Inductivism and falsificationism reconcilable

Summary Inductivism is understood as the explication of the degree of confirmation as conditional logical probability. Inductivism is not recommendable in the form of Carnap's -system, but tenable in the form of Bayesianism. Objections directed at it are either irrelevant or can be taken account of within Bayesianism.     

Generalization and discrimination of shape orientation in the pigeon

Pigeons learned to peck a green key on which parallelogram-shapes were projected; they then received generalization tests in which the orientation of the parallelogram was varied. Nondifferential training produced very little eventual stimulus control along the orientation dimension, but when training included S- trials (absence of the parallelogram) subjects responded consistently more to certain orientations than to others. Unlike typical results for visual generalization (e.g., line-tilt), the tilt gradients obtained for this complex stimulus were bimodal, supporting predictions on the basis of human perceptual data. However, unimodal gradients could be produced by specific discrimination training along the orientation dimension. Other forms of intradimensional training also produced relatively steep gradients, often characterized by unexpected but consistent secondary peaks. An attempt to obtain inhibitory gradients (S+: green key; S-: parallelogram on a green background) resulted in virtually zero responding all along the shape-orientation dimension; therefore, specific inhibitory control could not be evaluated. All these experiments suggest that definition of this complex stimulus dimension in terms of mere "angular orientation" is inappropriate, and alternative interpretations are discussed.     

The language of the psychopath

The language of the psychopathic personality is described along with a review of the literature and various psycholinguistic examples of its importance for theory and research. Recommendations are made for future advancements in this field.This article will also appear as a chapter of Rieber, R.W., & Vetter, H. (in press).The Psychopathology of Language and Cognition. New York: Plenum Press.     

Facial aging, attractiveness, and distinctiveness.

A standard facial caricature algorithm has been applied to a three-dimensional (3-D) representation of human heads, those of Caucasian male and female young adults. Observers viewed unfamiliar faces at four levels of caricature--anticaricature, veridical, moderate caricature, and extreme caricature--and made ratings of attractiveness and distinctiveness (experiment 1) or learned to identify them (experiment 2). There were linear increases in perceived distinctiveness and linear decreases in perceived attractiveness as the degree of facial caricature (Euclidean distance from the average face in 3-D-grounded face space) increased. Observers learned to identify faces presented at either level of positive caricature more efficiently than they did with either uncaricatured or anticaricatured faces. Using the same faces, 3-D representation, and caricature levels, O'Toole, Vetter, Volz, and Salter (1997, Perception 26 719-732) had shown a linear increase in judgments of face age as a function of degree of caricature. Here it is concluded that older-appearing faces are less attractive, but more distinctive and memorable than younger-appearing faces, those closer to the average face.     

Perceiving Potentiality: A Metaphysics for Affordances

Topoi - According to ecological psychology, animals perceive not just the qualities of things in their environment, but their affordances: in James Gibson’s words, ’what things furnish,...     

Judgments of grammaticalness: A partial replication and extension

This study is a partial replication and extension of a study by Maclay and Sleator (1961) involving judgments of grammaticalness. In an effort to overcome various methodological shortcomings in the earlier study, 152 male subjects were asked to judge a series of 36 word sequences on the dimensions of grammaticalness, meaningfulness, and ordinariness under five different modes of stimulus presentation. Results of the present study failed to confirm the findings reported earlier by Maclay and Sleator. The significance of the results is discussed in relation to several basic issues in the scaling of judgments of grammaticalness.