Counseling and Human Sexuality: A Training Model

In recent years sexuality has been broadly defined as a fundamental dimension of personality. Mental health practitioners need to respond to the increased awareness of human sexuality as a vital aspect of personal development. To date, few programs or workshops assist mental health counselors in developing the necessary skills to confront sexual concerns in the counseling relationship. This article presents a counseling and human sexuality course model that provides counselors with an information base in human sexuality and assists them in exploring the emotional aspects of sexuality. This course model assumes that mental health counselors will provide a valuable service to their client populations once they have become more willing and able to explore sexual conflicts.     

The Effect of Crowding on Human Task Performance1

In a series of three experiments, groups of people performed tasks under varying conditions of density. The tasks ranged from very simple to complex, from rote memory to a test of creativity. Subjects worked on the tasks for 4 hours at a time for two or three successive days. There were no significant effects of density on performance, nor any consistent trends.     

The Effects of Force and Direction Uncertainty on Choice Reaction Time in an Isometric Force Production Task

The two experiments reported examined the temporal organization of force and direction motor-programming processes in a step-input tracking type task. Both experiments observed a reduction in reaction time in the direction-uncertain conditions compared to the direction-certain ones. Thus it seems as though the direction decision does not have to precede the selection of the proper amount of force. Experiment 2 observed an underadditive interaction between levels of direction uncertainty (certain or uncertain) and levels of force uncertainty (certain or uncertain). This interaction was interpreted as support for a parallel organization of the processes responsible for the programming of force and direction and thus, strongly supports the parallel model of programming recently proposed by Klapp (1977a, b).     

Ethical Challenges Arising in the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Overview from the Association of Bioethics Program Directors (ABPD) Task Force

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised a host of ethical challenges, but key among these has been the possibility that health care systems might need to ration scarce critical care resources. Rationing policies for pandemics differ by institution, health system, and applicable law. Most seem to agree that a patient’s ability to benefit from treatment and to survive are first-order considerations. However, there is debate about what clinical measures should be used to make that determination and about other factors that might be ethically appropriate to consider. In this paper, we discuss resource allocation and several related ethical challenges to the healthcare system and society, including how to define benefit, how to handle informed consent, the special needs of pediatric patients, how to engage communities in these difficult decisions, and how to mitigate concerns of discrimination and the effects of structural inequities.     

延迟时间与反应设置对任务切换的影响

采用任务线索范式,探讨了在不同反应设置条件下,延迟时间对任务切换的影响,以揭示在延迟时间内之前任务设置延迟的认知加工。以切换代价为主要测量指标,结果表明,反应设置和延迟时间的主效应均不显著,但是二者的交互作用显著。简单效应分析发现,在双向设置条件下,切换代价随着延迟时间的延长而显著减少,但是在单向设置条件下无显著差异。这说明,在任务切换中反应设置对延迟时间的影响效应具有调节作用。由此可见,在延迟时间内之前任务设置延迟的是反应设置。     

A Note on Stability in Force Applied to Control a Repetitive Task With the Legs

The forces applied to pedals during cycling were collected every 40 ms from approximately 29,000 movement repetitions. Intra-cycle mean values of force and its variability were significantly correlated, supporting Schmidt–s impulse variability theory of within-movement activities of the legs. In addition, as mean forces approached peak values, coefficients of variation decreased. From averages taken minute by minute, intra-cycle forces were seen to rise or fall in concert, implying that the pattern as a whole constituted a significant neuromuscular unit of control.     

The Influence of Masked Stimuli on Response Selection: Evidence from a Semantic Categorization Task

Unconscious visual stimuli can be processed by human observers and influence their behaviour. A striking example is a phenomenon known as “free-choice priming,” where masked “prime” stimuli—of which participants are unaware—modulate which of two response alternatives they are likely to choose. Recent efforts to uncover the mechanisms underlying this intriguing effect have revealed that free-choice priming can emerge even in the absence of automatized stimulus-response (S-R) associations between masked primes and specific motor responses, indicating that free choices can be influenced by a masked prime’s meaning (Ocampo, 2015). It remains unknown, however, whether masked primes bias response selections because they are implicitly classified according to task instructions, or because spreading activation occurs within the prime's semantic network. To adjudicate between these two possibilities, participants in the present experiment categorised targets as either animals or people and selected which of two response alternatives they wanted to make following presentation of a free-choice target. Crucially, while implicit classifications could proceed during processing of both animal and person masked primes, only animal primes could trigger spreading activation within their semantic network. This manipulation modulated free-choice priming; only masked animal primes influenced response selections to free-choice targets. This result indicates that an automatic spreading activation mechanism might underlie a masked prime’s ability to influence free-choice responses.