Effect of artificial voice feedback delay in typing and its implications for the blind user

We examined the effect of voice-feedback delay on learning to type nonsense strings on a reduced computer terminal keyboard. The results suggest that long delays (1,642 msec) affect learning of the keyboard before mastery, whereas shorter delays (841 msec) do not. With mastery, subjects learn to ignore the disruptive effects of long feedback delays. Feedback delay may nevertheless be an important human-factors issue for blind consumers who are learning to type with a voice-based system, and for hardware and software designers of systems for the blind and visually impaired.     

The importance of ethnicity in the development of identity of black adolescents

Ego-identity status was examined in 20 male and 20 female black junior and senior high school students. Ego-identity was assessed by a semistructured interview measuring questioning and commitment in the traditional areas of occupation, ideology (religion and politics), sexual-interpersonal attitudes and behavior, and the newly added area of ethnicity. The greatest questioning and commitment occurred in the area of ethnicity. Ethnicity was most predictive of over-all identity-status and was seen as most important to self-definition. The other area of central importance was occupation. While the ideological and sexual-interpersonal areas have been found in previous research to have central importance for white adolescents, they were found in this sample of black adolescents to show the lowest concordance with over-all identity and to be cited as having least importance in self-definition. The lowest amount of questioning and commitment occurred in these areas.     

The role of social class in the formation of identity: a study of public and elite private college students

The authors explored the influence of social class on identity formation in an interview study of 15 lower income students and 15 affluent students from a highly selective liberal arts school and 15 lower income students from a state college. Students ranked occupational goals as 1st in importance to identity and social class as 2nd. The affluent students regarded social class as significantly more important to identity than did the lower income students, were more aware of structural factors contributing to their success, and had higher occupational aspirations. Social class was an area of exploration for half the students, with higher levels of exploration shown by the lower income private school students than by the state college students. Lower income students developed an ideology that rationalized their social class position.     

Self-Other Differentiation and the Mother-Child Relationship: The Effects of Sex and Birth Order

We examined the effect of sex and birth order on the experience of a separate sense of self and its connection to mothers' differential involvement with sons and daughters. Results from two samples of college-age students are reported. Men showed a more separate sense of self than women, and mothers were reported to be more highly involved with and intrusive in the lives of their daughters than their sons. Results for birth order were consistent though not always statistically significant: First-born women had the least separate sense of self and reported the greatest degree of maternal involvement and intrusiveness. Implications of these findings for developmental theory and criteria of Psychological well-being are discussed.     

The adaptive significance of the location of the optic disk

Although the 'filling in' of each blind spot by healthy retina in the other eye has long been described as an adaptive property of the spatial arrangement of the optic disks, an explanation of why the disks are specifically located where they are has yet to be proposed. A rationale for their horizontal position in humans is offered that is based on the projections of the blind spots in visual space in relation to fixation distance and to the protrusion of the bony facial occlusion of the nose bridge.     

Reduced visual acuity is mirrored in low vision imagery

Research has examined the nature of visual imagery in normally sighted and blind subjects, but not in those with low vision. Findings with normally sighted subjects suggest that imagery involves primary visual areas of the brain. Since the plasticity of visual cortex appears to be limited in adulthood, we might expect imagery of those with adult-onset low vision to be relatively unaffected by these losses. But if visual imagery is based on recent and current experience, we would expect images of those with low vision to share some properties of impaired visual perception. We examined key parameters of mental images reported by normally sighted subjects, compared to those with early- and late-onset low vision, and with a group of subjects with restricted visual fields using an imagery questionnaire. We found evidence that those with reduced visual acuity report the imagery distances of objects to be closer than those with normal acuity and also depict objects in imagery with lower resolution than those with normal visual acuity. We also found that all low vision groups, like the normally sighted, image objects at a substantially greater distance than when asked to place them at a distance that ‘just fits’ their imagery field (overflow distance). All low vision groups, like the normally sighted, showed evidence of a limited visual field for imagery, but our group with restricted visual fields did not differ from the other groups in this respect. We conclude that imagery of those with low vision is similar to that of those with normal vision in being dependent on the size of objects or features being imaged, but that it also reflects their reduced visual acuity. We found no evidence for a dependence on imagery of age of onset or number of years of vision impairment.     

GENDER DIFFERENCES IN PRESCHOOL CHILDREN'S NARRATIVE FANTASY

In this study, 22 female and 20 male 3- to 5-year-old children were presented with six story starts and were asked to finish the stories. In their stories, girls introduced significantly more friendly figures who offered assistance; boys introduced significantly more aggressive behavior and attempts to master situations through the use of aggressive activity. Girls told significantly more stories about girls; boys tended to tell more stories about boys. A factor analysis of the coding categories is discussed. The analysis of the fantasy narratives showed boys to be more concerned with coping with aggressive drives and channeling them into attempts at mastery, and girls with caretaking and responding to the needs of others.