Fact and fantasy: the roles of accuracy and variability in confusing imaginations with perceptual experiences

In Experiment 1, pictures were presented to subjects two, five, or eight times, and subjects were asked to imagine each pciture two, five, or eight times. Subsequently, subjects estimated the number of times each picture had been presented. Their estimates of the frequency of these external events were influenced by imagination trials; this effect was greater for good imagers than for poor imagers. Experiment 2 involved a similar design in which subjects were asked either to imagine the same referent for a word or to imagine a different referent for a word on successive imagination trials. Consistency (same referent) did not increase the influence of imaginations on immediate judgments of external frequency. Thus, the results of Experiment 1 were attributed to the greater accuracy (as opposed to greater consistency) of good imagers' internal generations of the stimuli. Furthermore, variation (imagining different referents), like greater accuracy, increased the effects of imagination trials on immediate but not on delayed judgments of frequency. Possible mechanisms underlying these effects are discussed. In general, the two studies show that qualitative characteristics of completely covert generations influence their impact on estimates of the frequency of external events.     

Paperwork,Pressure, and Discouragement: Student Attitudes Toward Guidance Services and Implications for the Profession

This article goes beyond the traditional survey of student attitudes toward the school guidance service. The student data are used as a springboard to the broader issues affecting the counseling profession. The focus is on counselor discouragement and what all concerned practitioners can do to revitalize the profession.     

Differences in the search rate of children and adults in short-term memory

When people recognize a test item as belonging or not belonging to a previously presented set, recognition latency increases with the number of items in the set. Although some evidence suggests otherwise, it is currently held that the rate of this increase is the same for children and adults. In contrast, the present experiments indicated a much slower search rate for second graders (mean age = 7.33 years) than for seventh (mean age = 12.50 years) and twelfth graders (mean age = 17.25 years). Moreover, search rate for second graders was invariant under instructions which did or did not emphasize speed and with presentation of the memory set in either the auditory or visual modality. Experiment II showed that the slow search rate for children was not due to differences in encoding between children and adults.     

Crowding: Effects of Group Size,Room Size,or Density?

The separate effects of group size, room size, and density (space per person) were investigated for subjects responding interactively or coactively to perceptual and cognitive tasks. The major findings are that crowding has greater effects on "feelings" and "interpersonal perceptions" than on task performance. Where crowding did have effects, they appeared to be mediated more by group size and, to some degree, room size than by density, especially for males. Female subjects appeared somewhat more density oriented than male subjects.     

Periodicity pitch perception and its upper frequency limit in cats

We have established a procedure for behavioral assessment of periodicity pitch perception in the cat. This procedure requires the training of cats to make a differential response to two different pure tones, and then testing for the transfer of learning when complex stimuli known to produce periodicity pitch sensations in humans are substituted for the pure tones. Complex stimuli consisted of three to five harmonically related frequencies of the same amplitude and phase. Eight cats were the subjects of these experiments. Two of them were controls. It is demonstrated here that cats do perceive periodicity pitch. We also used this procedure to measure the upper frequency limit of periodicity pitch perception for two cats. The frequencies tested were 100, 200, 300, 400, 600, 800, 900, and 1,200 Hz. The data indicate that the upper frequency limit of periodicity pitch perception in the cat is on the order of 600 to 800 Hz. There is a trend of decreasing prominence of the perception of periodicity pitch as the component frequencies are increased. These results are parallel to the human psychophysical data.