Is preparation of responses precluded by choice reaction time testing?

Choice reaction times for short (Dit) and long (Dah) Morse key presses were measured using a number of different left hand/right hand Dit/Dah 2-response combinations. When Dit and Dah responses were made with the same hand, Dits were initiated significantly faster, which confirms the finding of Klapp et al. (1974). The absolute sizes of Dit and Dah CRT's, however, varied significantly from one test situation to another; and the Dit:Dah difference was shown to be intransitive. Such context effects cast doubt on the extrapolative power of CRT findings, and on the usefulness of CRT as a measure of movement complexity. Latencies were reduced when subjects knew in advance which hand would be used; but the usefulness of response duration pre-knowledge was not unambiguously demonstrated. Preparation of responses is, therefore, not precluded by CRT testing; and possible explanations for these savings in terms of response selection and motor preprogramming were discussed. On balance, the hypothesis that the longer reaction times of Dah responses are due to their greater movement complexity (Klapp et al. 1974) was rejected, in favour of the explanation that subjects adopt a strategy of preferentially preparing Dit responses.     

The old calendarists: A social psychological profile of a Greek Orthodox minority

The authors discuss the social psychological dynamics by which a minority group, faced with different levels of discrimination, moves from an initial reaction of outrage to a state of passive fright and, finally, to a feeling of futility and powerlessness. These dynamics and stages of accommodation to differential discrimination are applied to the historical experience of a Greek Orthodox religious minority, the so-called Old Calendarists, to which the authors themselves belong. The authors argue that the historical experience of the Old Calendarists suggests that minority groups, in their downward spiral toward powerlessness, become the victims of other social and political forces which reinforce both discrimination against the minority group and the minority group's perception of its own powerlessness.     

Family therapy training methods: minimal contact with an agency

This paper describes the development, implementation and monitoring of a family therapy training programme with several special features. Training was given to staff of a large agency at a site distant from the trainers. Because input from trainers was limited, peer-group self-directed teaching approaches were used. Formal evaluation demonstrated that the programme was successful. This report describes the concepts, methods and techniques which were employed in this programme and which can be easily used in other settings.     

Discrimination based on response-produced stimuli

This study outlines a simplified operant conditioning procedure for investigating discrimination based on response-produced stimuli. The method, using concurrent schedules of reinforcement, greatly reduced the complexity of the procedures and the number of training sessions necessitated by a recently offered alternative technique. Calculations of Weber’s Constant for discrimination between response-produced stimuli are presented and the relevance for learning theory of empirical studies concerning response-produced stimuli is indicated.     

Forty years on: Uta Frith's contribution to research on autism and dyslexia, 1966-2006

Uta Frith has made a major contribution to our understanding of developmental disorders, especially autism and dyslexia. She has studied the cognitive and neurobiological bases of both disorders and demonstrated distinctive impairments in social cognition and central coherence in autism, and in phonological processing in dyslexia. In this enterprise she has encouraged psychologists to work in a theoretical framework that distinguishes between observed behaviour and the underlying cognitive and neurobiological processes that mediate that behaviour.     

Chinese clients' belief systems about psychological problems in Singapore

This study explores Singaporean Chinese clients' beliefs about psychological problems by comparing their beliefs with those of non-clients and professional counsellors. These three samples were asked to indicate the extent to which they would agree with three belief models, the Chinese indigenous model, the Western psychological model, and the other model. It was found that clients and non-clients were more likely than therapists to endorse the indigenous belief model. Amongst the indigenous sub-models, Chinese medicine was the most endorsed across the three samples; and clients and non-clients endorsed Chinese medicine more than therapists did. The indigenous belief model, especially Chinese medicine was endorsed more by Buddhist and Taoist clients than Christian or non-religionist clients; and by clients holding lower educational qualifications.     

Atypical cerebral lateralisation in adults with compensated developmental dyslexia demonstrated using functional transcranial Doppler ultrasound

Functional transcranial Doppler ultrasound (fTCD) is a relatively new and non-invasive technique that assesses cerebral lateralisation through measurements of blood flow velocity in the middle cerebral arteries. In this study fTCD was used to compare functional asymmetry during a word generation task between a group of 30 dyslexic adults and a group of 30 non-dyslexic individuals. In light of previous evidence of atypical laterality in dyslexia, a reduced leftward asymmetry was predicted and confirmed. We know from previous research that most people with atypical language lateralisation have normal language and literacy skills: nevertheless, our results confirm that language laterality is reduced in those with dyslexia. Theoretical explanations for this apparent conundrum are discussed.     

How Do Our Values Inform Ethical Research? A Narrative of Recognizing Colonizing Practices

How do you reconcile tensions between ethical research practice, personal values, and disciplinary values? This article focuses on an ethical challenge involving the engagement of rural Indigenous community members that emerged during my PhD fieldwork. The narrative illustrates the necessity to engage in critical reflexive research practice, a process which saw me respond to my own feelings of “wrong” and “right,” contemplate a distinction between procedural ethics and virtue ethics in community‐based research, explore colonizing research practices, and endeavor to reconcile an instance where the values of community psychology appeared in contest. The “voice” in this narrative is that of the first author; the dual authorship reflects the ongoing collaboration between both authors. When this ethical issue came about, our relationship was one of “student” and “supervisor”; we are now colleagues and friends.