Psychological science gold medal award: Eleanor J. Gibson.

The Gold Medal Awards, which include a check for $2,000 and a gold medallion, are given to American psychologists who are 65 years of age or older and residents of North America in recognition of a distinguished and long-continued record of accomplishments in three individual areas: professional, scientific, and public interest. This article provides a citation and a biography for Eleanor J. Gibson, the 1986 Psychological Science Gold Medal Award winner. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Directly perceiving Gibson: A further reply to Gyr.

In his 1972 critique of direct theories of perception, J. W. Gyr argued from the view that Gibson believes (a) that stimulus structure can determine perception and (b) that perceiving as a consequence of voluntary activity is virtually the same as perception that is not a consequence of voluntary activity. Since neither of these assumptions is found in Gibson's approach, Gyr's criticisms do not seem to apply. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eleanor Jack Gibson: Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award.

Acknowledges the presentation of the American Psychological Association (APA) 1968 Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award to Eleanor Jack Gibson. The citation reads: "For distinguished studies of perceptual learning and perceptual development. Following participation in and guidance of studies which have significantly advanced our understanding of depth perception in infants and young organisms, she has turned to the systematic analysis of reading. Her analysis and experimental study of the discriminatory and decoding aspects, as well as semantic and syntactical features of reading have indicated what must be learned. Her analysis of the learning process itself has delineated how reading is acquired. Always the experimentalist, she has elucidated the steps that must precede application in formal instruction. By so doing, she has imaginatively shown how to bridge the gap from laboratory to classroom." A biography and a listing of the awardee's scientific writings are also included. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

James J. Gibson: An appreciation.

J. J. Gibson (see PA, Vol 29:5103; see also PA, Vol 81:28168) conceived of a perceptual psychology very different from that taken by mainstream research work in vision over the past 30 yrs. Placing psychology in a biological and physical context and avoiding traditional disciplinary definitions, Gibson outlined a physics relevant to animate life. From this flowed his theory of affordances, his preoccupation with surfaces, and his interest in animal locomotion. Visual motion played a decisive role in rounding out these views. His work here was prophetic, anticipating neurophysiological discoveries on motion sensitivity and directly inspiring more recent studies on higher order aspects of motion encoding. Gibson scrupulously avoided mention of internal representation. Yet, those researchers interested in such internal processes remain deeply indebted to his enduring contributions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning to administrate, administrating to learn.

This article describes a director of clinical training (DCT) mentorship program aimed at teaching administrative skills to graduate students. Toward this end, the administrative knowledge and skills targeted in the program are described, followed by a discussion of the implications of this training experience, including the potential applicability to other disciplines within psychology. Although the DCT mentorship experience that is presented seems to be a promising model for administrative training, future efforts are needed to evaluate the relative merits of this type of program over the long term. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Obituary: James J. Gibson (1904-1979).

Presents the obituary of James J. Gibson (1904-1979). Gibson was a perception psychologist who was also the creator and leader of an epistemological movement. His claim that perception is direct, requiring no inferential steps and no processing of information, presents a radical alternative to prevailing views of the nature of knowledge. Gibson's life and career are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A layered network model of associative learning: Learning to learn and configuration.

Networks composed of layers of adaptive units provide a rigorous explanation for associative learning phenomena that otherwise have been relatively intractable, particularly learning to learn, spontaneous configuration, and negative patterning (the exclusive-OR problem). Layered network models can also reconcile these phenomena with better-understood phenomena, for example, stimulus summation, blocking, and conditioned inhibition. This article presents simulations based on a network of three adaptive units, each of which operates according to an associative competition rule, also known as the delta rule. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

To perceive is to know.

"Perceiving is a cognitive process involving knowing, understanding, comprehending, organizing and even cognizing… . [The] factors known in perception are properties of sets of stimuli, not properties of individual stimuli (to say nothing of the elements which make up these individual stimuli)… . [Perceiving] is an active process, 1 in which the perceiver participates fully." The experiments cited illustrate "that to perceive is to know. It is to know and comprehend the nature of a stimulus; it is to know the nature of the alternatives to a stimulus; and it is to know the structure and organization of sets of stimuli." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning to perceive the affordance for long-distance throwing: Smart mechanism or function learning?

