Linear arrays of 1, 8, and 9 letters were exposed while S read off the items of the letter sequence while maintaining constant fixation. By this procedure, serial position effects were studied in the absence of requirements for scanning the array quickly, as in a tachistoscopic display, and for remembering a large number of items, as in a delayed whole report. Despite the absence of these requirements, typical serial position curves were generated. Serial position effects were partially ameliorated by the introduction of blank spaces into the array. Performance was influenced both in the immediate vicinity of the blank spacings, as well as extending over a large portion of the array. The data were interpreted in terms of lateral masking effects associated with adjacent elements. N onuniformities in performance with closely placed visual materials have long been subjects of investigation (e.g.

Linear letter arrays of varying lengths were presented monocularly, binocularly, and dichoptically in order to provide locus information concerning previous findings that recognition of letters in such an array follows aU-shaped function over positions. With unlimited viewing time and constant fixation, U-shaped serial position curves were generated under all conditions of viewing. It was concluded that some supraretinal lateral masking effect is involved.

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The present study examined the extent to which perceptual differentiation between spoken questions and statements can be made on the basis of a small set of simple feature detectors. Neurophysiological studies have described “frequency sweep” detectors which might be fruitfully extended to this task. For a number of spoken contexts it was found that a good account of question/statement differentiation can be provided by a model incorporating detectors sensitive to increases (upsweeps) and decreases (downsweeps) in fundamental frequency. This model is consistent with the view that prosodic features may be detected by “preattentive” mechanisms, which involve primitive, parallel processes that extract features without requiring focused attention.

It is proposed that runner's high is mediated by increased endorphin release as induced by placebo responses arising from subjective expectancies and setting.

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