Religious self and secular self: Clinical transitions

Clerical people, returning to secular life, may undergo shifts in self-experience, including alterations in internal object relations. Self-psychology, positing the importance to health of cohesion of all aspects of self, provides a theoretical model for exploring such shifts and their facilitation through psychoanalytic psychotherapy. A case of a released Roman Catholic priest is discussed to illustrate dynamic processes. Emphasis is on a clinical approach that does not require conversion of religious and spiritual self-experience into drive derivative formulations     

Negative priming in same-different matching: further evidence for a central locus of inhibition

Responses to recently ignored information may be slower or less accurate than responses to information not recently encountered. Such negative priming effects imply that the mechanism of selective attention operates on unattended, as well as attended, information. In the present experiment, subjects judged the second and fourth letters of five-letter strings (e.g., BABAB) as "same" or "different." Responses were slower when a target letter was identical to the distractors presented in the immediately preceding trial. This effect did not depend on which response was required on the current or preceding trial. The results suggest that ignored information is functionally disconnected from the response system as a whole, rather than from a specific response.     

A theory of phenomenal geometry and its applications

The geometry of perceived space (phenomenal geometry) is specified in terms of three basic factors: the perception of direction, the perception of distance or depth, and the perception of the observer's own position or motion. The apparent spatial locations of stimulus points resulting from these three factors thereupon determine the derived perceptions of size, orientation, shape, and motion. Phenomenal geometry is expected to apply to both veridical and illusory perceptions. It is applied here to explain a number of representative illusions, including the illusory rotation of an inverted mask (Gregory, 1970), a trapezoidal window (Ames, 1952), and any single or multiple point stimuli in which errors in one or more of the three basic factors are present. It is concluded from phenomenal geometry that the size-distance and motion-distance invariance hypotheses are special cases of the head motion paradigm, and that proposed explanations in terms of compensation, expectation, or logical processes often are unnecessary for predicting responses to single or multiple stimuli involving head or stimulus motion. Two hypotheses are identified in applying phenomenal geometry. It is assumed that the perceptual localization of stimulus points determines the same derived perceptions, regardless of the source of perceptual information supporting the localizations. This assumption of cue equivalence or cue substitution provides considerable parsimony to the geometry. Also, it is assumed that the perceptions specified by the geometry are internally consistent. Departures from this internal consistency, such as those which occur in the size-distance paradox, are considered to often reflect the intrusion of nonperceptual (cognitive) processes into the responses. Some theoretical implications of this analysis of phenomenal geometry are discussed.     

An asymmetry in transmodal perceptual learning

Transmodal perceptual learning was examined in a canonical same/different paradigm. Subjects naive to vibrotactile stimulation and unfamiliar with the task were asked to discriminate sequentially presented shapes moving laterally across an aperture. On all trials, the shapes were presented either visually and then vibrotactually or in the opposite modality order, and on all trials the shapes moved in opposite directions. Analyses of the data revealed that although perceptual learning was evident in both groups, the rate of the learning was more rapid in the visual-vibrotactile group. This interaction of modality order and practice was significant and was considered in terms of E.J. Gibson's theory of perceptual learning and in terms of the constructs, suggested by J.J. Gibson, of available and accessible information-in-stimulation and the education of attention.     

Detection and discrimination thresholds for auditory periodicity

Complex periodic auditory signals, produced by the Guttman-Julesz procedure of repeating segments of random noise, were employed to address the low region of auditory periodicity. Periodicity detection and discrimination tasks were examined with a common experimental procedure and a common measure of thresholds. Typically, detection and discrimination performance suffer at extremely low periodicities, presumably because of the extremely close spacing of harmonics throughout the auditory spectrum. Interaural phase effects are extremely weak for these signals, being largely confined to threshold-detection tasks. Despite qualitative phenomenological differences for different periodicity regions, detection and discrimination functions show no sharp discontinuities over a wide range of periodicities.     

Cross-gender perceptions of facial attributes and their relation to attractiveness: do we see them differently than they see us?

