Encoding and contextual components of word recognition in good and poor readers

Good and poor readers from the third and sixth grades (9- and 12-year-olds, respectively), named visually presented words as rapidly as possible. Words were in clear or degraded form, and were preceded by related or unrelated words. Poor readers were hurt more by degradation than were good readers, and showed greater benefit from context. In general, the contextual benefit was greater with degraded words than with intact, and this interaction was especially pronounced in the poor readers. The results are consistent with an interactive-compensatory model of word recognition. Under conditions in which stimulus encoding is slow, contextual factors may compensate for this encoding deficit.     

Respiratory phase and visual signal detection

Previous studies have implicated respiration as a source of intra-S variation in visual signal detection tasks. In the present study, pneumographic respiration records were obtained on 22 female undergraduates during a visual signal detection task. The analysis of signal detection with respect to respiration phase showed that signals presented during exhalation were detected more frequently than those presented during inhalation. These findings suggest that the intra-S variation in signal detection performance may be partially accounted for by respiratory behavior at the moment of signal presentation.     

A body with chronic fatigue syndrome as a battleground for the fight to separate from the mother

I describe the therapy of a 20-year-old woman who believed that her difficulties in concentrating and remembering were caused by her 'ME' (Myalgic encephalomyelitis, Chronic fatigue syndrome, or CFS). She had been fathered by a man who never left his own wife. Work with her dreams revealed a within-body drama in which she was locked in an unspeakable fight to the death with her mother. Her symptoms improved after parallels between a dream and an accident showed her own self-destructive hand in her story. Another dream, reflecting her first 'incestuous' affair, showed her search for her original father-self as someone separate from mother, and a later affair provided a between-body drama, helping her to own the arrogant and abject traits she had before seen only as her mother's. I show how we worked in the area of Winnicott's first 'primitive agony' as experienced by a somatizing patient, stuck in a too-close destructive relationship with her mother-body. I discuss how analytical work can be done with the primitive affects and conflicts against which the ME symptoms may be defending.     

Time and temperature: A note on Bell

Bell (1975) reported data concerning the effects of body temperature on time estimation. His analysis led him to doubt whether time estimation was controlled by a metabolic pacemaker. Our analysis of the same data, however, shows that Bell's experiment actually supported the hypothesis.     

The discriminative validity of the Whitaker Index of Schizophrenic Thinking

An attempt was made to assess the discriminative validity of the WIST with a sample of psychiatric inpatients. Through the use of a standardized structured interview and a diagnostic system for schizophrenia based on the use of discriminant function analysis with nonpathognomic symptom combinations, a reliable and valid system was used to establish the criterion diagnosis. Approximately 63% of patients reliably diagnosed as schizophrenic were detected via the WIST while only 14% of nonschizophrenic patients scored in the schizophrenic range on the WIST. The assets and liabilities of using the WIST to diagnose schizophrenia are discussed.     

Comparison of 26-item and 20-item versions of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale for psychiatric outpatients

This study compared the 20-item revised Toronto Alexithymia Scale with the 26-item version for 257 psychiatric outpatients. Scores on the 20-item version significantly correlated with those on the 26-item inventory even when controlled for depressed mood. Furthermore, the 20-item scale showed greater internal consistency. Factor analysis for both versions indicated three subfactors but the factors in the TAS-20 accounted for greater common variance (92%) than for the factors in the TAS-26 (78%). The total variance accounted for by these factors on the TAS-20 (45%) was also greater than for the TAS-26 (38%).     

Getting a little closure for closure

Synthese - In this paper, I’ll survey a number of closure principles of epistemic justification and find them all wanting. However, it’ll be my contention that there’s a novel...     

I can’t steal from a coworker if I work from home: Conceptual and measurement-related issues associated with studying counterproductive work behavior in a telework setting

Teleworkers are an increasingly large proportion of the workforce. Despite the popularity of telework, organizations are concerned that telework offers employees more opportunity to engage in counterproductive work behavior (CWB). We argue that current CWB scales are inappropriate for the telework setting because this context affects the types of employee behavior that can (a) feasibly be enacted and (b) conceptually be considered as CWB. In this article, we develop a CWB scale suitable for the telework setting (i.e., the T-CWB scale) by addressing the errors of contamination (commission) and omission present in existing CWB scales vis-à-vis the telework setting. We end by outlining an agenda for future research on CWB in the telework setting.