Effects of static and motion parallax depth information on perception of size in children and adults

The effects of static and kinetic information for depth on judgments of the relative size of objects placed at different distances was studied in 3- and 7-yr-old children and adults. Subjects viewed either a pair of objects placed on the floor of a textured alley or a projected slide of the identical scene. The presence of motion parallax information for depth was also manipulated. All subjects showed a clear sensitivity to static pictorial depth information in judging objects placed so they projected equal retinal areas. When the retinal size of objects was very different, however, children tended to respond to retinal rather than physical size. Motion parallax information increased responsiveness to depth when a 3-dimensional scene was being viewed, but decreased responsiveness with 2-dimensional projections. The decrease was greater in children than adults.     

The effect of continuous, intermittent, and "placebo" reinforcement on the effectiveness of the conditioning treatment for enuresis nocturna

It has been suggested that intermittent reinforcement may be of value in reducing the rate of relapse in bedwetting conditioning therapy. An experiment was conducted with 30 enuretic boys to examine acquisition and extinction parameters of continuous (100%), intermittent (70% variable ratio), and “placebo” (0%) reinforcement schedules. Reinforced trials were administered as in the typical Mowrer conditioning procedure. Non-reinforced trials were achieved by means of a time delay with the subsequent alarm being activated in the parent's room rather than in the child's room. These procedures required the development of a new conditioning device which could be programmed to automatically administer the desired schedule of reinforcement. The results of the field investigation revealed that continuous reinforcement (CR) and intermittent reinforcement (IR) groups attained acquisition in approximately the same number of trials and with essentially the same success rate. Relapse rate was significantly greater in the CR group than in the IR group. The placebo group showed no improvement over the 6 weeks of treatment. The results of this study may be interpreted as supporting the tenet that relapse can be viewed and treated as an extinction of the acquired response.     

The use of modeling to increase independent behavior

Three experiments were conducted aimed at increasing independence via use of modeling procedures in, respectively, two samples of neurotic outpatients and a sample of psychiatric inpatients. Significant gains in independence emerged in all three investigations. Subsidiary findings are reported regarding the operation in clinical contexts of ‘modeling-enhancers’ of demonstrated effectiveness in laboratory settings.     

Coding strategies and cerebral laterality effects

In a short-term recognition memory task, Ss were given relational imagery and rehearsal coding strategies in different sessions, with probes presented to the left or right cerebral hemisphere. Consistent with a model of separate processing systems for verbally and visually coded information, Ss yielded significantly faster response latencies for probes to the left hemisphere than the right when employing the rehearsal strategy, and significantly faster latencies for probes to the right hemisphere than the left when using the imagery code. This suggests that cerebral laterality effects are functionally related to coding strategies, and argues for the inclusion of imagery, or generated visual information, as part of the visual processing system. As such, generated visual information may be viewed as a coding alternative to verbal mediation.     

Perceptual-cognitive explorations of a toroidal set of free-form stimuli

A polar-coordinate analogue of Fourier synthesis generates organic-appearing “free forms” that can be continuously deformed along any desired number of difficult-to-verbalize dimensions. Since the dimensions are also circular, the forms correspond to points on the surface of a torus which, though conveniently finite, is free of bounding edges. Two experiments explore a particular two-dimensional set of 81 such forms. The first shows that perceived pair-wise similarities among the individual forms are well explained purely in terms of the distances among their corresponding points in the toroidal parameter space. The second, however, establishes that forms that tend to be grouped together as having the same cognitive interpretation define regions in parameter space that are variously shaped or even bimodal and, hence, that cannot be explained solely on the basis of the fixed set of pair-wise similarities. The stimuli appear to offer a novel combination of cognitive richness and low-dimensional parametric control.     

Electrical aversion therapy with alcoholics: An analogue study

Chronic alcoholic patients matched on age, education and length of problem drinking were assigned to one of three treatment conditions, with 10 subjects in each group: (1) Electrical Aversion Conditioning (high shock paired with alcohol sips); (2) Control Conditioning (very low shock paired with alcohol sips); and (3) Group Therapy (confrontation psychotherapy). Groups 2 and 3 were included to control for possible ‘attention-placebo’ and expectancy factors involved in the conditioning procedures. Subjects in each group were given instructions designed to produce high expectancy for therapeutic success. Pre-post measures of alcohol consumption and attitudes toward alcohol were obtained using an analogue ‘taste test’ assessment procedure. No statistically significant differences in reduced alcohol consumption or attitudes toward alcohol were found among the groups. Trends in the data support the contention that effects of electrical aversion may be more related to such factors as therapeutic instructions, expectancy, specificity of the procedure or experimental demand characteristics than to conditioning factors.