary attention to one of two static objects in the peripheral field of one eye makes this object more liable to masking by a moving object in the corresponding area of the field of the other eye (Experiment 1).

Positive after images (and probably negative after images) are subject to (binocular) movement masking (Experiment 2).

Movement masking can occur in the field of either eye, but with the displays so far tried the inhibitory influence of a moving object is less in the field of the eye to which it is shown than in the field of the other eye (Experiment 3).     

Memory for the pitch of a tone

Observers attempted to detect the presence of a pitch difference between two successive tones. The percentage of correct judgments was equivalent for tones separated by .95, 4.5, and 8.9 sec. There was a general increase in reports of a pitch difference with increased intertone interval, which is interpreted as arising from hypothesized shifts in the neural locus of the first stimulus during the intertone interval.