Phenomenology has made an important contribution to understanding the human mind by offering a rigorous description of consciousness. This essay's intent is to provide a familiarity with the vocabulary and concepts of phenomenology as an aid to the general scholar. (Author/JB)

Demonstrates that evaluative connotations of personality characteristics have more persuasive effect on interpersonal judgment for persons low in cognitive complexity than for cognitively complex persons. Stresses need for conceptualizing interpersonal judgment as function of interaction between cognitive complexity and evaluative requirements of…

Explored personality correlates of pain perception and tolerance in a nonmedical sample and setting. Results showed no significant correlations with personality measures and cold-pressor scores, but a significant relationship between pain tolerance and cognitive focus; those who focused on the experimental situation had much shorter tolerance…

Children aged 48 - 77 months were given experience in either color oddity or nominal class sorting prior to a transfer task that tested their ability to apply the oddity rule ("which one doesn't belong") to three picture arrays for which solution was based on nominal class membership. (RH)

This study tested whether the first level in processing orientation information results in perceiving whether a shape is upright or nonupright. Theory states that nonupright orientations are not distinguished from each other. As predicted, three- and four-year-olds discriminated upright from nonupright pictures more readily than they discriminated…

Eight experiments involving 99 college students examined the role of edge-assignment in a contour matching task. Edge-matching performance was not based solely on a raw description of the edges themselves. Results suggest a pervasive tendency within the visual system to go beyond the edges toward figural shapes. (SLD)

Examined the processing of potential auditory and visual cues that differentiate statements from echoic questions. Found that both auditory and visual cues reliably conveyed statement and question intonation, were successfully synthesized, and generalized to other utterances. (Author/VWL)

It is proposed that there is a modular but interconnected system underlying the perceived hierarchical organization of objects. The discussion centers on neural and cognitive mechanisms of organizing objects within objects in at least four separate subsystems. (SLD)

Two experiments investigated lateral asymmetries in eight-month-olds' perception of contour-altered and contour-preserved melody changes. Found that infants who heard a contour-altered change showed a left-ear advantage, whereas infants who heard a contour-preserved change showed a right-ear advantage. The pattern of lateralization for melody…

Discusses the role of theoretical knowledge in seeing and makes the case that direct and indirect forms of cognitive perception are pervasive forms of seeing in educational practice, and that both forms are fundamentally theory laden. Suggests that theoretical knowledge enhances our capacity to see in practice. (SLD)

In this study, the looking behavior of 16 autistic and 14 non-autistic children toward cartoon-like scenes that included a human figure was measured quantitatively using an infrared eye-tracking device. Fixation behavior of autistic children was similar to that of their age-and IQ-matched normal peers. Results do not support the idea that autistic…

Describes the Verbal Transformation Effect (VTE): When listeners hear the same word repeated very many times at a rapid rate, the word tends to be perceived as other words. Reports lexical effects in the VTE and examines their cause. (Author/VWL)

Humans are fast and accurate at performing an animal categorization task with natural photographs briefly flashed centrally. Here, this central categorization task is compared to a three position task in which photographs could appear randomly either centrally, or at 3.6 [degrees] eccentricity (right or left) of the fixation point. A mild…