SENSORY AND PREPARATORY FACTORS IN RESPONSE LATENCY: III. Preknowledge and regularity of stimuli as antecedent variables

T hrane , V. C. Sensory and preparatory factors in response latency. III. Preknowledge and regularity of stimuli as antecedent variables. Scand. J. Psychol ., 1961, 2, 30–44.—Interaction between stimulus and organismic determinants of simple reaction time under weak and strong auditory stimulation was studied with 24 subjects. Results indicate that without specific preknowledge of the stimulus variants presented, there is little or no correlation between sensory and non-sensory determinants of response latency, but that both speed and constancy of response are influenced by preknowledge, and to some extent by regularity of stimuli, in a manner and to a degree which depend on the expected intensity, thus being consistent with the hypothesis of bipolar (positive and negative) compensatory interaction.     

SENSORY AND PREPARATORY FACTORS IN RESPONSE LATENCY: The visual intensity function

Simple reaction times under irregular order of stimulus presentation are studied as a function of three luminous intensities viewed foveally and covering five log I units at the upper half of the brightness scale. Response latency varies inversely and rectilineariy with log I within this range. Respondents tend to converge in average latency but differ more in variability as stimulus strength is reduced, the more variable subjects even at high intensity suffering relatively greater loss in speed. Both positive and negative practice effects are observed, which seem partly dependent on stimulus intensity.     

SENSORY AND PREPARATORY FACTORS IN RESPONSE LATENCY

T hrane , V. C. Sensory and preparatory factors in response latency. IV. General and differential warning of full-scale auditory intensities. Scand. J Psychol ., 1961, 2, 211–224.—Twenty-one loudness variants ranging from hardly audible to no db re standard threshold were randomly presented after either (1) a constant or (2) a varied warning signal denoting one range below and two above an assumed transition point for the bi-functional relationship between response latency and stimulus intensity. Under (1) greater improvement with practice at one end of the scale was acccompanied by smaller gains at the other end. Under (2) practice had favorable but preknowledge unfavorable effects at the weakest intensities. Differential warning facilitated speed of response only for medium and strong stimuli and most at the high end of the scale.     

SENSORY AND PREPARATORY FACTORS IN RESPONSE LATENCY

T hrane , V. C. Sensory and preparatory factors in response latency. V. Stimulus blanks as regulator of preparatory set. Scand. J. Psychol ., 1962, 3 , 1–15.—When otherwise nearly replicating the preceding experiment, but excluding the final reaction signal in 14 per cent of the trials under all conditions, response latency was much less affected, if at all, by differential warning of stimulus strength. It is concluded that a constant proportion of stimulus blanks serves largely to equalize perceptual uncertainty on the part of the respondent as to presence of a stimulus, in spite of variations in the sensory adequacy of the expected stimulus, and hence may be used when necessary as an antecedent variable for generating more comparable preparatory sets in studies concerned with the sensory effects of stimulus variables.     

Too Much Info: Data Surveillance and Reasons to Favor the Control Account of the Right to Privacy

Res Publica - In this paper, we argue that there is at least a pro tanto reason to favor the control account of the right to privacy over the access account of the right to privacy. This conclusion...     

SENSORY AND PREPARATORY FACTORS IN RESPONSE LATENCY: Simple reaction or compensatory interaction?

The so-called simple reaction is viewed as a dynamically integrated organismic response, modifiable by sensory and preparatory factors and their interactions. The procedure used in presenting several variants of the focal stimulus regulates the specificity of the respondent's preknowledge of stimulus, and thereby the opportunity for interaction as suggested. Additional results confirm the previous finding that the differential effect of stimulus intensity is inversely related to the degree of preknowledge. The interaction is therefore considered to be of a compensatory nature.     

Privacy Rights,and Why Negative Control is Not a Dead End: A Reply to Munch and Lundgren

Lauritz Munch and Björn Lundgren have recently replied to a paper published by us in this journal. In our original paper, we defended a novel version of the so-called ‘control theory’ of the moral right to privacy. We argued that control theorists should define ‘control’ as what we coined ‘Negative Control’. Munch and Lundgren have recently provided a range of interesting and challenging objections to our view. Independently of each other, they give almost identical counterexamples to our definition of Negative Control. In this comment, we show that while the counterexamples are genuine counterexamples, they do not force us to abandon the idea of Negative Control. Furthermore, we reply to two additional objections raised by Lundgren. One of these replies involves giving a new account of what the relation is between the concept of privacy and the right to privacy.