The relationship between personal authority in the family system and discovery of meaning in life

This study investigated the relationship between intergenerational family relationships and Frankl's concept of meaning in life. Intergenerational family relationships were measured by the Personal Authority in the Family System Questionnaire (PAFS-QE) by Bray, Williamson, and Malone. The meaning in life variables were measured by the Life Attitude Profile-Revised (LAP-R) by Reker. This quantitative study, using the BMDP Statistical Package (Dixon, 1990), correlated the scores on various subscales from both instruments, resulting in seven statistically significant relationships. The findings, although modest, suggest the existence of a relationship between these two theoretical areas.This article is based in part on the first author's doctoral dissertation at Texas Woman's University.A copy of the PAFS-Q may be obtained from: James H. Bray, PhD, 5510 Greenbriar, Houston, TX 77005. A copy of the LAP-R may be obtained from: Gary Reker, PhD, Trent University, Psychology Department, Peterborough, Ontario Canada K9J 7B8.     

Brief report: An extension of the sequential alternating treatment design using reversals with subjects not available concurrently

This brief report proposes an extension of the traditional Alternating Treatments Design that would be acceptable to use in hospital and residential settings where subjects are often not concurrently available. Concerns about the inability of traditional designs to work in these special situations and the emergence of a “scientist–practitioner split” are discussed. An example of how the Extended Alternating Treatments Design might be used is provided.     

Technologies to reliably transduce the topographical details of pigeons’ pecks

Pigeons’ pecking has long been a subject of interest in behavioral research, with the response typically being viewed as unitary. Recent experiments done with computer-controlled devices have revealed that this response is at least bipartite in character, with beak opening and response location (head transport) as its components. In addition, experimental work has demonstrated that these response components may be separately influenced and controlled by respondent and operant conditioning procedures. The detailed topographic analysis and technology that have emerged may provide a background for similar work with other behavioral systems.     

Age-dependent facilitation of taste-footshock conditioning by prior exposure to the training context

Among adult rats, gustatory stimuli are easily associated with illness, but not with external unconditioned stimuli such as footshock. Recent evidence indicates, however, that this cue-to-consequence specificity may vary ontongenetically. The present studies examined the acquisition of an aversion to a taste paired with footshock in 5- and 15-day-old rats. Consistent with previous reports, 5-day-old rats avoided the taste that preceded footshock, while 15-day-old subjects did not express an aversion to the taste paired with footshock. Exposure to the training context for either 1 or 5 h prior to conditioning disrupted taste-footshock conditioning in the 5-day-old subjects. For the 15-day-old subjects, 1 h of pre-conditioning exposure to the training context had no effect on conditioning, whereas a longer duration of preexposure promoted conditioning to the taste cue. The results suggest ontogenetic differences in stimulus selection.     

The naturalistic fallacy: moral inferences drawn from research with children versus adults

The naturalistic fallacy occurs when a person reads a report of scientific research and concludes that the moral implication of the research was included in the article when, in fact, it was not. For example, the fallacy is committed when a study contains the conclusion that TV advertising increases preference for sugar-based foods, but the reader later believes that the study concluded that TV advertising should be controlled. Previous research indicates that the commission of the fallacy was strong when memory for social research was tested. The present study showed that the commission of the fallacy was stronger when the research which was read involved children as subjects compared to adult subjects. Increased empathy for the subjects of a research article strengthens commission of the fallacy.     

Clinical judgment, clinical training, and professional experience

Reviews studies on training, experience, and clinical judgment. The results on the validity of judgments generally fail to support the value of on-the-job experience in mental health fields. The validity results do provide limited support for the value of training. Other results suggest that experienced clinicians are better than less experienced judges at knowing which of their judgments are likely to be correct and which are likely to be wrong. Reasons why clinicians have trouble learning from experience are given. Recommendations are made for improving training and clinical practice.     

Extraretinal information about eye position during involuntary eye movement: optokinetic afternystagmus

Despite importance for theories of perception, controversy exists as to whether information is available to the perceptual system about involuntary as well as voluntary eye movements. We measured the perceived direction of targets flashed briefly in an otherwise dark field during the primary phase of optokinetic afternystagmus (OKAN), an involuntary eye movement that persists in darkness following optokinetic stimulation. Perceived direction was measured by unseen pointing in one experiment and by pointing made under visual control in a second experiment. Pointing was essentially veridical in both experiments, indicating that accurate extra-retinal information about eye position (presumably, as efference copy) exists for OKAN. Illusory motion of visual targets, which can occur during involuntary oculomotor responses, therefore cannot be attributed to a lack of efference-copy signals for such eye movements.     

Relationship between two nontraditional procedures for assessing speech-sound discrimination

Test of speech-sound discrimination are used by special educators, reading specialists and speech-language pathologists in assessing children's ability to differentiate between speech sounds occurring in standard English. Such tests are important in determining if speech-sound articulation errors are caused by difficulty in making such differentiations. However, during the past 10 years, these tests have been criticized on the basis of their reliability and validity. The purpose of this study was to examine the use of two alternative methods of assessing speech-sound discrimination with a school-aged population to determine if they elicited responses in a similar manner.