Current Theorizing Research Articles

Anxiety and Cognitive Processes in Problem Solving

In this paper a trait-state conception of anxiety is presented which incorporates a number of extensions to current theorizing. The conception is a cognitive one in that it emphasizes information processing that occurs with respect to both the trait and state components of anxiety. The conception indicates a number of insights into human problem solving that can be made through a consideration of cognitive processing, anxiety processing, and their interaction. In particular, the role of coping styles in threat reduction and the influence of A-state on specific cognitive processes are examined. Implications for theory and further research are discussed.

Toward the Humanization of Economics

The attacks on the validity of establishment economics are being stepped up. Galbraith accuses this scholarship of being unconcerned with proposals for practical action. Others, looking farther afield, are disturbed by the narrowness of the base of current theorizing and its scholastic formalism. Their studies, less concerned with immediate so? cial reform and more with its guiding foundations, have already identi? fied some of the shortcomings of current economic theory and are pointing more explicitly to the next great tasks for innovating thinkers. Mrs. Joan Robinson in addressing the 1971 meeting of the Amer? ican Economic Association spoke of the second crisis of economic theory.1 It emerges, she said, as did the first one, because of a neglect to include historical time in analysis. She insists that evolution and not equilibrium should be the basic concept of economic theory. Keynes, whose work resolved the first crisis, showed that contrary to the then prevailing laissez-faire orthodoxy, an increase of debt financed invest? ment would increase consumption and saving. This autonomy is not contained in a general equilibrium net. The Neo-Keynesian Orthodoxy, however, fell back again into the equilibrium mold of classical analysis and failed to change the questions from how much to invest to where to invest. Mrs. Robinson sees the study of the evolution of profit and income distribution, rather than mechanistic allocation, as the central task of human economics.

EXTRA-OCULAR FEEDBACK IN BINOCULAR RIVALRY.

Current theorizing has led to the proposal that feedback from contour scanning eye nlovements plays a role in the visibility of the contour scanned. It is assumed that a central mechanism establishes match or mismatch relations between the pattern of stimulation fed back from the extra-ocular muscles and the many patterns of stimulation that may arise from scanning one contour in a field of many. The particular retinal stimulations that match extra-ocular feedback are enhanced in visibility. Thus, in regard to binocular rivalry, rhe expectation is that the stimulus seen on initial viewing will be the one that matches contemporaneous extra-ocular feedback. To test this expectation, binocular rivalry was induced by having S view stereoscopically the red vertical and green horizontal members of a cross. In two previewing conditions, S scanned for 30 sec. with eyes closed. In one condition S scanned vertically and in the other condition, S scanned horizontally. Thus, when S opens his eyes to view the two stimuli, preview conditions have provided, it is assumed, aftereffects of feedback from scanning. These aftereffects provide the hypothesized match with one of the two stimuli presented, viz., vertical preview with vertical stimulus and horizontal preview with horizontal stimulus. All Ss were practiced in reporting by telegraph key the duration that one stimulus was seen alone or in front of the other stimulus. Ss were tested twice for each preview condition. A Latin square design controlled for sequence of conditions within two double fatigue orders.