Stimuli

И/li? к 6<fos à$> 1 Psychological Rcvtw tM6,V»ra,No. 2, 136-153 Copyright Í9S6 by the American Psycnoloüiial АвосМев, lac. . 003M»X/8«$00.7S Norm Theory: Comparing Reality to Its Alternatives Daniel Kahneman University of British Columbia Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada ...

Michael (1975) reviewed efforts to classify reinforcing events in terms of whether stimuli are added (positive reinforcement) or removed (negative reinforcement). He concluded that distinctions in these terms are confusing and ambiguous. Of necessity, adding a stimulus requires its previous absence and removing a stimulus its previous presence. Moreover, there is no good basis, either behavioral or physiological, that indicates the involvement of distinctly different processes, and on these grounds he proposed that the distinction be abandoned. Despite the cogency of Michael's analysis, the distinction between positive and negative reinforcement is still being taught. In this paper, we reconsider the issue from the perspective of 30 years. However, we could not find new evidence in contemporary research and theory that allows reliable classification of an event as a positive rather than a negative reinforcer. We conclude by reiterating Michael's admonitions about the concept...

In this study, Auditory Steady State Responses (ASSR) to 100 μsec clicks and 4 msec cochlear chirps are recorded in adult subjects at repetition rates of 20 to 100 Hz in 10 Hz increments. Response characteristics of ASSRs are compared in the frequency domain. Results show that response amplitudes to both stimuli peak in the proximity of 40 Hz and 80 Hz, but chirps generate responses with larger amplitudes at all repetition rates. The responses at 40 Hz repetition rates for both clicks and chirps are larger than the corresponding responses at 80 Hz stimuli in awake adults. The 40 Hz responses, however, show greater variability than the 80 Hz responses depending on the subject's state of consciousness. The predictions of the ASSR waveforms at each repetition rate were then synthesized by superimposing the suitably shifted Middle Latency Response (MLR) waveforms that were recorded during the same session with a stimulus repetition rate of 10 Hz for both click and chirp recordings. ...

This article reviews recent research on perception of tangible pictures in sighted and blind people. Haptic picture naming accuracy is dependent upon familiarity and access to semantic memory, just as in visual recognition. Performance is high when haptic picture recognition tasks do not depend upon semantic memory. Viewpoint matters for the ease or difficulty of interpreting haptic pictures of solid objects. Top views were easiest for sighted and blind persons when geometrical solids had constant crosssections in the vertical axis. The presence or absence of viewpoint effects depends upon the nature of the solids that are represented. Congenitally blind people do not spontaneously produce perspective drawings, but recent data suggests that depictions including linear perspective can be understood after minimal experience. The results suggest that two-dimensional configurations are not necessarily problematic for touch. Touch is a remarkable sense, and it is just beginning to reveal...

The question regarding visual imagery and visual perception remain an open issue. Many studies have tried to understand if the two processes share the same mechanisms or if they are independent, using different neural substrates. Most research has been directed towards the need of activation of primary visual areas during imagery. Here we review some of the works providing evidence