Blank Mind Research Articles

Imitation or Early Imitation: Towards the Problem of Primary Data Entry

The paper highlights the discrepancy between newborns' communication disability and their successful performance in social tasks. The author believes that the "blank mind" can only acquire social meanings by social interaction; it is the only possible way of knowledge acquisition that obeys Nature's laws. There is no other mechanism of transmitting information about social reality to the "blank mind", which can help newborns succeed in imitation. In specific, the article discusses: (1) the terms "early imitation" and "imitation", showing them as two different phenomena of mirror actions in, respectively, newborns and infants (at 8-12 month-olds); (2) the lack of evidence on matching in studies may show that experiments on "early imitation" did not consider emotional arousal as an independent variable of their research; (3) the problem of Primary Data Entry (PDE), how a "blank mind" acquires the first social meanings to initiate knowledge acquisition.

Improving orthodontic patients' and parents' information recall with use of audio-visual presentation and mind mapping exercises.

Design Randomised controlled trial, with blinding of operators and outcome assessors.Study population English-speaking patients aged 10 or older and parents with capacity to consent were given a 45-minute audio-visual presentation and written information on orthodontic treatment in one of three formats, either leaflets from British Orthodontic Society, generic mind map or blank mind maps.Data analysis A 30-item closed-ended questionnaire was used to test knowledge of patients and parents before (T0), at 30 minutes (T1) and 6 weeks (T2) after provision of presentation and written information. Questionnaire scores at T0, T1 and T2 were analysed using box plot, histogram and Shapiro-Wilk test.Results Ninety-three patients and 89 parents were eligible for the study, of which 88 patients (94.6%) and 77 parents (86.5%) have completed questionnaires at T0, T1 and T2. There were no significant differences in scores at T0 between the three groups. After presentation and written information were given, all three participant groups scored higher at T1 and T2. The increase in score was higher in mind map groups.Conclusions Use of audio-visual presentation and written information has improved information recall of patients and parents. The study suggests that mind maps are a superior format of written information than leaflets.

Critique of John Locke Objection to the Innate Ideas

The debate about innetivism is not a new subject in philosophy. From the earlier philosophers up to the recent ones, the main question that remains is: men are born with some ideas or we only know through experience? In this study, the emphasis will not be the process of human knowledge but the controversy in the objection of Locke to the innate Idea. From the beginning of his objection, John Locke shows that we are born with empty mind. Then through experience we build the knowledge little by little. But later on, Locke recognizes that it’s also possible that children may have some ideas from the womb. They may experience wants, diseases, hunger, and heat. To him many of those ideas which were produced in the minds of children, in the beginning of their sensation, if they are not repeated in future, then they are quite lost. If we choose the fact that people are born with ideas from pre-experience, that view is more scientific and more logical than the religious view of Plato. The paper concludes that even though there is no complete agreement on how innate ideas are made, we did not come in the world with blank mind and what is important is not how innate ideas have been made but their existence and application in life.

“Laura was not thinking”: Cognitive Minimalism in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes

Critics have long considered the most distinctive feature of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes (1926) to be the generic shift from realism to fantasy when Laura Willowes becomes a witch and makes a pact with Satan. This article however examines Warner’s underappreciated and unusual depiction of Laura’s consciousness. Although her decisions are the crux of the plot, Laura is regularly presented as having a blank mind, experiencing mere sensation, or even “not thinking” at all. Drawing from cognitive science as well as narratology, this article maintains that Warner’s “cognitive minimalism” brings her into connection with contemporaneous modernist experiments from which she would otherwise seem to stand apart. The apparent move to fantasy is in the service of depicting minimal mental functioning. This cognitive minimalism, moreover, serves as an implicit social critique by pointing to the lack of representation of the thinking of an undervalued category—the unmarried woman.

