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The published literature on attitudes toward environment and space has neglected ambiguity and ambivalence, an aspect of human psychology which we all recognize, but one which is difficult to measure. Three conditions promote ambiguity and ambivalence: 1) complex environments (stimuli); 2) the discrepancy between the mind's search for symmetry and life's bias in favor of movement and of certain psychological values; and 3) the tendency for feelings and primitive concepts to polarize. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines some relationships between generality and ambiguity for a set of words. Generality's reference to the inclusiveness of a class which the word names; Description of the ambiguity of a word as a condition where a word evokes more than one meaning response in a perceiver; Suggestion that no functional difference between the concepts of generality and ambiguity was perceived by the participating subjects.

The article sheds light on the joinder of claims under alternate ambiguities in the United States. Ambiguous gifts in wills are treated with very scant courtesy by the English courts. Unless the ambiguity can be removed by extrinsic evidence, the gift fails to take effect; the principle being that an unambiguous disposition is necessary to defend the title of the heir at law, next of kin, residuary devisee or legatee, or person entitled in default of appointment. There are many cases, however, in which the ambiguity is very limited in extent.

Examines the "parol evidence" rule in United States law in relation to the construction of writings. Case of wills; Statute of Wills; Questions of ambiguity; Maxim by Bacon on the ambiguity in writing; Edward Altham's Case; Extrinsic matter which might help in construing a document.

The central theme of this study is that a relationship exists between an individual's role changes and self changes. This is not a new idea. Lindesmith and Strauss discuss the effects of status changes on personality. Kuhn, building on the work of Mead, Cooley, and others, theoretically implies this. Sarbin cites a considerable body of empirical evidence in support of the statement that role enactments are related to four types of psychological changes, somatic changes, changes in performance, changes in preferences for attention deployment, and changes in cognitive dispositions, attitudes, values, opinions, and beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explains that rule relaxation and system combination produced a substantial increase in the proportion of classifiable MMPI profiles from both inpatient and outpatient settings. However, the resolution of ambiguities in classification that result from such procedures might require a considerable investment of clinical time. The potential value of increasing the number of classifications by these procedural modifications may also be diminished by problems with accuracy of classification. While the criterion employed in this study has sufficient limitations to require cautious interpretation of the findings, it does appear that the characteristics of the actuarial systems are altered significantly by rule relaxation.

This study investigates into the normative meaning and the variance of meaning of each of thirteen terms of number or amount and compares with similar data obtained by the another research about 25 years earlier. Although this time has elapsed and although new subjects have been used and the section of the country from which most of them came was different, normative meanings found in the forties were strikingly similar to those of the seventies. The same is also true, with two exceptions, for the degree of variance or ambiguity. However, the variance or ambiguity of these terms of number or amount should warn writers and speakers to use such terms with caution, particularly where more precise quantitative descriptions can be given.

This article presents research concerned with superficially ambiguous sentences and the acoustic cues for their spoken disambiguation. A set of sentences containing the phrase "good flies quickly" in each of two constituent structurings (for example, "the good flies quickly past" and "the good flies quickly passed") was read by five trained readers. The recorded readings of this phrase were then excised from the full sentences and presented to two groups of listeners. One group was asked to judge the location of the "sentence break" in each reading, while the other group was asked whether good or flies was "most stressed" in each reading.

An experimental analogue of the initial interview is used to investigate the effects of interviewer ambiguity-specificity and topical focus, i.e., a low- vs. a high-anxiety arousing topic, on interviewee vocabulary diversity, measured by the type-token ratio. This paper is one of a series dealing with the effects of both the ambiguity level and the anxiety arousing potential in an interviewer's remarks on interviewee's responses. In the present study authors are concerned with the effects of the above two interviewer variables on interviewee vocabulary diversity, as measured by the types token-ratio, i.e., the ratio of different words (types) to the total number of words (tokens).

Describes the effect of hostile context in resolving the ambiguity of stimulus words. Role of hostility in the life history of juvenile delinquents; Basis of the characteristics of prior context; Details on the production of hostile associates.

This article presents a modified procedure for identifying the Russian adverbial modifier or predicative complement and providing its correct English equivalent by mechanical translation. Earlier, attempts were made to formulate an unambiguous set of operational instructions which would enable an electronic computer to deal with a certain problem in the syntax of Russian; namely, to identify the Russian adverbial modifier or predicative complement, and to supply its correct English equivaIent. The set of instructions which we developed was based upon the examination of approximately 31,000 running words of Russian scientific text.

This article focuses on syntactic function by linear context. In an earlier paper, scholars attempted to formulate an unambiguous set of operational instructions which would enable an electronic computer to deal with a certain problem in the syntax of Russian; namely, to identify the Russian -o/-e/-ee adverbial modifier or predicative complement, and to supply its correct English equivalent. The set of instructions which we developed was based upon the examination of approximately 31,000 running words of Russian scientific text.

The article sets out a mechanical procedure for eliminating lexical ambiguities in machine translation in cases where a word in the source language has a number of equivalents in the target language. It can be argued for this method that it does away with the need for multiple meaning analyses, for "look-up" operations, and for some machine subroutines and programming, and thus minimizes machine time. Furthermore, it is generally agreed that machine translation will be realized for one limited universe at a time and not for "language" as a whole.

The article investigates ways in which grammatical number of a Russian noun is identified whenever form alone fails to provide the distinction by researchers from Ann Arbor, Michigan. In this study, a set of rules has been constructed to resolve the ambiguity of the grammatical number of certain Russian nouns. These rules were tested on 2,655 ambiguous nouns taken from a 30,152 word text in the field of physics. By making certain modifications, the validity of the rules was increased to approximately 99 percent.

This article reports on some relationships between stimulus structure and ambiguity in the solution of anagrams. Frequent responses, such as Popular responses on the Rorschach, usually have limited personal reference while infrequent responses are richer in personal meaning for the subject. Frequent responses are primarily stimulus-determined and infrequent responses are primarily need-determined. Also in a normal population frequent or stimulus-determined responses to test materials of limited structure appear to be less ambiguous, more definite, to the subject than infrequent responses.

The purpose of this study is to report the development and tests of a model of organizational behavior. The model was developed out of theory, research, and an interpretation of interview findings in the firm studied. A characterization of the firm is made in terms of current theory and research. Questionnaires and measurement scales designed, to test the model are described. Measures of organizational and leadership practices served as predictors. Dependent measures were satisfaction, perceived effectiveness, anxiety, and propensity `to leave. Role conflict and role ambiguity scales were treated as predictor, intervening, and as dependent variables in the model. Selected hypotheses are presented and tested. Predictors tended to relate in expected directions to role measures and dependent variables. Role measure hypotheses were generally supported, and role ambiguity was a better predictor and intervening (partialled) variable than role conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a mailed-questionnaire study of 156 staff registered nurses, perceived role clarity was related negatively to voluntary turnover, propensity to leave, and job tension, and positively to work satisfaction. The correlations of role clarity with voluntary turnover, propensity to leave, and work satisfaction were nonsignificant for nurses classified as low on a need-for-clarity index; the correlations were significantly higher for nurses with a high need for clarity. The correlations between role clarity and job tension were significant for both subgroups. The concepts of role clarity, the rigidity of role specifications, and the conditions of role specificity, as opposed to the processes of role specification, were discussed with regard to organizational theory and organizational change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a reply by the author on the clarifications being given by Jaroslav H&acutejek on the the authors allegation of the ambiguity surrounding the term "Ordinary Deviation," which was mentioned by H´jek in one of his lectures in the 6th Berkeley symposium.