Computer use in psychology instruction

This paper presents the ways in which psychology departments are using microcomputers for instruction, the types of facilities that they are using, and the varieties of hardware that they employ. These data are related to other data reported over the past 10 years. In addition, a summary of the types of software currently available in all areas of psychology is presented, and areas in which there is a need for further software development are identified. The information reviewed in this paper was compiled from the current software listings available through COMPSYCH, as well as the results of a survey distributed to registered users of COMPSYCH who hold academic positions.     

On the partitioning of squared Euclidean distance and its applications in cluster analysis

The partitioning of squared Eucliean distance between two vectors in M-dimensional space into the sum of squared lengths of vectors in mutually orthogonal subspaces is discussed and applications given to specific cluster analysis problems. Examples of how the partitioning idea can be used to help describe and interpret derived clusters, derive similarity measures for use in cluster analysis, and to design Monte Carlo studies with carefully specified types and magnitudes of differences between the underlying population mean vectors are presented. Most of the example applications presented in this paper involve the clustering of longitudinal data, but their use in cluster analysis need not be limited to this arena.     

Conflict partners and infrastructure use in safety critical events in cycling – Results from a naturalistic cycling study

Accident statistics show that cyclists are at considerable risk of being involved in a crash. However, statistics based on police reports are often heavily biased towards on-road, bicycle–motor vehicle crashes. Crashes that do not involve motorised vehicles or that occur on other types of infrastructure are neglected. Naturalistic cycling methodology appears to be a promising approach to address these issues. The goal of this study was to identify and classify safety critical cycling events involving a variety of conflict partners and covering all types of infrastructure. Thirty-one participants in three age groups had their own bicycles equipped with a data acquisition system. Participants rode their modified bike as usual for a period of four weeks. Over 1600 trips were recorded overall. We were able to identify 77 safety critical events during the observation period. Only 43% of these events involved motorised vehicles as conflict partners. Conflicts with other cyclists and pedestrians accounted for about 57% of the situations. Likewise, less than 35% of the events occurred on-road. The data show that although motorised vehicles are still the single biggest threat to cycling safety, and roads still constitute one of the most crash prone types of infrastructure, the importance of crashes that do not involve motorised road users or occur not on-road should not be underestimated.     

The urban environment and child pedestrian and bicycle injuries: Interaction of ecological and personality characteristics

It is argued that the study of injuries to child pedestrians and cyclists in urban contexts must involve the study of complex elements interacting within a total environment. This complexity, and the need for further research, is illustrated from a study of 400 child victims in an urban, ecological study, and of 67 individually studied child victims and controls. It is argued that the individual vulnerability of some children puts them at high risk when they live in certain types of urban neighbourhoods.     

The Perspectives of Young People of Parents with a Mental Illness Regarding Preferred Interventions and Supports

Young people of parents with a mental illness are at significant risk of developing a mental illness. This risk may be reduced if appropriate interventions are provided. While there are several supports available, their needs are rarely heard in either intervention development or evaluation. This study presents young people’s perspectives of the types of supports they want. One hundred and seventy-two young people (13–17 years) whose parent has a mental illness completed a self-constructed questionnaire and six of these participants engaged in individual follow-up interviews. Frequency data indicated that youth want to learn how to cope or manage their parent’s mental illness and highlighted a need to access support online. Interview thematic analysis reflected a need for psycho-education, confidential and/or anonymous support, and a preference to access information from health care professionals. Given the diversity of views presented, this study suggests that “not one size fits all”.     

Predictions of X-linked inheritance for human characteristics

The conclusion reached by H. Thomas and W. Jamison (Developmental Review, 1981, 1, 274–283) that an observed sex-related difference in water-level task performance is due to an X-linked major gene raises the question of whether available data would be consistent with X-linkage predictions other than the one tested. Several predictions of X-linked inheritance for human characteristics are presented and discussed. It was concluded that although water-level task performance may involve a heritable component, the available data from seven independent studies reviewed by Thomas and Jamison are insufficient for determining the specific mode of genetic transmission.     

The Effective Use of Secondary Data

In primary data analysis the individuals who collect the data also analyze it; for meta-analysis an investigator quantitatively combines the statistical results from multiple studies of a phenomenon to reach a conclusion; in secondary data analysis individuals who were not involved in the collection of the data analyze the data. Secondary data analysis may be based on the published data or it may be based on the original data. Most studies of animal cognition involve primary data analysis; it was difficult to identify any that were based on meta-analysis; secondary data analysis based on published data has been used effectively, and examples are given from the research of John Gibbon on scalar timing theory. Secondary data analysis can also be based on the original data if the original data are available in an archive. Such an archive in the field of animal cognition is feasible and desirable.     