METATHEORETICAL DECISIONS FOR THE GROUNDED THEORY RESEARCH OF SERMONS ON POVERTY AND TO THE POOR AS LISTENERS

The challenge of working with metatheoretical assumptions in a postmodern situation of a plurality of scientific-theoretical approaches is taken up in this article. The question whether the researcher must, in a practical-theological study, begin with theory analysis first or with praxis analysis first, is discussed. In sermon analysis with a grounded theory, abductive approach, the question is whether we have to begin with a blank mind. In order to answer this question the theory-praxis relationship is discussed. This leads to the argument of the article that wherever we begin the researcher cannot work without a theological perspective and in the case of homiletics, without a homiletical-theoretical framework.

Evidence to action in the developing world: what evidence is needed?

Can it work? Will it work? Is it worth it? These three questions constantly face health policy-makers, for whom access to the most relevant and useful evidence is critical. However, evidence in the clinical care context differs from evidence in the public health and health policy domains. It is often difficult to apply rigid hierarchies of evidence to public health policy. Although randomized controlled trials and systematic reviews are methods of choice when assessing the effectiveness of medications, complex health-care problems pose different challenges.1–3 Evidence providers and health policy-makers from developing countries have insisted that evidence needs to be broader than that based solely on randomized controlled trials. Observational studies, qualitative research and even “experience”, “know-how”, consensus and “local knowledge” should also be taken into account. For example, Indonesia tapped into village wisdom to formulate actions and policies to combat avian influenza.4 Locally-generated evidence reformed social health insurance in Mexico5 and Thailand; it also improved primary health care in the United Republic of Tanzania6 and mental health-care policy in Viet Nam.7 In these five examples, findings were interpreted and utilized against a background of global evidence and experience from different settings. In terms of generating the evidence, policy-makers should be involved from the start in defining the specific policy question and processes for developing the evidence base and interpreting reviews and evidence summaries. Research provides only one type of evidence, and policy decisions are invariably made within the context of other social, political, cultural and economic factors.2 Different policy questions may require different types of evidence. Arguably, evidence for policy and action in a public health context also requires innovation beyond the health sector. As an example, policies for vaccination strategies in humans can be combined with those for animals to achieve synergies and efficiencies in resource-poor settings.8 Timeliness is another important issue. The reality is that policy-makers are under pressure to implement policies rapidly, often in the absence of relevant evidence on the likely outcomes of their decisions. What is WHO doing to ensure that national research agendas are designed to address this lack of evidence? Through EVIPNet (Evidence-informed Policy Networks),9 WHO is working to build capacity in countries for linking the producers and users of knowledge. The Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research and WHO are promoting more health systems research, including context-specific research that is often most needed for national decision-making.10 Evidence-based public health is an exciting and emerging field. However, it is still in its infancy, is comparatively imprecise and definitely needs more support for its further development. It bravely tries to merge the “science” with the “art” of health policy-making, and takes into account the reality that “scientific findings do not fall on blank minds that get made up as a result. Science engages with busy minds that have strong views about how things are and ought to be ...”11 A realistic view of evidence in health policy-making will serve to move the field forward for the benefit of all. ■

