Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Tangible Pictures: Viewpoint Effects And Linear Perspective In Visually Impaired People, Morton A. Heller, Deneen D. Brackett, Eric Scroggs, Heather Steffen, Kim Heatherly, Shana Salik

Morton A. Heller

Perception of raised-line pictures in blindfolded-sighted, congenitally blind, late-blind, and low-vision subjects was studied in a series of experiments. The major aim of the study was to examine the value of perspective drawings for haptic pictures and visually impaired individuals. In experiment 1, subjects felt two wooden boards joined at 458, 908, or 1358, and were instructed to pick the correct perspective drawing from among four choices. The first experiment on perspective found a significant effect of visual status, with much higher performance by the low-vision subjects. Mean performance for the congenitally blind subjects was not significantly different from that …

The Haptic Muller-Lyer Illusion In Sighted And Blind People, Morton A. Heller, Deneen D. Brackett, Kathy Wilson, Keiko Yoneyama, Amanda Boyer, Heather Steffen

Morton A. Heller

We examined the effect of visual experience on the haptic Mu« ller-Lyer illusion. Subjects made size estimates of raised lines by using a sliding haptic ruler. Independent groups of blind- folded-sighted, late-blind, congenitally blind, and low-vision subjects judged the sizes of wings-in and wings-out stimuli, plain lines, and lines with short vertical ends. An illusion was found, since the wings-in stimuli were judged as shorter than the wings-out patterns and all of the other stimuli. Subjects generally underestimated the lengths of lines. In a second experiment we found a nonsignificant difference between length judgments of raised lines as opposed to …

Implicit Religion And The Curvilinear Relationship Between Religion And Death Anxiety, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

Debate over the relationship of religion to death anxiety has included the opposing views of Malinowski, who held that religion lessened death anxiety, and Radcliffe-Brown, who argued that religion increased death anxiety. Homans' theoretical synthesis of these viewpoints was tested by Leming, who concluded that the empirical relationship was curvilinear, meaning that both high and low religious involvements resulted in low death anxiety while middle-range attachments did not.

Reconsideration of this result argues that the presence of death anxiety is not dependent upon social learning, and that either high or low levels of theism leads to the resolution of anxiety …