Recognizing Racit Knowledge in Medical Epistemology

The evidence-based medicine movement advocates basing all medical decisions on certain types of quantitative research data and has stimulated protracted controversy and debate since its inception. Evidence-based medicine presupposes an inaccurate and deficient view of medical knowledge. Michael Polanyi’s theory of tacit knowledge both explains this deficiency and suggests remedies for it. Polanyi shows how all explicit human knowledge depends on a wealth of tacit knowledge which accrues from experience and is essential for problem solving. Edmund Pellegrino’s classic treatment of clinical judgment is examined, and a Polanyian critique of this position demonstrates that tacit knowledge is necessary for understanding how clinical judgment and medical decisions involve persons. An adequate medical epistemology requires much more qualitative research relevant to the clinical encounter and medical decision making than is currently being done. This research is necessary for preventing an uncritical application of evidence-based medicine by health care managers that erodes good clinical practice. Polanyi’s epistemology shows the need for this work and provides the structural core for building an adequate and robust medical epistemology that moves beyond evidence-based medicine.An erratum to this article can be found at     

Dimensions underlying Holland's hexagon: Missing link between interests and occupations?

Holland uses a hexagon to model relationships among his six types of vocational interests. This paper provides empirical evidence regarding the nature of the interest dimensions underlying the hexagon. Two studies are reported. Study 1 examines the extent to which two theory-based dimensions—data/ideas and things/people—fit 27 sets of intercorrelations for Holland's types. Three of the data sets involve the mean scores of career groups (total of 228 groups and 35,060 individuals); 24 involve the scores for individuals (total of 11,275). Study 2 explores the heuristic value of the data/ideas and things/people dimensions by determining whether they contribute to the understanding of why interest inventories work. Two data sets covering a total of 563 occupations are used to calculate correlations between the vocational interests of persons and the tasks which characterize the persons' occupations. Each occupation's principal work tasks are determined from job analysis data obtained from the U.S. Department of Labor. Study 1 results provide substantial support for the theory-based dimensions. Study 2 results suggest that interest inventories “work” primarily because they tap activity preferences which parallel work tasks. Counseling and research applications of the data/ideas and things/people dimensions are suggested and implications for interest assessment are noted.     

Comparative research methodology: Cross-cultural studies

Cross-cultural research can make contributions to theory development by identifying groups of people who seem not to behave according to established theories and by increasing the range of independent variables available for study in any one culture. A major methodological orientation to such studies, developed over the last 10 years, is the emic-etic distinction. An emic analysis documents valid principles that describe behavior in any one culture, taking into account what the people themselves value as meaningful and important. The goal of an etic analysis is to make generalizations across cultures that take into account all human behavior. Examples of these approaches are given from studies on ingroup-outgroup relations in Greece and the United States; and studies on the need for achievement and its relation to the need for affiliation. A specific method to document emic and etic principles is presented which involves the development of core items to measure concerns in all cultures under study, and culture-specific items which are designed to measure concerns in one culture that may not be appropriate for all cultures under study. The techniques of back-translation and decentering are related to the emic-etic approach, as are the techniques developed by Triandis which involve the development of research instruments within each culture and the use of factor analysis. The most general approach, applicable to all comparative studies, is the plausible rival hypothesis analysis which forces the research to examine each and every potential explanation for any data set. The suggestion is made that the future of cross-cultural research will depend on its contribution to theory in general psychology, and methods (such as those presented here) will only be a means to the major goal of discovering important, central facts about human behavior.     

Developments in geographical offender profiling: commentary on Bayesian journey-to-crime modelling

The Bayesian approach covered in this special issue complements the earlier ways of exploring offenders' crime location choices. It is different from earlier approaches in dealing directly with large local data sets of solved crimes to develop statistical models as compared with attempts to derive more generic ways of conceptualising an offender's geographical crime pattern. The two approaches can thus be seen to enshrine different epistemologies; the Bayesian being about a process for deriving patterns in geographically specific data sets, the earlier centre-of-gravity-oriented approaches seeking to establish general theories and principles that are broadly independent of any given locality. They are consequently sensitive to different types of bias in the data available. However, the interesting results achieved through the analysis of Bayesian patterns within crime data does further the consideration of the similarities across offenders in their use of locations for crime and thus has theoretical as well as practical implications. Therefore, these two approaches need to build on each other. This complementarity provides a useful example for other areas of Investigative Psychology. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Children Helping Children Program: A Case Illustration

This article highlights the need for community and school-based programs for children of divorce and describes The Children Helping Children Program which was designed to respond to this need. A review of literature indicates that children of divorce typically experience school related problems including poor academic performance, depression, and disturbances in peer relationships. The review also points out that few support group programs are presently available, either in schools or through agencies for these children. Evaluative evidence consisting of parent comments at the conclusion of the program, followup questionnaire data collected at least four months after the program, and pre-post data pertaining to parenting effectiveness suggest that Children Helping Children may be a promising program. The need for further evaluative data in future implementations is discussed.     