An Aesthetics of Enclosure: James Merrill's Inner Rooms

Everything beyond a certain distance is dark, and yet everything is full of being around us. Teilhard de Chardin THROUGHOUT HIS CAREER, AMERICAN POET James Merrill's resources against disintegrative forces of all kinds were two--love and art. These co-exist for him most intensely in poems capable of surrounding and obviating the consequences of fear and death. Many critics have documented Merrill's predilection for interiors, both as settings and as tropes for poetic form (e.g., Baird; Hollander, Mirror; Kalstone). In his own essay, titled Acoustical Chambers;' Merrill explains his liking for arrangements: Interior spaces, the shape and correlation of rooms in a house, have always appealed to me. Trying for a blank mind, I catch myself instead revisiting a childhood bedroom on Long Island.... fondness for given arrangements might explain how instinctively I took to quatrains, to octaves, and sestets, when I began to write poems. Stanza is after all the Italian word for room. (R 3) (1) Merrill also wrote about the poet Daniel Hall, admiring his compact arenas, his Escher-like spatial dynamics, and commenting that enclosure beckons to him like an open road (DH ix-x). Merrill's own poetry attests to a similar attraction to the aesthetics of enclosure. Instead of perceiving language as a prison house from which to escape, he seems to yearn for more intense interiority, for the solace and liberty of narrow rooms. Inner Room (1988) signaled by its very title Merrill's sense of the possibilities of interior images and settings. Indeed, this late approach to the inner room constitutes an arrival of some significance. Sooner or later one touches upon matters that are all the for not being easily talked about, Merrill said in an interview, concerning the darkest secrets of technique (R 36). When Merrill takes on these realer matters, these darkest secrets, he expands for us the meaning and vocabulary of interiority, and he defends his deep sense of aestheticism in a critical climate disinclined to appreciate it. What kind of sanctum does the collection represent? How does it present its own interiority? What does it mean for a poet of interiors to move further inside? What is excluded, what invited in, and what are the conditions of entry for the reader? What kinds of language are appropriate? What happens or doesn't happen there? Is this collection a renewal of Merrill's conviction about the value of poetic closure and the composed self or an inspired questioning of these notions? What are the aesthetics and the poetics (in Gaston Bachelard's sense) of inmost space? Inner room poems are likely to be self-consciously concerned with their own refinements and their own spatial formalities. This is certainly true about a sonnet from Inner Room, The Parnassians which figures poetic refinement as an enclosed inner space, a loge at the opera. To describe Parnassian poetry, Merrill uses the voice of a footman in attendance at the sophisticated ritual of a night at the opera; yet he claims other linguistic allegiances, namely to language and meanings: Theirs was a language within ours, a loge Hidden by bee-stitched hangings from the herd. mere exchanged glance between word and word Took easily the place, the privilege Of utterance. Here therefore all was tact. Pairs at first blush ill-matched, like turd and monstrance, Tracing their cousinage through consonants, Communed, ecstatic, through the long entr'acte. Without our common meanings, though, that world Would have slid headlong to apocalypse. We'd built the Opera, changed the scenery, trod Grapes for the bubbling flutes mild fingers twirled; As footmen, by no eyelid's twitch betrayed Our scorn and sound investment of their tips. (IR 39) Since the poem is so beautifully realized, with elegant and sophisticated rhymes, modulated rhythms, and varied caesura] pauses, there is never any doubt that the poet behind the speaker is himself avowedly a Parnassian, one who delights in the complicated and ecstatic familial interactions of language. …

