The effects of visual field (right or left), mode of presentation (unilateral or bilateral), and response mode (manual or verbal) on reaction time were investigated in a Sternberg task. Subjects responded with their left hands, with their right hands, or verbally to indicate whether a stimulus was in or out of a memory set. Unilateral presentation produced significantly shorter reaction times than bilateral presentation did (p <.001). Stimuli in the memory set were responded to more quickly (p <.001) than were those out of the memory set. Presentation mode interacted with visual field (p <.01). Reaction times to left visual field stimuli were significantly shorter only when stimuli were presented bilaterally. Response mode interacted with memory set (p <.001). Reaction times for letters in the memory set were faster than those for letters out of the memory set for manual but not for verbal responses. These results pose problems for interpreting memory set and divided visual field studies.

Personal comments about Shinkuro Iwahara by two of his teachers and a colleague in graduate school are presented.

Originally published in Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 1971, Vol 16(5), 333. Reviews the book, Organismic Psychology and Systems Theory by Ludwig Von Bertalanffy (1968). Inaugurating the Heinz Werner Lecture Series (in 1966), these two lectures by the distinguished biological theoretician make up a thin volume. Nevertheless, they do constitute a wide-ranging critique of much of modern American psychology (especially the behavioristic wing). They also provide some theoretical underpinnings for general systems theory, to which the author has been a prime contributor. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)