Systematicity,knowledge, and bias. How systematicity made clinical medicine a science

Synthese - This paper shows that the history of clinical medicine in the eighteenth century supports Paul Hoyningen-Huene’s thesis that there is a correlation between science and...     

Informant-Based Determinants of Symptom Attenuation in Structured Child Psychiatric Interviews

Informant-related determinants of item attenuation, that is, the drop-off in symptom endorsement rates at retest, were examined in an enriched community subsample of 245 parent–child pairs drawn from the National Institute of Mental Health Methods for Epidemiology of Child and Adolescent Mental Disorders Study. Youngsters and their parents were interviewed with the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (Version 2.3; DISC-2.3) on two occasions with a mean test–retest interval of 12 days. Item attenuation rates were high for both informants, with adults failing to confirm 42% and children 58% of baseline responses at retest. Stepwise regressions revealed that item attenuation at DISC-P retest was higher for adult informants who were younger, and who reported on older and less impaired children. On the DISC-C, attenuation was higher for children who were less impaired, rated as doing worse in school, and who had a longer test–retest interval. These results are broadly consistent with past studies examining the determinants of attenuation and test–retest reliability and have implications for the design and use of structured diagnostic instruments.     

The comorbidity of ADHD in a community sample of children aged 6 through 16 years

Secondary analyses of the data from the Puerto Rico Child Psychiatry Epidemiologic Study were undertaken to provide information on the comorbidity patterns of ADHD. A high level of comorbidity was found among ADHD and other diagnostic categories, particularly the conduct/oppositional group. Comorbidity was associated with level of impairment and with service utilization.     

Proactive inhibition as a function of orienting task characteristics

Two release from proactive inhibition experiments were conducted, in which orienting tasks were employed to direct subjects' attention to particular features of words. Experiment 1 employed two such tasks which emphasized either semantic or nonsemantic features, while both orienting tasks in Experiment 2 directed attention to semantic features of words. Although significant release was obtained with a change in task in these experiments, the level was considerably lower in Experiment 2 than in Experiment 1. The data were interpreted in terms of a theoretical orientation that emphasizes item differentiation as a major determinant of retrieval probability. It was argued that the degree of differentiation depends to some extent on the specific tasks employed and the extent to which they direct attention to different word features.     

A computer-controlled system for the recording modification and presentation of two-channel musical stimuli

This paper describes a computer-based system for the on-line experimental use of musical stimuli. The system is in two sections. The first records in digital form two successive monophonie keyboard performances and combines them into a two-part musical stimulus consisting of bass and treble melodic lines. This musical stimulus can be modified in one or more ways by means of an editing program. The second part of the system presents the modified stimulus to the subject and records his reaction time to particular target notes. The system can be expanded to allow the merging of a larger number of melodic lines into a single polyphonic form or can be modified to produce precisely controlled two-channel tonal stimuli.