Visualizing the Economy

Arjo Klamer Visualizing the Economy VISIONS WHEN ROBERT HEILBRONER WRITES ABOUT THE VISION OF ECONOMISTS, he him self appears to be a visionary (Heilbroner, 1956; Heilbroner and Milberg, 1995). It is as if he sees something that others do not. Economists usually do not speak of their vision. Which economist would step forward to state: “I have a vision”? Economists are expected to formulate models, conduct statistical tests, and state their results. It is yeoman’s work they do; not the stuff of visionaries. Even so, Heilbroner insists there is vision beneath that work too. If we presume he is right, then we must ask: Exactly what is a vision? How do we recognize it? And in what way does it matter? The first source to go to for an answer is Schumpeter’s The History of Economic Analysis (1972 [1954]). Economic theorizing begins with a vision, Schumpeter tells us. He speaks of a pre-analytic act. “Obviously, in order to be able to posit to ourselves any problems at all, we should first have to visualize a distinct set of coherent phenomena as a worth­ while object of our analytic effort” (41). How this is possible is not quite clear, especially if the researcher works “from scratch,” as Schumpeter presumes. No researcher starts with a blank mind. Each one of us approaches a line of research loaded with our own concepts and meth­ ods, as well as the work of others. But Schumpeter is not interested in making a deep epistemological point. Being the historian, he is concerned with revolutions in economic analysis. He attributes such revolutions (my term, not his) to the intervention of a vision: “[Vision] may re-enter the history of every established science each time some­ body teaches us to see things in a light of which the source is not to be social research Vol 71 : No 2 : Summer 2 0 0 4 251 found in the facts, methods, and results of the preexisting science” (41). It is as if at some point in time, while economists are doing their thing, an economist steps up and states: “I have a vision” and proceeds to show how this vision propels a change in economic analysis. We would now say, with Thomas Kuhn, that such a visionaiy intervention can bring about paradigmatic change in economics. Schumpeter’s entre­ preneur comes to mind. Like the entrepreneur, the visionaiy econo­ mist has a creative insight that interrupts the routines and initiates a new research program. The important point is that the development of economic analysis is more than a logical progression of ever more truth­ ful models. It rather shows leaps and bounds that are not accounted for in strictly logical terms. The historian Schumpeter needs the visionary and his vision to account for what happens in economics as a science, just as he needs the visionaiy entrepreneur to account for the dynamics of capitalism. Schum peter’s exam ple is the intervention by John Maynard Keynes. The way he imagines it is that Keynes already had his novel vision in The Economic Consequences ofthe Peace (1919); Keynes already saw the psychological tendencies that underlie economic processes. But he did not yet incorporate them in a full-fledged economic analysis. Later, in The General Theory ofEmployment, Interest and Money (1936) he would give these psychological tendencies an analytic expression in the form of the marginal propensity to consume, liquidity preference, and the marginal efficiency of capital. What followed is histoiy—for the history of economic thought, that is. A vision is not arbitrary in Schumpeter’s view. It does not come about “just like that.” Schumpeter alludes to the possibility that an ideology biases the vision of a researcher. He speaks of a habit of ratio­ nalization that makes us see things more as we like to see them than as they are (Schumpeter, 1972: 35). He distinguishes in Keynes’s vision the characteristics of “an English intellectual” facing “England’s declin­ ing capitalism ” (42). Preceding Keynes, Jevons, Walras, Menger, and Marshall had visualized “their economic world” as “a world of numer­ ous independent firm s” (892). We may add that they have presented 252 social research the...

Essential Guide to Acute Care

At last! A book that addresses the needs of every junior doctor faced with the management of acutely sick patients. Concise and readable, its format allows the reader to absorb the principles of human physiology, and to apply them to everyday situations involving critically ill patients. With each chapter being dedicated to a separate physiological ‘insult’, Cooper and Cramp open with a brief outline of what happens under ‘normal’conditions. This is followed by a summary of how physiology adapts under disease conditions. In this way the authors cover oxygen therapy, acid base disturbance,fluid balance, circulatory failure, sepsis, acute renal failure and coma. There are also chapters on identifying the patient at risk, and optimising physiology in the preoperative patient. With a distinct ‘anaesthetic slant’, the layout and emphasis are different to that with which most physicians will be familiar. This is however to its advantage, as it effectively bridges the traditional gap between medicine and critical care. Unlike many texts, the authors have ignored the minutiae and have concentrated on the most relevant and applicable information. Well illustrated throughout, the reader is guided towards establishing a logical approach to the ill patient. With self-test questions relevant to each chapter, it becomes a valuable learning tool. ‘Mini- tutorials’ in each chapter highlight controversies, such as the relative merits of crystalloid versus colloid in f luid resuscitation, or the use of sodium bicarbonate in the treatment of metabolic acidosis. The size of the book lends itself well to being carried in the white coat pocket. However the layout of the text makes it more suited to evening reading, rather than as a bedside reference. Some algorithms summarising the key points of each chapter might have added to the practical uses of the text. Although this book will not help in passing the MRCP examination, it will hopefully make its readers into safer, better clinicians. If you ’ve ever been faced with a sick patient, a blank mind and a room full of expectant faces, then this is the book for you. Dr Stuart Henderson Specialist Registrar in Medicine Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust

