Reduction or Augmentation? why We need Two “Planks” before Deciding

This note concentrates on two developments since the experimentally based concepts of the reducer and augmenter were introduced a decade and a half ago by Petrie and colleagues (5). These two are chosen because they emphasize how obsolete is the proposal of Baker, et al. that we discard the data from the second session of the investigation in determining the perceptual characteristics of juvenile delinquents. (1) An atypical perceptual modulation pattern occurs in adults with known abnormalities of the nervous system. A considerable number of juvenile delinquents present the same atypical ‘stimulus-governed’ pattern. The only way to date of identifying the stimulus-governed person, who differs in important ways from the rest of the population, is by having his performance from two sessions to allow for comparison. The stimulus-governed person is wrongly characterized on one session alone. (2) The neurophysiological finding that augmenters have larger cortical-evoked responses than have reducers is based on measurements combining the information from two sessions. Other spinal neurophysiological correlates are similarly based. Thus, the bridge between reduction and augmentation on a perceptual level and these neurophysiological correlates was built on two ‘planks.’ The economy of discarding one of these planks, as suggested by Baker, et al., would prevent our using this vital bridge.