The Inclusion of Fathers In Family Therapy: A Research Based Perspective

This paper summarizes the results of research on the role of fathers in families and family therapy with particular reference to preparation for fatherhood, father involvement in family life as a protective factor, fathers' deviant behaviour as a risk factor, fathers' communication and coping styles, fatherhood and different types of marriages, and the effects of the workplace on fathers' behaviour within the family. Available research suggests that, with respect to problem formation, the behaviour of fathers may serve as either a risk factor or as a protective factor. With respect to problem resolution, fathers may be a powerful therapeutic resource or seriously compromise effectiveness of family therapy. The implications of research for clinical practice are discussed.     

Type a and Risk Taking in Everyday Money Matters

The purpose of the present study is to extend previous research investigating personality factors as determinants of financial risk taking in everyday money matters (e.g., personal investments and household affairs). Type A and Type B subjects were asked to make a series of everyday financial decisions that varied in degree of risk. Type A individuals took greater financial risks than Type B individuals. The results provide additional support for the influence of personality factors in everyday financial risk-taking behavior and demonstrated another area of risk taking associated with the Type A behavior pattern not previously identified.     

Does Evidence Presentation Format Affect Judgment? An Experimental Evaluation of Displays of Data for Judgments

Information relevant to a prediction was presented in one of eight formats: a table of numbers, a brief text, a longer biographical story, and five different types of bar graphs. Experimental participants made judgments of marathon finishing times based on information about the runners' ages, prior performance, training, and motivation. A regression analysis was used to assess the individual judges' relative weighting of the various types of information relevant to their predictions. The different formats for displaying information yielded different levels of accuracy and patterns of information utilization. In accordance with an explanation-based decision model, the text and story displays induced the heaviest reliance on information about the runners' motivation and prior performance and produced the most accurate judgments of marathon finishing times.     

Orienting to Extinguished Signals in Hemispatial Neglect

This study tested for spatial orienting effects, without awareness to signals presented in the neglected hemifield of 2 hemispatial-neglect patients. The experiment adapted a spatial precuing paradigm for measuring the effects of visual attention. Contralesional orienting hastened subsequent target detection at the location of an extinguished precue. These findings validate a claim that orienting can occur independently of overt detection and indicate that location information is registered in the neglected field.     

Transient global amnesia

Transient global amnesia (TGA) is a memory dysfunction characterized by a sudden onset of dense anterograde amnesia (AA) that gradually resolves across several hours. TGA is typically accompanied by repeated questions (concerning present circumstances) with retrograde amnesia for events preceding the attack, and it usually strikes individuals in their late 50s and early 60s. The etiology of TGA remains unclear, although it probably reflects a temporary disruption of the blood supply to the temporal lobe. The physical and psychological events preceding the attack are diverse, but they often include acute emotional and physical stressors. TGA appears to be benign, with low risk for recurrence or residual complications. While systematic memory research on TGA patients is rare, these individuals present a unique opportunity to study amnestic behaviors in otherwise normal individuals. A guide to conducting future research is provided.     

The eyes have it! Reflexive orienting is triggered by nonpredictive gaze

Normal subjects were presented with a simple line drawing of a face looking left, right, or straight ahead. A target letter F or T then appeared to the left or the right of the face. All subjects participated in target detection, localization, and identification response conditions. Although subjects were told that the line drawing’s gaze direction (the cue) did not predict where the target would occur, response time in all three conditions was reliably faster when gaze was toward versus away from the target. This study provides evidence for covert, reflexive orienting to peripheral locations in response to uninformative gaze shifts presented at fixation. The implications for theories of social attention and visual orienting are discussed, and the brain mechanisms that may underlie this phenomenon are considered.     

A reevaluation of semantic versus nonsemantic processing in implicit memory

A number of investigations have purported to demonstrate that semantic processing does not produce a memorial advantage over nonsemantic processing on implicit tests, as contrasted with the typical advantage of semantic over nonsemantic processing on explicit tests. A review of 166 outcomes from 38 studies that have manipulated processing on implicit tests reveals that on 131 occasions (79%), priming was greater following semantic than it was following nonsemantic processing. This difference was found in both perceptual and conceptual implicit memory tests, as well as in within- and between-subjects designs. It suggests that implicit tests reflect the involvement of both conceptual and perceptual processes. Although explicit contamination may account for some of the processing difference in implicit tests, the pervasiveness of the phenomenon, especially in perceptual implicit tests, makes it an unlikely account for the entire effect.     

Processing empty categories: A parallel approach

In many current theories of human sentence processing, the mechanisms and principles proposed to account for data related to processing (1) long-distance dependencies and (2) structural ambiguities, such as garden-path sentences, are independent, despite the fact that deciding whether or not to posit a gap is just a special case of ambiguity resolution. In this paper we demonstrate how the parallel parsing theory proposed by Gibson (1991, in press)—which was developed to account for nongap ambiguity resolution data—also explains a number of gap-positing facts, without additional strategies. In particular, we show how this theory correctly explains filled-object-gap effects and the lack of filled-subject-gap effects in English, as well as certain gap-processing effects in Dutch.