"The defects of his race": E.G. Boring and antisemitism in American psychology, 1923-1953

From the 1920s to the 1950s, Edwin G. Boring wrote letters of reference for Jewish students and colleagues in which he followed the common practice of identifying them as Jews and assessing whether they showed "objectionable traits" thought to characterize Jews. These practices are discussed in relation to the increasing antisemitism of the interwar period, with specific reference to Abraham A. Roback and Kurt Lewin. In Roback's case, the "defect" of Jewishness was thought to explain his undesirable personality: with Lewin, personal charm mitigated the "defect" of Jewishness. Boring's unsuccessful attempts to place Jewish students, his subsequent pessimism, and his postwar discussions of Jewish identity are examined in relation to the general issue of antisemitism in the history of academic psychology.     

A methodology to facilitate occupational task grouping: Meeting the demands of training analysis and planning

Methods for grouping occupational tasks are required to support a broad range of personnel actions and organizational planning activities. Having subject matter experts sort tasks into groups is the only methodology generally recognized for these purposes. For many applications, however, and training in particular, analyses that cover large areas of an organization may be required. For such uses, manual sorting is costly and may be infeasible. A new method, based on statistical clustering using task coperformance, is described. Results indicate that this method can replicate much of the structure of the experts’ groups and so can be used to facilitate task grouping. Implications of this new approach are discussed.     

Eye movements measured with a solid state photodiode matrix

The apparatus described uses the corneal reflex technique to measure horizontal and vertical eye movements with a metal oxide semiconductor matrix array of 64 by 64 photodiodes. A simple optical system forms a reflex image on the array and also determines the device range, which can vary from ±25 deg to ±3 deg; sensitivity is 50 arc min and 6 arc min, respectively. Mounted on a simple lightweight headband complete with universal mechanical adjusters, the instrument weighs less than 100 g, excluding connecting cable, and samples eye movements every 5 msec.     

Conceptions of Parenthood

The everyday concept "parent" includes a central prototype and less typical subtypes, such as stepparent, adoptive parent, and foster parent. We studied informants' concept of "parent" by constructing typical and atypical scenarios in which people become parents: planned and unplanned pregnancy, unmarried parents, abandonment, divorce, stepparent/child, adoption, pregnancies resulting from rape, and situations involving medical technology and contract motherhood. The parental role of each of the characters in the scenarios was characterized in terms of seven attributes of parenthood. Unmarried undergraduate informants rated the claim of each of the characters to be a parent of the child. Characters whose parental contribution was more similar to the prototype case were seen as having stronger claims. The most important attributes were, in order: intention to raise the child, gestation, genetic contribution, provision of nurture, and intention to create a baby. All informants appeared to make use of three principles involved in everyday, informal explanations of how a person becomes a parent. Parental consent, the predominant principle for both men and women, was given more weight by women; maternal investment in gestation was given equal weight by both sexes, and genetic contribution was given more weight by men.     

EFFECTS OF CALORIC LEVEL ON RUMINATING

A series of recent studies has shown that a number of dietary variables affect ruminative behavior in institutionalized retarded persons. This experiment extends an earlier study that examined the influence of the caloric level of the diet on the frequency of ruminating. Subjects consumed regular portions of food that varied between phases from normal to high caloric levels. The data show a clear but modest inverse relation between the caloric value of the diet and the rates of postmeal ruminating.     

Last rights: the ethics of research on the dead

People often have strong views about being the subjects of research after their deaths. Should these views be given any weight and, if so, how much? How could we find out what the views are and what should we do if we cannot? This paper defends the idea of posthumous interests and discusses the significance of those interests for research ethics. It argues that we can be guided by a symmetry between the interests of living and dead people and uses posthumous privacy as an example. It also claims that the weight of those interests might not decline even over long periods of time. The arguments have important implications for the ethics of (amongst others) biomedical, archaeological, anthropological, historical, and sociological research.     

Parental consent and the use of dead children's bodies

It has recently become known that, in Liverpool and elsewhere, parts of children's bodies were taken postmortem and used for research without the parents being told. But should parental consent be sought before using children's corpses for medical purposes? This paper presents the view that parental consent is overrated. Arguments are rejected for consent from dead children's interests, property rights, family autonomy, and religious freedom. The only direct reason to get parental consent is to avoid distressing the parents, which carries implications for the consent process, secret harvesting of body parts, and the weight to be given to parental feelings.     

Pigeons discriminate continuous versus discontinuous line segments

Three experiments examined various facets of the perception of continuous and discontinuous line segments in pigeons. Pigeons were presented with 2 straight lines that were interrupted by a gap. In some instances, the lines were the same angle and were positioned so that they appeared (to human observers) to form a continuous line. In other instances, the lines were different angles or the same angle but spatially misaligned. The birds were trained to classify each stimulus as continuous or discontinuous using a go/no-go procedure. A series of tests followed in which the birds received novel discontinuous displays made up of familiar line segments, continuous and discontinuous stimuli made up of novel line segments (novel straight lines or curved lines), and familiar displays in which the gap was covered with a gray square. Results from the tests indicated that 2 of the 3 pigeons had learned a continuous-discontinuous categorization and that they appeared to use the relationship between the 2 line segments in discriminating the displays.     

The Impact of Breast Cancer Genetic Risk Assessment on Intentions to Perform Cancer Surveillance Behaviors

One hundred and fifty-four women undergoing breast/ovarian cancer genetic risk assessment completed questionnaires at entry into the Cancer Genetic Service for Wales (CGSW) assessment program and following risk provision, mapping the strength of intentions to engage in a number of preventive/surveillance behaviors, including seeing specialists, breast self-examination, and involvement in screening programs, including mammography. A number of potential predictors of intentions were also assessed, including participants' mood and emotional response to receiving risk information, the perceived benefits (in terms of reassurance and early disease detection) of engaging in each preventive behavior, and the perceived desires of their family and General Practitioner. Intentions to self-examine did not change following risk provision, although strength of intentions to engage in some other preventive behaviors did lessen. Family and General Practitioners appeared to be strong social influences on behavioral intentions, as were the perceived benefits of gaining reassurance and/or early detection of disease.