Generalization gradients following differential intradimensional autoshaping.

Three pigeons were trained on a differential, intradimensional autoshaped discrimination. A 45 degrees line tilt was always paired with food whereas a 15 degrees line tilt was never paired with food. All subjects learned the discrimination within 17 sessions. The pigeons were then given generalization tests in extinction over seven line tilts (0 degrees, 15 degrees, 30 degrees, 45 degrees, 60 degrees, 75 degrees and 90 degrees). The subjects yielded generalization gradients with maxima at 45 degrees and minima at 15 degrees. An area shift, but no peak shift, was found for each subject.     

Employment and health among married women with children

A sample of nearly 500 urban married women with children was used to evaluate the possible effect of outside-the-home employment on the mental and physical health of married mothers. Six measures of health were used, some drawn from interviews with the women, others from a medical examination. After controlling for ethnicity, education, and age of the women, the husband's occupation, number of children in the family, and length of time the woman has been married, it was found that wives who had been employed for more than a year were healthier than wives not employed outside the home and wives who had worked less than one year. Housewives who had never worked outside the home were healthier, on the whole, than wives who had been employed at some time in the past. Poor marital relationships and having no preschool age children seemed to increase the health advantage of long-term employed wives over those in the housewife categories. The occupational status of wife and husband did not seem to change these health differences very much.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Southwest Social Science Association, San Antonio, March 1975. The authors would like to thank Donna Duvall, Ministry of State for Urban Affairs, Ottawa; Elaine Hess, University of Nebraska at Omaha; and David R. Johnson, University of Nebraska — Lincoln for their comments. Gilles Robert and Marie Josepha Hebert ably assisted with various aspects of this project. Support for the project was provided by the Ministry of State for Urban Affairs, but the views expressed here are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Ministry.     

The absence of depth constancy in contour stereograms

Stereoscopic surfaces constructed from Kanizsa-type illusory contours or explicit luminance contours were tested for three-dimensional (3-D) shape constancy. The curvature of the contours and the apparent viewing distance between the surface and the observer were manipulated. Observers judged which of two surfaces appeared more curved. Experiment 1 allowed eye movements and revealed a bias in 3-D shape judgment with changes in apparent viewing distance, such that surfaces presented far from the observer appeared less curved than surfaces presented close to the observer. The lack of depth constancy was approximately the same for illusory-contour surfaces and for explicit-contour surfaces. Experiment 2 showed that depth constancy for explicit-contour surfaces improved slightly when fixation was required and eye movements were restricted. These experiments suggest that curvature in depth is misperceived, and that illusory-contour surfaces are particularly sensitive to this distortion.     

Set-Theoretic Absoluteness and the Revision Theory of Truth

We describe the solution of the Limit Rule Problem of Revision Theory and discuss the philosophical consequences of the fact that the truth set of Revision Theory is a complete 1/2 set.     

Risk as feelings

Virtually all current theories of choice under risk or uncertainty are cognitive and consequentialist. They assume that people assess the desirability and likelihood of possible outcomes of choice alternatives and integrate this information through some type of expectation-based calculus to arrive at a decision. The authors propose an alternative theoretical perspective, the risk-as-feelings hypothesis, that highlights the role of affect experienced at the moment of decision making. Drawing on research from clinical, physiological, and other subfields of psychology, they show that emotional reactions to risky situations often diverge from cognitive assessments of those risks. When such divergence occurs, emotional reactions often drive behavior. The risk-as-feelings hypothesis is shown to explain a wide range of phenomena that have resisted interpretation in cognitive-consequentialist terms.     

The Centrality of Schools in the Lifecourse: The Case for Focusing on School-Related Influences in Developmental Theory and Research

While the strength of the lifecourse/developmental (LCD) perspective in the examination of antisocial behavior has been clearly demonstrated, this work has given little attention to schools and education as salient influences. By contrast, there is much research using other theoretical frameworks to examine school-related risk factors of deviance. Given what we know about the importance of schooling and education on individual development and subsequent implications for behavior, we contend that academic influences should be more prevalent in LCD theories of deviance and that research using an LCD theoretical perspective should embrace non-LCD work examining school-related risk factors of antisocial behavior.