Poetry and Terror in Peter Dale Scott's "Coming to Jakarta"

In Peter Dale Scott's forthcoming work, Minding the Darkness, he asks ...did he [David Horowitz] perhaps have a point / about the left's too willing // suspension of judgement? This is the kind of question, calling for an evaluation of one's political beliefs and strategies, that is typical of Scott's recent poetry. Scott's work is one example of a that counters the familiar complaints about contemporary poetry's political irrelevance. His is very much about politics in the late twentieth century. But I would suggest that the political meaning of Scott's work is not located just in his subject matter or the questions that he raises; rather, the politics of his are also determined by the way in which he involves his audience in his project of self-critique. His poems challenge those of us with the time and inclination to peruse Chicago Review or to pick up a New Directions volume of to think about our own role in shaping the institutions and practices of political power. In this essay I argue that Scott's invitation to his readers to recognize our complicity with the terrors effected by our political institutions is especially apparent in the first book of his trilogy, Coming to Jakarta. Coming to Jakarta has three principle subjects, and one of the goals of the poem is to determine a useful relationship between them. The poem opens: There are three desks in my office at one I read Virgil's descent into the underworld at one I try to sort out clippings of failed Swiss banks or of slow killings on meat-hooks in a well-guarded Chicago garage but the third desk this one is where the typewriter stares at me with only a sheet of white paper from which my blank mind is averted with an unmistakable almost diamagnetic force The subjects of this poem are politics, poetry, and Scott himself as he tries to find a way to write about them. The most shocking revelations of Jakarta occur when Scott reveals the U.S. government's involvement in the 1965 massacres in Indonesia, when as many as half a million people were killed over the course of a few months. Scott documents his accusations with marginal references and an extensive bibliography, though he does once take advantage of the fact that he is writing precisely poetry to hazard an informed but unsubstantiated guess about one man's connection to the massacres. But with the exception of his authorization to make this one guess, what recommends this subject matter to poetry? In interviews Scott notes that he first began this poem because he could not get his investigation of the massacre published in any other form. This censorship was a boon for poetry, however, for it spurred Scott to make a poem out of this material, and in so doing he also began to investigate his own - and our - involvement in the perpetuation of the conditions under which such a horrific event could have taken place. Because Scott takes on issues of political import through a lyric that encourages self-reflection, he leads both himself and us to consider the connection between ourselves and the work of states and corporations that we like to think of as removed from ourselves. Large sections of the poem are devoted to speculation on the causes of the massacre. In one section he questions the results of the intersection of U.S. economic and political interests in Indonesia, interests that included the United States' desire to keep the country from becoming a communist domino falling toward Australia or Indochina, and U.S. corporations' investments in extracting maximum profits from the land. After noting the Cold-War choices between nuclear Armageddon or Jonestown mass-suicide, Scott asks: And what if the choices in Java were just as simple - to become a technological graveyard or a Malthusian one rice production beginning to give way to high-yield low-nutrition cassava till petty landlords rid themselves of peasants who had taken over the fields to enforce the government's ineffectual land reform (125) The italicized section in this passage is a quote from Robert Shaplen's Time Out of Hand. …

The Kaspar Hauser Syndrome of 'Psychosocial Dwarfism': Deficient Statural, Intellectual, and Social Growth Induced by Child Abuse

Hauser emerged at the Haller Gate in the city of Nuremberg, Bavaria, on May 26,1828, shrouded in mystery and greatly romanticized. A 17-year-old dwarfed male, with a blank mind and without language, he exhibited a spurt of growth and intellectual and social development, becoming a highly peculiar and limited young man whose origin remained enigmatic when he was assassinated on December 14,1833. His story became the sensation of the day throughout Europe and has been enshrined in literature through the present. In his book, John Money proposes Kaspar Hauser syndrome to designate a previously poorly understood and described constellation of symptoms and findings he and others have noted in small children who had been sequestered in their homes and subjected by their caretakers to extreme neglect and other abuses, lasting to adolescence in some cases. His appears to be the first book-length treatment in the scientific literature of this

