The Drug Discrimination Procedure: A Microanalysis of the Qualitative Properties of Quantal Responses

The Psychological Record -     

Training specificity and transfer in time and distance estimation

Learning is often specific to the conditions of training, making it important to identify which aspects of the testing environment are crucial to be matched in the training environment. In the present study, we examined training specificity in time and distance estimation tasks that differed only in the focus of processing (FOP). External spatial cues were provided for the distance estimation task and for the time estimation task in one condition, but not in another. The presence of a concurrent alphabet secondary task was manipulated during training and testing in all estimation conditions in Experiment 1. For distance as well as for time estimation in both conditions, training of the primary estimation task was found to be specific to the presence of the secondary task. In Experiments 2 and 3, we examined transfer between one estimation task and another, with no secondary task in either case. When all conditions were equal aside from the FOP instructions, including the presence of external spatial cues, Experiment 2 showed “transfer” between tasks, suggesting that training might not be specific to the FOP. When the external spatial cues were removed from the time estimation task, Experiment 3 showed no transfer between time and distance estimations, suggesting that external task cues influenced the procedures used in the estimation tasks.     

Prevalence and Levels of Severity of Childhood Trauma among Mexican Female Sex Workers: A Comparison of Two Mexico Border Cities

The purpose of this study is to examine the prevalence of childhood trauma in a sample of female sex workers in Mexico. One hundred and nine female sex workers were recruited from Nuevo Laredo and Ciudad Juarez and administered the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire. Findings reveal a high prevalence rate of childhood trauma among the total sample (94%). Nuevo Laredo sex workers had significantly higher total mean and subscale scores and levels of severity compared to Ciudad Juarez sex workers. This research is important because it examines the extent of childhood trauma among sex workers in a developing country. Moreover, it contributes to the few existing studies on sex workers that have documented the circumstances and factors unique to rural and urban environments. These results underline the importance of early identification of childhood trauma and implementation of appropriate prevention, intervention, and policies that might reduce these females' trajectory into sex work.     

Context,visual salience,and inductive reasoning

An important debate in the reasoning literature concerns the extent to which inference processes are domain-free or domain-specific. Typically, evidence in support of the domain-specific position comprises the facilitation observed when abstract reasoning tasks are set in realistic context. Three experiments are reported here in which the sources of facilitation were investigated for contextualised versions of Raven's Progressive Matrices (Richardson, 1991) and non-verbal analogies from the AH4 test (Richardson & Webster, 1996). Experiment 1 confirmed that the facilitation observed for the contextualised matrices was in part due to extraneous aspects of commentaries originally intended to activate domainspecific processes. Experiments 2 and 3 indicated that the remainder of the facilitation for the matrices, and all of the facilitation for the analogies, could be explained by visual salience: Converting the item elements into realistic objects had enabled them and their transitions to be identified more easily. Hence, performance at simplified abstract items was as good as, or better than, at contextualised items. It is concluded that facilitation effects cannot be interpreted as showing that domain-specific processes constitute a self-contained system separate from domain-free processes. In turn, this means that domain-free processes cannot be dismissed as being unimportant for reasoning.