The effect of varied physician affect on recall, anxiety, and perceptions in women at risk for breast cancer: an analogue study.

Evaluated the effect of varied physician affect on subject recall, anxiety, and perceptions in a simulated tense and ambiguous medical situation. Forty women at risk for breast cancer viewed videotapes of an oncologist presenting--with either worried or nonworried affect--mammogram results. Although the mammogram results and the oncologist were the same in both presentation, analyses indicated that, compared to the women receiving the results from a nonworried physician, the women receiving the results from a worried physician recalled significantly less information, perceived the clinical situation as significantly more severe, reported significantly higher levels of state anxiety, and had significantly higher pulse rates. These results suggest that physician affect plays a critical role in patient reaction to medical information. Implications for compliance research, patient satisfaction, and physician training are discussed.     

Models of central capacity and concurrency

According to single channel theory, the ability of humans to perform concurrent mental operations is limited by the capacity of a central mechanism. The theory was developed by analogy with early computers which had a single central processing unit and required sequential processing. These limitations are not likely to be properties of the mind. But now computers have begun to employ extensive concurrent processing, because of the decreasing cost of the necessary hardware. In this review we will try to bring the computer analogy up to date. Theoretical issues important for concurrent systems may be of interest to psychologists and have applications to such problems as the speed-accuracy trade-off. Several hypotheses about the way signals gain access to the central mechanism are reviewed. Recent variations of the single channel theory are discussed, including the hypotheses that more than one process can use the central mechanism at a time, and that some processes do not use the central mechanism and can be executed concurrently with those that do. In addition, relevant concepts from scheduling theory and operating systems theory are introduced and difficulties encountered by concurrent systems, namely complexity, deadlocks, and thrashing, are discussed.     

Stimulus context and duration discrimination

The ability of human observers to discriminate duration was assessed in two types of tasks: (1) pulse tasks, in which the observer compared the duration of two brief increments in an ongoing sinusoid, and (2) gap tasks, in which the observer compared the duration of two brief interruptions in an ongoing sinusoid. Performance in these tasks was assessed in three different contexts: noise alone, noise plus continuous sinusoids, and noise plus continuous sinusoids chosen to induce a pitch segregation effect. Performance in the pulse task was independent of the changes in context; however, performance in the gap task changed as a function of context condition. There was a large decrement in the observers’ ability to discriminate duration when the stimulus ensemble induced the pitch segregation effect. The results are discussed in terms of the relationship between duration discrimination and stimulus variations which do not carry duration information.     

Validity Rates of the Personality Assessment Inventory and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory–2 in a VA Medical Center Setting

This paper presents some notions regarding the all important question of projective stimulus ambiguity. It is suggested that in spite of the observation that TAT stimulus ambiguity has been the most studied, the problem of stimulus ambiguity must be considered a vital problem in relation to projective tests as a whole. Findings specific to an extended DAP (involving the inclusion of a self-portrait) are reported and the relevance of these findings to the problem of stimulus ambiguity is discussed.     

WFORM: A graphical speech-waveform editing and analysis system

A graphical waveform editor for use in speech research applications is described. The editor operates in 32 kwords of main memory on a DEC LSI-11/23 microcomputer under the RSX-11M operating system. The graphics subsystem is a Hewlett-Packard vector graphics controller and display unit. The editor is written in ANSI standard FORTRAN IV to promote portability. WFORM is capable of reading speech files and displaying the contents of these files in either visual or auditory format. In addition, the editor provides the capability to excise arbitrary portions of speech files, concatenate several speech files, and modify the contents of speech files by windowing. Speech analysis is also available in the form of the fast Fourier transform, and a number of windowing techniques are useful for Fourier analysis. The results of the Fourier transform can be displayed either in the form of power spectra or as a rough spectrograph.     

Digital speech recording and playback system using a multiprocessor architecture

This paper describes a digital speech recording system capable of digitizing, storing, and playing back speech signals of arbitrary duration. The maximum duration for continuous speech processing is limited only by disk storage capacity. The system is based on a multiprocessor architecture, with a main processor responsible for file processing and outboard processor I/O control. As implemented, the main processor is a DEC LSI-11/23 microcomputer with 1 MB of main memory and a large-capacity Winchester disk. The outboard processor is an Intel 8085 with 2K local memory for speech buffering. Digitization is accomplished using logarithmic PCM at 8-kHz sampling frequency. Interprocessor communication is achieved with a 16-bit parallel data bus, and the necessary electrical connections and handshaking signals are discussed in detail. The local software modules are described, with attention given to timing and communications protocol considerations.     

Some effects of reduction in reinforcement magnitude in a monetary economy with hospitalized alcoholics

A 25% reduction in reinforcement magnitude (RIRM) of money paid to residents of an alcoholic rehabilitation program emphasizing the learning of behavior theory and its applications, was instituted to determine the effects on response rates on six classes of behavior—class attendance, desensitizing sessions, completion of desensitization hierarchies, tests on written material, and ward therapeutic and non-therapeutic activities. The effects of the RIRM condition on the behavior of eight subjects were compared with the behavior of ten subjects who spent a comparable amount of time in the program but were not subjected to the experimental condition (RIRM). The RIRM resulted in a reduction in rate of response on two classes of behavior and an increase in the response rate of a third. The three remaining classes of behavior were not significantly affected, although two of these three showed trends toward a decrease in response rate. Results are discussed in terms of altered response costs, accessory 'or intrinsic rewards. response switching, and individual differences.