IMPROVED CURVEBALL HITTING THROUGH THE ENHANCEMENT OF VISUAL CUES

This study investigated the effectiveness of using visual cues to highlight the seams of baseballs to improve the hitting of curveballs. Five undergraduate varsity baseball team candidates served as subjects. Behavior change was assessed through an alternating treatments design involving unmarked balls and two treatment conditions that included baseballs with 1/4-in. and 1/8-in. orange stripes marking the seams of the baseballs. Results indicated that subjects hit a greater percentage of marked than unmarked balls. These results suggest that the addition of visual cues may be a significant and beneficial technique to enhance hitting performance. Further research is suggested regarding the training procedures, effect of feedback, rate of fading cues, generalization to live pitching, and generalization to other types of pitches.     

Linear Analogue Self-Assessment and Procrustean Measurement: A Critical Review of Visual Analogue Scaling in Pain Assessment

Visual analogue scales (VASs) are one of the most widely used self-report measures of clinical pain. This article reviews the empirical literature on linear analogue self-assessment (LASA) and critically examines the features that appear to have made it such an attractive measurement option in pain assessment. It is concluded that analogue scaling does not withstand critical scrutiny as a primary measure of either pain intensity or pain affect and that, in most circumstances, the overall clinical utility of VASs is inferior to that of more structured pain indices.     

儿童运动视觉表象操作水平的发展及影响因素

采用计算机软件控制实验,以暴露运动一段行程后进入遮蔽的光点为刺激物,光点以三种不同运动速度、三种不同运动行距组合呈现,要求儿童判断光点到达目标位置时按键反应。结果表明：5—19岁儿童运动视觉表象操作水平的发展存在5一8岁、11—14岁两个加速期;客体运动速度对运动视觉表象操作绩效有显著影响,5、8、11岁组快速较中速下．5．8岁组中速较慢速下操作准确性均有显著降低;客体运动行距对运动视觉表象操作绩效也有显著的影响．5、8、11岁组右目标位置下较中目标位置下操作准确性显著降低;性别对运动视觉表象操作水平无显著影响。     

Precuing the Target Location in Visual Searching by a Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes): Effects of Precue Validity

A chimpanzee ( Pan troglodytes ) performed a visual search task using a modified matching-to-sample procedure in which a sample stimulus was followed by the search display, which contained one stimulus identical to the sample (target) and several uniform stimuli different from the sample (distractors). On cued trials, while the subject was observing the sample, a white square (precue) appeared at the location where the target was to be presented (valid trials), or elsewhere (invalid trials). The validity of the precue (correspondence between the cued and the target locations) was changed from 0% to 100% across conditions. Cost-benefit analyses were performed on the difference between valid and noncued trials (benefit) and between invalid and noncued trials (cost). Under the high-validity conditions, the response times were shorter when the cued location corresponded to the target location than when the precue did not appear. When the cued location did not correspond to the target location, on the other hand, the subject took longer to select the target than on noncued trials. When the validity of the precue was relatively low, however, cost of the invalid trials disappeared, while benefit of the valid trials remained. These results confirmed the two-process (automatic and attentional) theory of priming in human information processing; the advance information had the same effects on a chimpanzee's visual search performance as on humans'.     

Art in existential psychotherapy with couples and families

The authors describe and outline how art can be used in existential psychotherapy to help a couple or family uncover, discover, and make use of the meanings and meaning potentials to be found in marital and family life. In existential psychotherapy with couples and families, art can be used to help the members of the relationship notice meaning potentials in the future, honor meaning potentials that have been actualized and deposited in the past, and discover new ways to actualize meaning potentials in the here and now.     

Response acquisition by Siamese fighting fish (Betta splendens) with delayed visual reinforcement

Male Siamese fighting fish, Betta splendens, swam through a ring in an aquarium, breaking a photocell beam and initiating an unsignaled, resetting delay interval. Following delays of 0 s, 10 s, or 25 s, a 15-s mirror presentation released an aggressive display by the fish. Swimming through the ring increased in the absence of either a period of acclimatization to the reinforcer (analogous to magazine training when appetitive reinforcers are used) or explicit training of the response by the experimenters. Response rates were a decreasing function of delay duration. Other fish exposed to a schedule of response-independent mirror presentations failed to acquire and maintain the response. The results demonstrate the robustness and generality of the phenomenon of response acquisition with delayed reinforcement. They further qualify earlier observations about behavioral mechanisms involved in the phenomenon.     

Autoshaping in the rat: The effects of localizable visual and auditory signals for food

Two experiments investigated autoshaping in rats to localizable visual and auditory conditioned stimuli predicting response-independent food. In Experiment 1 considerable conditioned-stimulus approach behavior was generated by a localizable visual conditioned stimulus that was situated approximately 35 cm from the food tray. Using the same apparatus in Experiment 2 we found that the conditioned-stimulus approach was generated only to a visual conditioned stimulus and not to a localizable auditory conditioned stimulus even though subjects (1) could discriminate presentations of the auditory conditioned stimulus, (2) had associated it with food, (3) could localize it, and (4) would approach the auditory stimulus if this behavior constituted an instrumental response to food. The predominant conditioned responses to the auditory stimuli were goal tracking (entering the food tray) and orienting towards the food-paired conditioned stimulus by head turning and rearing and turning. These results imply that rats do not invariably approach a localizable appetitive Pavlovian conditioned stimulus but that stimulus-approach responses depend on the nature and modality of the conditioned stimulus.     

Eco on Dewey

This study seeks to examine Umberto Eco's views of the key ideas in John Dewey's Art as Experience. Eco's proferred suggestion of transactional psychology as a corrective to Dewey's views is criticized as a misreading of Dewey's position.     

Behavioral control of visual fixation of the rhesus monkey.

A paradigm for the control of visual fixation of the macaque monkey in vision experiments was described. Using a Maxwellian view, the procedure permits the placement of discrete test-light stimuli in a specific area of the retina as the monkey fixates a primary target. This procedure holds foveal fixation as other behaviorally significant visual stimuli are presented to the visual field. By a methods-of-limits procedure, the sensitivity of the monkey eye was measured at different retinal locations under both photopic and scotopic visual adaptation.