Examination of perceptions of human facial attributes revealed that individual attributes are similarly perceived by males and females. However, patterns of attribute interrelationships differ as a function of gender of the face. Undergraduate students (N = 280) rated pictures of 40 male or female Caucasians on 12 physical attributes (e.g., nose size, face width) and overall attractiveness. The four sets of attribute ratings (defined by rater gender and picture gender) were submitted to principal components analyses, and five-factor solutions were found for each condition (accounting for about 76% of the variance). Comparisons of the four component solutions using confirmatory factor procedures revealed that male and female raters share one factor structure when rating photographs of female faces and another factor structure when rating photographs of male faces. Multiple regression analyses revealed that the patterns of attribute interrelationships were not "perceptual units" in the perception of attractiveness, and that different "rules" are used to assess the attractiveness of male and female stimuli faces. The importance of these results for models of facial attractiveness and interfacial similarity judgements are discussed.     

How much processing do nonattended stimuli receive? Apparently very little, but...

The early versus late selection issue in attention models was examined by means of a new methodology. Through cues or precues, attention was directed to one location of a multistimulus visual display and, while attention was so engaged, the identity of a stimulus located at a different position in the display was changed. By varying the time after display onset before the stimulus was changed, we controlled the preview time that the original stimulus was represented on the retina. Then, using a marker cue, we directed the subject's attention to the location of the changed stimulus. The subject's response was a timed discrimination between two possible target letters. The data of main interest was the effect of preview time upon the subject's latency in identifying the new target that appeared in the changed location. We found that the preview time of the original stimulus, before RT was affected to the new target, depended upon whether the original stimulus was a neutral (noise) letter or whether it was the alternative target. When the original stimulus was a noise letter, RTs to the new target were just as fast as those obtained in the control condition in which the target was present throughout the preview interval and did not change its identity. Significant effects upon RT were obtained at preview times of 83 msec when the original stimulus was one of the targets that changed to the alternative target. Preview times also varied as a function of precuing. Preview times were correspondingly shortened when the first cue occurred 50 msec before display onset, thus providing an extra 50 msec for attention to be directed to the first display location. The results were interpreted in terms of two separate information-processing systems in the human: an automatic system and an attentional system. Even though a stimulus may have been automatically processed, when the attention system is directed to that stimulus, processing starts at the beginning again.     

Information-processing differences and laterality of students from different colleges and disciplines

1023 college students were assessed for hemispheric brain dominance using the paper-and-pencil test, the Human Information Processing Survey. Analysis of scores of students majoring in Advertising, Interior Design, Music, Journalism, Art, Oral Communication, and Architecture suggested a preference for right-brain hemispheric processing, while scores of students majoring in Accounting, Management, Finance, Computer Science, Mathematics, Nursing, Funeral Service, Criminal Justice, and Elementary Education suggested a preference for left-hemispheric strategies for processing information. The differential effects of hemispheric processing in an educational system emphasizing the left-hemispheric activities of structured logic and sequential processing suggests repression of the intellectual development of those students who may be genetically favorable to right-hemispheric processing.     

Effect of visuomotor rehearsal with videotaped modeling on racquetball performance of beginning players

This investigation was designed to assess the effect of visuomotor behavior rehearsal (VMBR) with videotaped modeling on racquetball performance of beginning players. 24 male students in beginning racquetball class were randomly assigned to either VMBR with videotape modeling or relaxation and imagery (no modeling) condition for a 2-wk. training period. All subjects were pre- and posttested on forehand and backhand racquetball skill tests. Analysis indicated an effect for forehand shooting, with those given visuomotor behavior rehearsal with videotaped model exhibiting better performance than the relaxation and imagery group, but no effect for backhand shooting.     

Wire-bending test as a predictor of preclinical performance by dental students

Traditional Dental Aptitude Test and academic grade point average have been shown to be poor predictors of clinical performance by dental students. To refine predictors of psychomotor skills, a wire-bending test was given to 105 freshmen at the beginning of their dental education. Grades from seven restorative preclinical courses in their freshman and sophomore years were compared to scores on wire bending and the three traditional predictors: GPA, academic aptitude, and perceptual aptitude scores. Wire-bending scores correlated significantly with six out of seven preclinical restorative courses. The predictive power for preclinical performance was doubled when wire bending was added to traditional predictors in stepwise multiple regression analysis. Wire-bending scores identified students of low performance. These preliminary results suggest that the wire-bending test shows some potential as a screening test for identifying students who may hae psychomotor difficulties, early in their dental education.