Auditory perception of breaking and bouncing events: a case study in ecological acoustics

The mechanical events of bouncing and breaking are acoustically specified by single versus multiple damped quasi-periodic pulse patterns, with an initial noise burst in the case of breaking. Subjects show high accuracy in categorizing natural tokens of bouncing and breaking glass as well as tokens constructed by adjusting only the temporal patterns of components, leaving their spectral properties constant. Differences in average spectral frequency are, therefore, not necessary for perceiving this contrast, though differences in spectral consistency over successive pulses may be important. Initial noise corresponding to glass rupture appears unnecessary to categorize breaking and bouncing. The data indicate that higher order temporal properties of the acoustic signal provide information for the auditory perception of these events.     

Integrating pictorial information across eye movements

Six experiments are reported dealing with the types of information integrated across eye movements in picture perception. A line drawing of an object was presented in peripheral vision, and subjects made an eye movement to it. During the saccade, the initially presented picture was replaced by another picture that the subject was instructed to name as quickly as possible. The relation between the stimulus on the first fixation and the stimulus on the second fixation was varied. Across the six experiments, there was about 100-130 ms facilitation when the pictures were identical compared with a control condition in which only the target location was specified on the first fixation. This finding clearly implies that information about the first picture facilitated naming the second picture. Changing the size of the picture from one fixation to the next had little effect on naming time. This result is consistent with work on reading and low-level visual processes in indicating that pictorial information is not integrated in a point-by-point manner in an integrated visual buffer. Moreover, only about 50 ms of the facilitation for identical pictures could be attributed to the pictures having the same name. When the pictures represented the same concept (e.g., two different pictures of a horse), there was a 90-ms facilitation effect that could have been the result of either the visual or conceptual similarity of the pictures. However, when the pictures had different names, only visual similarity produced facilitation. Moreover, when the pictures had different names, there appeared to be inhibition from the competing names. The results of all six experiments are consistent with a model in which the activation of both the visual features and the name of the picture seen on the first fixation survive the saccade and combine with the information extracted on the second fixation to produce identification and naming of the second picture.     

Awareness of the response after feedback training for changes in heart rate and sudomotor laterality

What is the relation between the ability to control visceral responding on a biofeedback task and the ability to report behaviors actually contributing to this performance? Subjects received biofeedback training for unidentified visceral responses and then gave written reports about what they had done to control the feedback displays. Independent judges were given these reports and, on the basis of knowledge about activities known to contribute to visceral activity, were asked to determine the visceral responses for which the subjects had been trained. The reports of subjects who succeeded at bidirectional control of heart rate (Experiment 1) or sudomotor laterality (Experiment 2) showed awareness of behaviors related to feedback as assessed by this procedure, whereas the reports of subjects who failed at bidirectional control did not. Subsequent experiments indicated that these results did not depend on a learning strategy that might have been specific to the initial studies. These findings call into question the view that people are unaware of what they have done to produce the response after training on biofeedback tasks. Earlier studies reporting lack of awareness in biofeedback are discussed in light of factors that affect the measurement of biofeedback learning and response awareness.     

Individual differences in loudness processing and loudness scales

Parameters of the psychophysical function for loudness (a 1000-Hz tone) were assessed for individual subjects in three experiments: (a) binaural loudness summation, (b) temporal loudness summation, and (c) judgments of loudness intervals. The loudness scales that underlay the additive binaural summation closely approximated S. S. Stevens's (1956) sone scale but were nonlinearly related to the scales that underlay the subtractive interval judgments, the latter approximating Garner's (1954) lambda scale. Interindividual differences in temporal summation were unrelated to differences in scaling performance or in binaural summation. Although the exponents of magnitude-estimation functions and the exponents underlying interval judgments varied considerably from subject to subject, exponents computed on the basis of underlying binaural summation varied less. The results suggest that interindividual variation in the exponent of magnitude-estimation functions largely reflects differences in the ways that subjects use numbers to describe loudnesses and that the sensory representations of loudness are fairly uniform, though probably not wholly uniform, among people with normal hearing. The magnitude of individual variation in at least one measure of auditory intensity processing, namely, temporal summation, seems at least as great as the magnitude of the variation in the underlying loudness scale.     

Measuring a macho personality constellation

A Hypermasculinity Inventory was developed to measure a macho personality constellation consisting of three components: (a) calloused sex attitudes toward women, (b) violence as manly, and (c) danger as exciting. The 30 forced-choice items were selected by a two-stage internal consistency item analysis. Issues of substantive and structural validity were addressed by considering item content, test format, homogeneity of items, and the factor structure of items. The Cronbach α coefficient for the Hypermasculinity Inventory was .89 in the present sample of 135 college men. External validity was assessed by correlating scores of the Hypermasculinity Inventory with self-reported drug use, r(135) = .26, p < .01, aggressive behavior r(135) = .65, p < .001, and dangerous driving, r(136) = .47, p < .001, following alcohol consumption, and delinquent behavior during the high school years, r(135) = .38, p < .01. Construct validity was supported further by a pattern of theoretically meaningful correlations with the Personality Research Form (D. N. Jackson, 1974, Goshen, NY: Research Psychologists Press). The discussion considered further research that is needed to adduce additional evidence for the construct validity of the Hypermasculinity Inventory as a measure of the macho personality pattern.     

A psychometric study of the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales

The Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales (FACES), a measure of family functioning, contains three scales: cohesion, adaptability, and social desirability. These were slightly modified (FACES- R) on the basis of pilot data and were administered to 42 clinic families (families seeking or receiving psychological services) and 206 nonclinic families. Support for the scales was found in high coefficient alpha reliabilities and similarity of the sample means and standard deviations to those of the standardization sample. However, there was little agreement among family members' scale scores. Therapists' ratings of cohesion and adaptability did not correlate with scale scores among clinic families. There was no difference between clinic and nonclinic samples on the cohesion or adaptability scales, although the social desirability scale did discriminate between groups. Factor analysis suggested that cohesion, adaptability, and social desirability cannot be clearly differentiated using this measure.This work was supported by the American Association of University Women and by Grant R01HD13820 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.