Bingham, Schmidt, & Rosenblum, (1989) showed that people are able to select, by hefting balls, the optimal weight for each size ball to be thrown farthest. We now investigate function learning and smart mechanisms as hypotheses about how this affordance is perceived. Twenty-four unskilled adult throwers learned to throw by practicing with a subset of balls that would only allow acquisition of the ability to perceive the affordance if hefting acts as a smart mechanism to provide access to a single information variable that specifies the affordance. Participants hefted 48 balls of different sizes and weights and judged throwability. Then, participants, assigned to one of four groups, practiced throwing (three groups with vision and one without) for a month using different subsets of balls. Finally, hefting and throwing were tested again with all the balls. The results showed: (1) inability to detect throwability before practice, (2) throwing improved with practice, and (3) participants learned to perceive the affordance, but only with visual feedback. These results indicated that the affordance is perceived using a smart mechanism acquired while learning to throw. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning to visually perceive the relative mass of colliding balls in globally and locally constrained task ecologies.

Novice observers differ from each other in the kinematic variables they use for the perception of kinetic properties, but they converge on more useful variables after practice with feedback. The colliding-balls paradigm was used to investigate how the convergence depends on the relations between the candidate variables and the to-be-perceived property, relative mass. Experiment 1 showed that observers do not change in the variables they use if the variables with which they start allow accurate performance. Experiment 2 showed that, at least for some observers, convergence can be facilitated by reducing the correlations between commonly used nonspecifying variables and relative mass but not by keeping those variables constant. Experiments 3a and 3b further demonstrated that observers learn not to rely on a particular nonspecifying variable if the correlation between that variable and relative mass is reduced. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Letter to The Editor, Canadian Psychologist: Dear Mr. Gibson.

In this letter to the editor, O. Spreen reports an error in "Applied Training Programmes of Psychology in Canada: A Survey" by Artur Z. Arthur (Canadian Psychologist Psychologie Canadienne, 1971[Jan], Vol 12[1], 46-65). Page 49 contains an error regarding the available staff for applied training programs at the University of Victoria. The correct figure under column 7 (staff, full-time, psychology) should not be 40. Instead the correct figure for 1971-72 should be 11; under "staff, other departments", 4 should be listed; under "staff, part-time", 1 should be listed; under "staff in applied settings", 3 should be listed. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2007-02140-007.) A survey of professional applied training programmes in the Canadian universities was carried out in 1969. Reported were 29 programmes: 17 in clinical psychology, 4 each in counselling and school psychology, one each in educational psychology and learning disabilities and 2 in experimental psychopathology. The number of places in the universities was related to the expected manpower requirements. Information was also given concerning the numbers of teachers in each programme, the types of applied settings utilized, and the different courses offered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Naive optics: Predicting and perceiving reflections in mirrors.

Undergraduate students predicted what would be made visible by a planar mirror. A paper-and-pencil task confirmed previous findings that when approaching a mirror from the side, participants expected to see their reflection in the mirror earlier than they actually would. This early response was found for all mirrors when the observer moved horizontally--even when the mirror was placed on the floor or the ceiling--but not when the observer moved vertically (in a lift). The data support the hypothesis that many people imagine the world in the mirror as rotated around the vertical axis. When participants had to judge manipulated mirror reflections according to their naturalness, a high degree of tolerance was found. In contrast to the prediction task, a rotation around the vertical axis was judged to be less natural than other distortions. The authors conclude that perceptual knowledge and predictive knowledge lead to different patterns of errors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Awards for distinguished scientific contributions: Eleanor E. Maccoby.

Presents the citation, biography, and selected bibliography for Eleanor E. Maccoby, one of the 1988 recipients of the American Psychological Association's Awards for Distinguished Scientific Contributions. Maccoby was honored for her wide-ranging and authoritative contributions to developmental and social psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Skewed symmetry: A nonaccidental property used to perceive visual forms.

Mathematically, skewed symmetry is a nonaccidental property because it can be interpreted as bilateral symmetry in depth viewed from a nonorthogonal angle. To find out whether this is a useful property in the perception of visual forms, 4 experiments were designed in which the Ss had to determine whether 2 symmetric or random patterns were the same regardless of possible affine transformations between them. The results provided mixed evidence: Although there was always a large symmetry advantage, skewed symmetry was only perceived as bilateral symmetry in depth for dot patterns with higher order types of symmetry (Exp 1), when the dots were connected to form closed polygons (Exp 2 and 4), or when they were surrounded by a frame to enhance their planarity (Exp 3). In other cases, Ss relied on local groupings on the basis of proximity or curvilinearity, which are qualitatively affine invariant. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Economically disadvantaged preschoolers: Ready to learn but further to go.