Philosophy as I remember it: Locke

Locke was an English appearancist. An appearancist is one who believes that it is more important to look good than to be good because things are nothing but what they appear to be. The truth of an idea, like the beauty of a person, is only skin deep, superficial, and therefore, one never needs to go below the surface to get at it. Locke hoarded his ideas; he saved all of them, even those that were spent. He continuously inflated those that others devalued and therefore eventually placed infinite value on those that were worth nothing. He believed that all of us were born with completely blank minds and that they got filled by experience. His, however, had a slow leak. He argued that our senses pick up everything they come in contact with-that they see, hear, taste, feel, smell, or write about. Ideas, he said, arise from reflecting on all the junk that the senses collected. Whenever an idea came up, Locke put it down, usually on paper (Fig. 1). This was quite easy because none of them had a leg to stand on.

The pupil as philosopher

Discussion of the need for an understanding of the philosophy of science to inform classroom practice is mostly directed at clarifying the nature of science, the history of science, the nature of scientific evidence, and the nature of scientific method for curriculum developers and teachers. The discussion assumes no input from pupils. The constructivist perspective, however, assumes that pupils do not come to lessons with blank minds. What insights and questions do students bring to lessons about issues relevant to the philosophy and history of science? Can these be used to develop understanding? Classroom discussions about the energy concept imply that students have valuable ideas and questions related to the exploration of philosophical issues. Rather than developing curricula to tell students about the philosophy and history of science, this paper argues for exploration of student’s ideas and questions when abstract concepts are being discussed in the classroom.

Matching styles: A historical look

(1984). Matching styles: A historical look. Theory Into Practice: Vol. 23, Matching Teaching and Learning Styles, pp. 3-9.

Where's Johnny?

ALL I COULD SEE in front of me was white. White walls, frozen white on the roof outside my window, icicles hanging from a nearby roof gutter like translucent chandeliers. Rows of houses filled with blank minds; people staring at blank paper trying to fill the pages with anything. To generate thoughts and transfer them to paper, an impossible task. But why? Do writing demons cloud the mind and make writing so painful? The final paper was due in a few weeks. It was to be our perfect paper. A month after handing it in we would be teaching composition to some poor kids. I had no energy to write it and nothing to write about. I disgustedly left the typewriter and sprawled out on the bed. The page was blank so I couldn't even crumple it to vent my frustration. I picked up a book of short stories by Woody Alien and begin reading about a Boston College coed who hired a detective to find out if God was dead. She needed the information for a term paper. This story gave me an idea for my own final paper. There have been many articles on why Johnny can't read or write. Why such a tremendous interest in this fellow Johnny? Just who is he? I was determined to find out and use the material in my final paper. I went back to my typewriter and began writing letters to some of the major publications in which Johnny's story had appeared. After a week of receiving no replies, I began calling the places on the phone. Everyone I spoke with laughed at me. I called the FBI but the most I could get from them was, No comment. At this point I began to suspect conspiracy. There was no logical reason unless the government was now getting into conspiracy as an art form. Conspiracy for conspiracy's sake. One kid could not have any noticeable effect on the national average for standardized tests. My investigation had reached a dead end until one day I looked at a book titled Current Topics in Language (Nancy Ainsworth Johnson, ed.: Cambridge, Mass.: Winthrop, 1976) and came upon an article entitled Juanito's Reading Problems: Foreign Language Interference and Reading Skill Acquisition, by Nancy Modiano. So the plot thickened; either Johnny was using an alias, or matters had been complicated by a new person (or should I say persona) entering the scene. Going on the assumption that Johnny and Juanito were one and the same, I hired a detective to find him. All we had to go on was his name and the fact that he supposedly couldn't read or write. The detective tramped around the Midwest through the snow, made numerous phone calls, and followed around certain literary editors. After two weeks the situation seemed hopeless and I could no longer afford her fees, that is, if I was to pay the next semester's tuition. It was at the back of

Editorial: Approaches to local immunotherapy.

