No abstract

Finke and Pinker (1982, 1983) showed subjects an array of dots followed by an arrow in a blank field, and asked them to determine whether the arrow pointed to any of the previously seen dots. Response times were linearly related to the distance between the arrow and the nearest dot, suggesting that subjects spontaneously used an internal scanning or extrapolation process to perform the task. We replicate and extend this finding by varying the retention interval, and by employing a paradigm in which subjects' eyes are closed and the arrows are described to them using a coordinate scheme. We also show that subjects are unable to predict the form of the data when the task simply is described to them. Results suggest that mental scanning along a straight path can be performed on images reconstructed from memory, and that it does not depend on the ongoing perception of a continuous surface, on physical eye movements, or on demand characteristics.In recent years, the phenomenon of mental image scanning has come to occupy a central position in the empirical and theoretical study of imagery. Kosslyn (1973) and Kosslyn, Ball, and Reiser (1978) showed that image scanning can be studied with considerable precision using chronometric methods. When subjects are asked to scan or shift attention between locations in an imagined scene, the time they require varies linearly with the Euclidean distances between the corresponding locations in the actual scene (r = .97 in Kosslyn, et al., 1978). Since then, data from imagery-scanning experiments have been used in three ways. First, the phenomenon itself has played an important role in debates over the format of image representation, with Kosslyn and his collaborators arguing that scanning implicates an

This study addressed the understudied topic of community functioning among released insanity acquittees. Items from the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale, the Short Form of the Jesness Behavior Checklist, and the U.S. Department of Labor's Current Population Survey were used along with some original items to compose a 78-item behavioral and psychiatric functioning questionnaire. Analysis of clinician ratings of California outpatients (mostly male, White, violent insanity acquittees) produced 12 social, behavioral, and psychiatric scales with acceptable internal and interrater reliabilities. Ratings of clients who subsequently received good discharges were higher on all scales (ps < .01) than were ratings of reoffenders and hospital revokees. Clients improved over time (ps < .01) on the Employment, Social Supports, and Independence and Compliance scales. The questionnaire provides richer information about community outcomes than do recidivism statistics alone.

No abstract