Cognitive competencies and motivation were assessed in 233 preschool and kindergarten children in the fall and again in the spring. Cognitive assessments were given again in the spring of the following year (kindergarten or 1st grade) to a subsample of 88 children. The results revealed much poorer performance among the economically disadvantaged children compared with advantaged children on all 8 of the cognitive tests. For most cognitive measures, gains were roughly equal and the socioeconomic status (SES) differences at the end of 1 or 2 years in school were similar to the differences at the beginning of the year. Only a few SES differences were found on the motivation measures assessing children's self-confidence, attitude toward school, expectations for success, dependency, and preference for challenge; they did not systematically favor either disadvantaged or advantaged children. Classroom observations revealed some differences in disadvantaged and advantaged children's classroom behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How people learn to skip steps.

Novices often explicitly apply in a domain each necessary operator while solving a problem, whereas experts often skip steps, and as a result, the solution procedures they use are often organized differently from those of novices. Using an algebra analog, the authors examined this change in process. In 2 experiments people learned the rules of the task and then solved many problems. Their solution procedures were monitored, and concurrent verbal protocols were taken. When participants started overtly skipping steps, they appeared to be performing them mentally but later started to use new transformations, thereby covertly skipping steps as well. An adaptive control of thought–rational model ( J. R. Anderson, 1993) of problem solver behavior within this task was developed and evaluated with respect to existing theories of skill acquisition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A reply to Mace and Pittenger on "Directly perceiving Gibson".

A reply to Mace and Pittenger on "Directly Perceiving Gibson" (see record 2005-09162-001). W. M. Mace and J. B. Pittenger address themselves to a false issue when they argue that J. J. Gibson has both a theory of stimulus structure and a theory of attention. The point of the 1972 article by J. W. Gyr is that these two theories are not as well integrated as they might be or as integrated as Gibson intended them to be. Moreover, a point also stressed by Gyr and overlooked by Mace and Pittenger is that Gibson's findings of stimulus structure are also consistent with theories that are not theories of direct visual perception, and therefore such findings by themselves cannot be used to support Gibson's theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Clinical and counseling psychology doctoral trainnees: How students perceive internships.

The authors examined applicants' perceptions of internship site types by specialty affiliation (clinical and counseling psychology). Multidimensional scaling analyses suggest that clinical psychology students focus their attention on internship site prestige, future job opportunities, opportunities for research, degree of client psychopathology and physical illness, and their overall comfort in working with the client population associated with the site type. Counseling students focus on fewer attributes, including site prestige, quality of supervision, degree of client physical illness, and comfort in working with the client population. Specialty affiliation also accounted for systematic differences in internship site preferences. Results are discussed with regard to internship supply-and-demand issues, and implications are offered for student applicants, academic training directors, and internship training directors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Fear detection and visual awareness in perceiving bodily expressions.

Many research reports have concluded that emotional information can be processed without observers being aware of it. The case for perception without awareness has almost always been made with the use of facial expressions. In view of the similarities between facial and bodily expressions for rapid perception and communication of emotional signals, we conjectured that perception of bodily expressions may also not necessarily require visual awareness. Our study investigates the role of visual awareness in the perception of bodily expressions using a backward masking technique in combination with confidence ratings on a trial-by-trial basis. Participants had to detect in three separate experiments masked fearful, angry and happy bodily expressions among masked neutral bodily actions as distractors and subsequently the participants had to indicate their confidence. The onset between target and mask (Stimulus Onset Asynchrony, SOA) varied from ?50 to +133 ms. Sensitivity measurements (d-prime) as well as the confidence of the participants showed that the bodies could be detected reliably in all SOA conditions. In an important finding, a lack of covariance was observed between the objective and subjective measurements when the participants had to detect fearful bodily expressions, yet this was not the case when participants had to detect happy or angry bodily expressions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Why minority group members perceive or do not perceive the discrimination that confronts them: The role of self-esteem and perceived control.

Self-esteem and perceived control were examined to explain why minority group members sometimes perceive discrimination but, more often, minimize the discrimination. Women (Study 1), and Asians and Blacks (Study 2) reacted to negative feedback after information about the probability for discrimination. Minority group members tended to minimize discrimination and attributed their failure to themselves. By perceiving discrimination as a reason for failure, minority group members protected their performance state self-esteem. In contrast, by minimizing discrimination, they protected their social state self-esteem and maintained the perception of control in the performance and social domains. Results suggest that minority group members minimize discrimination because the consequences of doing so are psychologically beneficial. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)