Writers are known to go through periods of mental aridity when no ideas germinate. Medical editorialists are no exception. Facing the challenge of a blank page with a blank mind, how do they put pen to paper? How do they meet a deadline during such agraphic crises? "Crises"? Only a short time ago crisis to a physician meant a sudden resolution of lobar pneumonia, a new lease on life. Now, not to be outdone by the front-page oil crisis, environmental crisis, sex crisis, and the like, medicine features its own crises of medical school admissions, drug abuse, malpractice, and above all, the crisis in health care delivery. "Delivery"? Is it not something we used to associate with a physician assisting in the birth of a new life? Now the term evokes visions of messenger boys depositing newspapers at the door. Is it because medical care has become less significant? "Significant"?

Editorial: Then and now.

Writers are known to go through periods of mental aridity when no ideas germinate. Medical editorialists are no exception. Facing the challenge of a blank page with a blank mind, how do they put pen to paper? How do they meet a deadline during such agraphic crises? "Crises"? Only a short time ago crisis to a physician meant a sudden resolution of lobar pneumonia, a new lease on life. Now, not to be outdone by the front-page oil crisis, environmental crisis, sex crisis, and the like, medicine features its own crises of medical school admissions, drug abuse, malpractice, and above all, the crisis in health care delivery. "Delivery"? Is it not something we used to associate with a physician assisting in the birth of a new life? Now the term evokes visions of messenger boys depositing newspapers at the door. Is it because medical care has become less significant? "Significant"?

Experimental observations on the contextual nature of hypnosis

Abstract The distinctive mental context of hypnosis was explored experimentally with a well-trained male undergraduate S. First, a context effect was demonstrated by presenting 2 sets of stimuli on a trial, 1 under the hypnotic condition and 1 under the waking, and testing their subsequent salience in hypnotic or waking report states. Next a series of attempts was made to isolate elements of the hypnotic context–-closed eyes, lowered mental arousal, and “blank mind”–-none of which proved to be sufficient in itself to account for the observed phenomenon. A noted greater difficulty of spontaneous information transmission from hypnotic to waking condition than vice versa led to additional experiments in which prior hypnotic “priming,” in the absence of specific posthypnotic suggestion, had no effect on related waking tasks. Finally a theoretical interpretation was proposed to explain how initially weak hypnotic inputs, registered within a highly distinctive mental context, can acquire virtually complete cogn...

A quantitative survey of kappa and alpha EEG activity

An electronic EEG scorer was used to quantify temporal kappa and occipital alpha EEG activities in 100 normal subjects while they were performing hard and easy tasks with their eyes open and closed. The percent of subjects with various EEG scores was shown, in addition to the average data which were statistically evaluated. The distribution of kappa scores suggests that differences between subjects are quantitative rather than qualitative. Hard tasks, such as adding, tended to give higher kappa scores and lower alpha scores than easy tasks, such as counting and keeping a “blank mind”. The increase in kappa activity on hard tasks was found both with eyes closed and eyes open, whereas the decrease in alpha activity on hard tasks was found only when the eyes were closed. Regardless of task difficulty, both alpha and kappa scores tended to be higher when the eyes were closed than when they were open. The effect of eye condition was much greater on the alpha scores than on the kappa scores. The EEG scores and the findings were highly reliable. Evidence supporting the distinction between kappa and alpha EEG activities was presented. Simultaneous kappa and alpha scores were quantitatively accounted for by assuming that the kappa and alpha activities are independent and occur simultaneously by chance. Small, but statistically reliable, correlations were found between kappa scores and height, weight, education, and anxiety estimates.