An additional measure of availability derived from theOxford English Dictionary

In order to develop an additional measure of availability for the nouns from Paivio, Yuille, and Madigan’s (1968) list, we used a CD-ROM version of theOxford English Dictionary (OED) to obtain the number of times a word was used to define other words. This variable was added to Rubin and Friendly’s (1986) set of measures for these words. In multiple regression analyses, our measure proved to be a useful predictor of free recall. These results suggest that the OED may be useful for providing additional psycholinguistic measures.     

The 'golden rectangle': some new data.

From two different series of dimensions were generated six ranges of nine rectangles each. Each range was presented to a different group of 15 men and 15 women, and a novel measure was used to assess aesthetic preference for each rectangle. The ratios between the lengths of the sides of the rectangles were the same in both series, but in one series the size of the rectangles covaried with the ratio between length and width, as in Godkewitsch's 1974 study, and in the other series the rectangles were of equal area. The subjects tended to prefer large to small rectangles in the former series and rectangles in the vicinity of the 'golden section' in the latter.     

Revisiting Wittgenstein on Köhler and Gestalt psychology

In an article in this journal, Nicholas Pastore rejected Ludwig Wittgenstein's critique of Wolfgang K?hler and Gestalt psychology. Pastore appears not to have appreciated Wittgenstein's argument that K?hler mistook conceptual questions for factual ones. A simi-lar confusion seems to underlie at least some aspects of contemporary neuroscience. Be that as it may, Wittgenstein has had minimal influence on the research practices of psychologists while K?hler remains influential. This outcome would not have surprised Wittgenstein, who predicted that scientists would not see his work as relevant to theirs.     

Context effects and the recall of comparative sentences

Clark and Card (1969) have proposed that semantic components underlie memory for comparative (C) sentences. To test this hypothesis, six groups of 15 Ss each were given different sets of C sentences. In line with the theory, Ss tended to remember unmarked adjectives better than marked ones and positive constructions better than negatives. However, contrary to the theory, they also tended to bias their responding either toward the negative or the equative form. A two-stage theory of recall, based on the memory schema-memory trace distinction, is proposed to account for these data.     

The long past and short history of the vocabulary of Anglophone psychology

How do particular words come to be part of the vocabulary of Anglophone psychology? The present study sampled 600 words with psychological senses from the Oxford English Dictionary, which not only gives the number of senses for each word but also the date and author for the earliest known occurrence of each sense. Analogous information for the same words was taken from PsycINFO. One can distinguish between words for which their psychological sense is the first to occur in the history of the written language (primary psychological words) and words for which their psychological sense only emerges after one or more other senses have become established in the written language (secondary psychological words). To use a distinction made famous by Ebbinghaus, secondary psychological words have both a past and a history in psychology, while primary psychological words only have a history. Secondary psychological words have more connections to other words and occur more frequently in PsycINFO than do primary psychological words. For secondary psychological words, it is possible to trace a process of metaphoric polysemy that provides a basis for the eventual occurrence of the psychological sense of a word. Some primary psychological words are now developing secondary, nonpsychological senses, showing that they are subject to the same metaphoric process as are any other words.     

The golden section and American psychology, 1892–1938

The golden section has been said by many to be the most beautiful proportion. Fechner was the first to investigate it experimentally, and several late‐nineteenth‐ and early‐twentieth‐century American psychologists followed up on his work. Among these were four prominent names: Lightner Witmer (1867–1956), Edward L. Thorndike (1874–1949), Robert S. Woodworth (1869–1962), and Robert M. Ogden (1877–1959). Why did such well‐known psychologists bother with the golden section? In attempting to answer this question we discovered that the golden section was surprisingly well known during this period, not only in psychology but also in advertising and design. It would have been entirely congruent with their stature for prominent psychologists to take an interest in it. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Solving path diagrams with EUREKA

To solve the path diagrams for a particular causal model, psychologists typically have made use of sophisticated programs such as LISREL. Such programs are difficult for the beginning student to use, and are occasionally awkward or inconvenient even for veteran causal modelers. It would be helpful to such users to have access to a method for conducting causal modeling on a microcomputer without requiring that they have any programming skills. Fortunately, such a procedure is now readily available in the form of EUREKA (1987). This paper describes a way of employing EUREKA so that it is of value not only to naive, but also to sophisticated, users.     

Dates of entry and measures of imagery,concreteness, goodness,and familiarity for 1,046 words sampled from theOxford English Dictionary

TheOxford English Dictionary is the standard reference work for determining the earliest known instance of the occurrence of a word (its date of entry). Partly in order to facilitate research on the relation between the date of entry and other psychological variables, we gathered normative data on 1,046 words sampled from theOxford English Dictionary. We present data for scales that measure the imagery, concreteness, goodness, and familiarity values for words. These norms may also be of use to researchers who are not explicitly concerned with words’ date of entry, but who wish to sample words from a set that contains a large number of unfamiliar as well as familiar words.     

Imagery,concreteness, goodness,and familiarity ratings for 500 proverbs sampled from theOxford Dictionary of English Proverbs

Partly in order to facilitate research on the relation between some standard psychological variables, we gathered normative data on 500 proverbs sampled from theOxford Dictionary of English Proverbs (Wilson, 1970). The scales for which we gathered data are imagery, concreteness, goodness , and familiarity. These norms may be of value to researchers who wish to sample linguistic units larger than the word from a set that contains an extensive number of unfamiliar and familiar items. To illustrate the possible uses to which these data may be put, we presented a causal model of the relation between the four variables mentioned above.