A theoretical expectancy table calculator

A program for calculating theoretical expectancy tables is described. These tables are useful for communicating the meaning of correlation coefficients, since they display the relationship in a simple way. The program allows users to go beyond empirical expectancy tables, which are routinely calculated, by allowing the table to reflect corrections for effects such as unreliability and restriction of range.     

Mechanism of the human diving response

The diving response in human beings is characterized by breath-holding, slowing of the heart rate (diving bradycardia), reduction of limb blood flow and a gradual rise in the mean arterial blood pressure. The bradycardia results from increased parasympathetic stimulus to the cardiac pacemaker. The reduction in limb blood flow is due to vasoconstriction resulting from increased activity of the sympathetic nerves supplying arteries in the arms and legs. Essentially the response is produced by the combination of water touching the face and either voluntary or involuntary (reflex) arrest of breathing. The nervous inputs and outputs for the response are coordinated in the brain stem by the respiratory, vasomotor and cardioinhibitory “centers.” The diving response in human beings can be modified by many factors but the most important are water temperature, oxygen tension in the arterial blood and emotional factors.     

Depression Mixed with Anxiety,Somatization, and Disordered Eating: Relationship with Gender-Role-Related Limitations Experienced by Females

In several previous studies, females who reported that they felt limited by responses to their gender, or viewed their mothers as having been limited in this way, exhibited higher prevalence compared to other females or to males of depression accompanied by anxiety, somatic symptoms such as headaches, disordered eating, and poor body image/preference for thinness (“anxious somatic depression”), but not higher prevalence of depression unaccompanied by these other symptoms (“pure depression”). In this study of high school students, females whose mothers scored high on a scale measuring their feelings of having been limited by traditional gender roles reported much higher prevalence than other females of anxious somatic depression, but not higher prevalence of pure depression. Mothers' reports of depression were not related to daughters' anxious somatic depression.     

EFFECTS OF CHOOSING ACADEMIC ASSIGNMENTS ON A STUDENT WITH ATTENTION DEFICIT HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER

The effects of choosing academic assignments on the undesirable behaviors manifested by a second-grade student with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder were analyzed. This study extended Dunlap et al.'s (1994) research on choice making as a form of antecedent control. A reversal design showed that undesirable behaviors decreased when the student was given a choice of academic assignments.     

A test of the moderating role of importance of appearance in the relationship between perceived scar severity and body-esteem among adult burn survivors

This study tested the hypothesis that the relationship between subjective burn scar severity and body-esteem is moderated by importance of appearance. Three hundred and forty-six adult burn survivors completed a mailed or online survey. The three subscales of the Body-Esteem Scale for Adolescents and Adults (BE-Appearance [satisfaction with general appearance], BE-Weight [weight satisfaction], BE-Others [others' evaluations of one's body and appearance]) were regressed onto sex, subjective burn scar severity, importance of appearance and their two- and three-way interactions. With one exception, the hypothesized main effects were significant in each of the regression equations. As hypothesized, importance of appearance moderated the relationship between subjective burn scar severity and body-esteem for BE-Appearance and BE-Other but not BE-Weight. The results of this study are consistent with the cognitive model of body-esteem. Clinical implications are discussed.     

Influence of consonantal context on the reading of vowels: evidence from children

When college students pronounce nonwords, their vowel pronunciations may be affected not only by the consonant that follows the vowel, the coda, but also by the preceding consonant, the onset. We presented the nonwords used by Treiman and colleagues in their 2003 study to a total of 94 first graders, third graders, fifth graders, and high school students to determine when these context influences emerge. According to some theories of reading development, early decoding is characterized by context-free links from graphemes to phonemes. However, we found that even children reading at the first-grade level (6-year-olds) were influenced to some extent by a vowel's context. The effect of context on vowel pronunciation increased in strength up to around the fifth-grade reading level (8- and 9-year-olds), and sensitivity to coda-to-vowel associations emerged no earlier than did sensitivity to onset-to-vowel associations. A connectionist model of reading reproduced this general pattern of increasing context effects as a function of training.     

When fiends become friends: the need to belong and perceptions of personal and group discrimination

The present article examines the role that the need to belong (NTB) plays in people's judgments of personal and group discrimination and in the attributions people make for potentially discriminatory evaluations. The authors hypothesized that the NTB motivates people to conclude that (a) whereas they rarely experience personal discrimination, (b) their fellow in-group members do experience discrimination. In Study 1, people high in the NTB reported experiencing lower than average levels of personal and higher than average levels of group discrimination. In Study 2, an experimental manipulation of the NTB yielded similar results. In Study 3, women who were motivated to be accepted by a bogus male participant were less likely to attribute his negative evaluations of their work to prejudice.     

Brief cognitive-behavioral phone-based intervention targeting anxiety about the threat of attack: a pilot study

A brief, cognitive-behavioral, phone-based intervention was employed with an Israeli sample experiencing anticipatory anxiety about potential war-related attacks. In this quasi-experimental controlled pilot study, the cognitive-behavioral therapy intervention (diaphragmatic breathing and a modified cognitive-restructuring technique) was compared with the standard hotline care administered when worried citizens called a mental health emergency hotline in Israel. Individuals (n=32) were administered anxiety and worry measures pre-intervention, post-intervention, and three days post-intervention. The results indicated that anxiety levels decreased for the experimental and control group immediately post-intervention; however, three days later, the levels of anxiety in the CBT group continued to decline, while anxiety levels in the control group reached pre-intervention levels on two of the three outcome measures. These results suggest that CBT can be effectively delivered by paraprofessionals over the phone, which is cost-effective and efficient. Limitations are considered, and implications for treating individuals coping with the threat of terrorism are discussed.     

Vowels, syllables, and letter names: differences between young children's spelling in English and Portuguese

Young Portuguese-speaking children have been reported to produce more vowel- and syllable-oriented spellings than have English speakers. To investigate the extent and source of such differences, we analyzed children's vocabulary and found that Portuguese words have more vowel letter names and a higher vowel-consonant ratio than do English words. In a spelling experiment, we found that Portuguese speakers used more vowels, but did not produce more syllabic spellings, than did English speakers. The differences that we observed are attributable to quantitative differences in the languages and their writing and letter name systems. They do not support the widespread idea that speakers of Romance languages pass through an additional, syllabic, stage of development.