In 1935, Cooke et al (12) suggested that blocking antibodies were produced in ragweed sensitive patients after pollen inoculation therapy. Actually the existence of antibodies other than reagin against allergens was intimated in the European literature in 1927 (7). [...]

In 1855 Addison described a group of symptoms, among which was a weak thready pulse, which were associated with bilateral descruction of the adrenal glands (1, 2). These findings were the first indication that the adrenal was important in the regulation of blood pressure. [...]

Through the ages, coronary artery disease has been plaguing mankind by the millions every year. Many sudden mysterious and dramatic deaths were attributed to this disease, yet people did not know how it worked. It was only during the advent of the 20th century that medical science began to probe this mystery, especially these last 35 years. [...]

Although he apparently never used it himself, Fick in 1870 elaborated the well known principle, bearing his name, for measuring cardiac output. He expressed it in the same form as it is presently used, i.e. that if one knows the amount of oxygen taken up by the lungs per unit time (or the amount of carbon dioxide eliminated also per unit time) and the difference in concentrations of oxygen (or carbon dioxide) between the arterial and the venous blood, then one can calculate the amount of blood flowing through the lung during that time. [...]

<p> Future cockpits are going to require new onboard technologies (e.g., Cockpit Display of Traffic Information, CDTI) in order to accommodate the responsibilities likely to be delegated to pilots under NextGen. The current study investigated the effects of multiple levels of force feedback on operator performance in a task designed to approximate a CDTI environment. Participants were presented with two different types of force feedback (gravitational and spring force feedback), each with multiple levels of gain. Approach Time, Time Inside Target and Overall Movement Time were recorded. Results demonstrated that the two highest levels of gravitational force significantly reduced Overall Movement Times and Approach Times relative to the lowest level of gravitational force. The two highest levels of gravitational force, however, resulted in largely similar performance and were found to be comparable to performance with a computer mouse. Spring force level only had a main effect on Time Inside Target.</p>

This research concerns the effects of post-exposure verbal description and imaging on subsequent face recognition. In Experiment 1 subjects viewed a sequence of 6 target photographs, and after each, groups of subjects performed one of four tasks. Two were target-directed description tasks, an adjective checklist or an adjective generate task. Other subjects were instructed to image the target face or they performed an irrelevant/distractor task. In the subsequent recognition test subjects looked for the targets in a sequence of 140 facial photographs. The results indicated that the adjective checklist task produced lower recognition performance compared to the adjective generate task. The imaging task produced the highest recognition performance but was not significantly different from the adjective generate task. The irrelevant/distractor task did not significantly differ from the other tasks. Experiment 2 used different adjective checklist and adjective generate forms, and added an adjective rate task. Orthogonal to the post-exposure manipulation was the presence vs. absence of imaging instructions. Like Experiment 1, the results indicated that the adjective generate condition produced higher recognition performance than the adjective checklist condition. The adjective rate task was intermediate but did not differ from the other two description tasks. Imaging instructions did not produce a main effect, but it did interact with post-exposure task. The adjective checklist and adjective rate tasks produced lower recognition when imaging instructions were given compared to when they were not given. However, the adjective generate task produced better recognition with imaging instructions than without. The highest quality descriptions were produced by the adjective generate condition. In addition, the quality of the adjective generate and adjective rate descriptions related to subsequent recognition but the adjective checklist condition did not. The recognition decrements shown by the adjective checklist task are explained primarily in terms of confusion by irrelevant face cues. If verbal descriptions are requested from eyewitnesses, a descriptor generation task is preferred over a descriptor checklist because it does not degrade subsequent recognition, it produces the best quality descriptions, and description quality is diagnostic of subsequent recognition performance.

Experiments reported here demonstrate that imagery can promote priming on perceptual implicit memory tests. In Experiment 1, when subjects were given words during a study phase and asked to form mental images of corresponding pictures, more priming was obtained on a picture fragment identification test than from a condition in which subjects performed a semantic analysis of words. Experiments 2a and 2b replicated the finding of imaginal priming. In Experiment 3, imaginal priming of picture fragment identification occurred for recoverable fragments, but not nonrecoverable fragments. Experiment 4 showed that the imagery effect was restricted to the imaged type of material: imagining pictures (when presented with words) primed picture fragment identification but not word fragment completion. Similarly, when pictures were presented, imagining the corresponding words primed word fragment completion but not picture fragment identification. Overall, results support the hypothesis that imagining engages the same mechanisms used in perception, thereby producing priming.

The goal of this research was to test the effect of display organization on user performance under a situation representative of non-experts' interactions with an online display. Alphabetical, categorical, and random organizations were tested for response time and accuracy on a visual search task (Experiment 1) and on a problem solving task (Experiment 2). Term or definition targets were searched for in displays consisting of items from distinct or overlapping categories. Performance with alphabetical and categorical organizations was similar when targets were terms and categories were distinct, however, these conditions are atypical of non-experts' interactions. Categorical organizations were superior when task difficulty increased. Surprisingly, overlapping categories resulted in decreased accuracy with alphabetical organizations relative to the distinct category conditions, whereas, performance with categorical organizations remained unaffected. This result and evidence suggesting that the individual display items influence how these factors affect performance have implications for interpreting past display organization research.

Effects of distinctiveness have been investigated with explicit memory tests, but not implicit memory tests. Therefore, four experiments compared the effects of two types of distinctiveness on an implicit test (word stem completion) and two explicit tests (word stem cued recall and free recall). Experiments 1 and 2 indicated a highly beneficial effect of instructions to attend to a particular word on its free recall and its primed word stem completion. Experiment 3 showed a nonsignificant effect in word stem completion, while still showing significant effects in word stem cued recall and free recall. Experiment 4, using pictures embedded in word lists as distinctive events, showed no effect in word stem completion or word stem cued recall, but a large effect in free recall. Thus making events distinctive greatly benefits free recall, and may benefit tests with word stems as cues depending on the nature of the distinctive events.

Jensen and Martin (1987) reported that subjects require additional time, and make more errors, when responding to a negative probe in a visual probe recognition task when the memory set contains one word that is either a rhyme of, differs by one letter from, or is a synonym of the probe. The experiments reported in this thesis investigate some aspect of each of these interference effects. Experiment 1 demonstrates that the phonological interference effect is not reduced when subjects must suppress articulation during a 12 second retention interval, and is not increased when subjects must recall the memory set after responding to the probe. This result implies that the phonological interference effect does not result from the retention of the memory set in an articulatory based short-term store. Experiment 2 and 3 demonstrate that similarity of graphemes, not just letters, leads to the graphemic interference effect since the effect was observed even when the probe and memory set were presented in different cases. Secondly, Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrate the suitability of a phonological control against which graphemic interference must be measured. Finally, Experiment 4 reveals that the semantic interference effect may result from directional association as well as synonymy. The results of these four experiments are consistent with several recent models of working memory proposed by Barnard (1985) and Monsell (1984) which propose that working memory involves both activated pre-existing memory traces as well as the temporary storage of trace images.