Neglected Ends: Clinical Ethics Consultation and the Prospects for Closure

Clinical ethics consultations (CECs) are sometimes deemed complete at the moment when the consultants make a recommendation. In CECs that involve actual ethical conflict, this view of a consult's endpoint runs the risk of overemphasizing the conflict's resolution at the expense of the consult's process, which can have deleterious effects on the various parties in the conflict. This overly narrow focus on reaching a decision or recommendation in consults that involve profound moral disagreement can result in two types of adverse, lingering sequelae: moral distress or negative moral emotions. The problem, succinctly named, is that such consults have insufficient “closure” for patients, families, and providers. To promote closure, and avoid the ills of moral distress and the moral emotions, I argue that CECs need to prioritize assisted conversation between the different stakeholders in these conflicts, what is often referred to as “bioethics mediation.”     

Intimations of immortality and omniscience in early childhood

Children aged three, four and five years, drawn equally from one secular and one religious school in Spain, were questioned about the psychological and biological constraints that apply to two different types of person: an ordinary human being (their best friend) and an extraordinary being (God). Children were asked to assess whether: (1) the knowledge available to either being is constrained by perceptual processes and (2) the life cycle of either being is constrained by biological processes. Three year olds provided few signs of distinguishing between the two types of being. Five year olds, on the other hand, were quite systematic in their differentiation. They judged that the knowledge available to a friend—but not to God—would be constrained by the need for perceptual access and they judged that the life cycle of a friend—but not that of God—would be constrained by the biological processes of birth, growth and death. Implications for current accounts of children's conceptual development are discussed.     

Videoconferencing psychotherapy: a systematic review

Individuals with mental health problems may face barriers to accessing effective psychotherapies. Videoconferencing technology, which allows audio and video information to be shared concurrently across geographical distances, offers an alternative that may improve access. We conducted a systematic literature review of the use of videoconferencing psychotherapy (VCP), designed to address 10 specific questions, including therapeutic types/formats that have been implemented, the populations with which VCP is being used, the number and types of publications related to VCP, and available satisfaction, feasibility, and outcome data related to VCP. After electronic searches and reviews of reference lists, 821 potential articles were identified, and 65 were selected for inclusion. The results indicate that VCP is feasible, has been used in a variety of therapeutic formats and with diverse populations, is generally associated with good user satisfaction, and is found to have similar clinical outcomes to traditional face-to-face psychotherapy. Although the number of articles being published on VCP has increased in recent years, there remains a need for additional large-scale clinical trials to further assess the efficacy and effectiveness of VCP.     

Daily Behavior Report Cards and Systematic Direct Observation: An Investigation of the Acceptability,Reported Training and Use,and Decision Reliability Among School Psychologists

More than ever, educators require assessment procedures and instrumentation that are technically adequate as well as efficient to guide data-based decision making. Thus, there is a need to understand perceptions of available tools, and the decisions made when using collected data, by the primary users of those data. In this paper, two studies that surveyed members of the National Association of School Psychologists with regard to two procedures useful in formative assessment, (i.e., Daily Behavior Report Cards; Systematic Direct Observation), are presented. Participants reported greater overall levels of training and use of Systematic Direct Observation than Daily Behavior Report Cards, yet both techniques were rated as equally acceptable for use in formative assessment. Furthermore, findings supported that school psychologists tend to make similar intervention decisions when presented with both types of data. Implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed.     

Client Record Guidelines

Although the need to keep client records is clear, there is little information available as to how to construct a client record. This article presents guidelines for what data should be contained in intake summaries, along with assessments, treatment plans, case notes, and other supplemental materials.     

Stuttering and the valsalva mechanism: A hypothesis in need of investigation

This note presents the hypothesis than the excessively forceful closure of the mouth of larynx associated with certain types of stuttering may involve a neurological confusion between speech and the human body's Valsalva mechanism, which is designed to increase pulmonary pressure by forceful closure of the upper airway to assist in many types of physical effort. It is suggested that such behavior may result from excessive neuromotor tuning of the Valsalva mechanism prior to speech, especially in situations where the stutterer anticipates the need to “try hard” to speak properly. Such tuning may both interfere with phonation and render the Valsalva mechanism overexcitable to triggering stimuli, such as the increase in subglottal pressure that accompanies the start of articulation.     

A conditioned weight illusion: Reafference learning without a correlation store

Each of 20 female college students repeatedly judged the weight of a heavy metal cylinder dropped repeatedly (180 times) into her waiting hand. The cylinder came to appear lighter to her when the release of the cylinder was accompanied by the onset of an indicator lamp than when it was not, but only providing the onset of the lamp preceded the release of the cylinder by a half second rather than being simultaneous with it. This conditional illusion has implications for von Holst and Mittelstaedt’s well-known thesis that every neural efference leaves an efference copy or corollary discharge of itself in the nervous system to be compared with concurrent neural reafference. Apparently some types of conditioned-efference leave no copies, and objects lifted in part by such unregistered efforts appear lightened accordingly. The illusion illustrates a form of reafference learning that need involve no correlation store (Held, 1961).