Odor recognition: familiarity, identifiability, and encoding consistency

The investigation examined the association between the perceived identity of odorous stimuli and the ability to recognize the previous occurrence of them. The stimuli comprised 20 relatively familiar odorous objects such as chocolate, leather, popcorn, and soy sauce. Participants rated the familiarity of the odors and sought to identify them. At various intervals up to 7 days after initial inspection, the participants sought to recognize the odors among sets of distractor odors that included such items as soap, cloves, pipe tobacco, and so on. The recognition response entailed a confidence rating as to whether or not an item had appeared in the original set. At the time of testing, the participants also sought to identify the stimuli again. The results upheld previous findings of excellent initial recognition memory for environmentally relevant odors and slow forgetting. The results also uncovered, for the first time, a strong association between recognition memory and identifiability, rated familiarity, and the ability to use an odor label consistently at inspection and subsequent testing. Encodability seems to enhance rather than to permit recognizability. Even items identified incorrectly or inconsistently were recognized at levels above chance.     

Existence and the existential quantifier

This paper draws a distinction between the existential quantifier and the symbol ‘∃’ used to express it, on the one hand, and existence and ‘exists’, on the other. It argues that some popular arguments in metaphysics, including arguments against vague existence and arguments against deflationary metaontology (which views ontological disputes as lacking substance), are guilty of fudging this distinction. The paper draws some lessons for metaphysical debate about existence and highlights some heretofore ignored and attractive positions in logical space.     

The use of psychoeducational groups to improve marital functioning in high risk Israeli couples: a stage model

A modular and sequentially-based psychoeducational groupwork method, including the rationale for this type of work with couples in Israel, is presented. Modules of this form of groupwork are illustrated using two examples of groupwork with couples experiencing chronic post-traumatic stress disorder and groupwork with couples in low-income multiproblem neighborhoods. Issues that arise in the training of professionals to do this kind of psychoeducational groupwork in Israel are discussed.     

Changes to acoustic communication systems in human-altered environments

Animal communication systems have become closely tuned to local habitat conditions as populations have adjusted to different long-term environmental pressures. However, many habitats are now rapidly changing because of anthropogenic modification. Maintenance of effective communication systems in greatly altered environments will depend on communicative responses on both evolutionary and ontogenetic time scales. Consideration of potential acoustic challenges caused by human-generated habitat modification has important implications for basic research and conservation biology. First, the observed signal structure of individuals in altered environments may not match the normally hypothesized call structure. Second, species that either possess little ability to adapt quickly on an evolutionary time scale or have little plasticity in their communicative systems may be unable to respond to large anthropogenic alterations in their acoustic environment.     

Reinventing the University Through the Teaching of Diversity

University reform encompasses an increased emphasis on the social and emotional development of students. In particular, the development of caring, empathy, and community are emphasized. This team of psychology professors approaches the task of university reform by presenting both its philosophy of diversity inclusion and specific inclusion strategies as means of promoting enhanced development of our students. Although the discipline of psychology is used as an example, the philosophical argument and the strategic approaches may be applied to other disciplines.     

Motivation for Parenthood

Summary: The relationships between the tendency of subjects to perceive temporal zones as interrelated or discrete and other temporal behaviors and personality factors were explored in two studies, one using 115 college students and the other 60 college students, employing the Personal Orientation Inventory the Temporal Orientation Inventory, and the Circles Test. Subjects who obtained higher time-relatedness scores were found to demonstrate greater self-actualization, evaluate the present time mode more positively, overestimate time intervals in an estimation task, and to perform less accurately in time estimation than low time relaters.     

The areas of change questionnaire: A cross-cultural comparison of israeli and american distressed and nondistressed couples

Abstract

This study examines Israeli couples' presenting complaints about their relationship, their perceptions of one another's complaints and perceptual accuracy between actual and perceived complaints, using the Areas of Change Questionnaire (ACQ). Samples were obtained of both distressed and nondistressed couples. Each sample met stringent criteria for categorization as distressed and nondistressed. Normative data for both samples are examined and areas of similarities and differences are discussed. The instrument is found to discriminate distressed and nondistressed Israeli couples. Results are compared with a previous study of American distressed and nondistressed couples. The American finding that women desire more change in marriage is not replicated in the Israeli sample, nor the American finding that distress and stage in the life cycle are related. However, there is an indication in both samples that men, compared to women, perceive more requests for change. Men in both cultures also feel more change is asked of them than they themselves ask in return.     

The Representation of Left-Right Orientation: A Dissociation Between Imagery and Perceptual Recognition

Eight experiments were conducted to determine whether visual mental imagery preserves left-right orientation in conditions where recognition memory apparently does not. Such a dissociation would suggest that information in memory preserves left-right orientation, but the process that matches input to such representations does not respect this distinction. In the experiments reported here, participants were asked to use one of two methods to indicate which way Abraham Lincoln faces on a US penny: Either they selected the correct profile from two sketches, or they formed a mental image and then specified the direction. If participants had just viewed pennies and were asked to visualize a particular one, they performed far better than chance; in contrast, if imagery was discouraged, they performed poorly when recognizing the profiles perceptually. However, unless actively discouraged from doing so, most participants reported spontaneously visualizing pennies prior to perceptual recognition if they had recently seen pennies.