A computer system for processing eye-movement records

A computer system using the LINC-8 computer was developed to process eye-movement records from two 16-mm cine film input sources : the Mackworth stand camera and the Mackworth wide-angle camera. Data reduction was accomplished by projecting the films onto an X-Y plotting table. An operator marked, using a cursor, either the eyespot, in the case of the stand camera, or the pupil and display center, in the case of the wide-angle camera, in order to digitize the locus of the gaze. This information was normalized and stored on magnetic tape as: ordinal fixation number, fixation duration, and fixation coordinates (X and Y). A software library was created to analyze the three eye-movement measures. One program calculates interfixation distance, fixation time, and dispersion of fixations about a point. A second program operates on data matrices to: calculate area covered by a fixation pattern, frequency of redundant fixations in a fixation pattern, and distribution of fixations over features of the visual display. Data are displayed on either scope or the Calcomp plotter.     

Vocational interest orientations: A comparison of rural university and junior college freshmen

The increase in junior colleges imposed new demands on counselors. Some areas to be investigated are the differences in counseling programs between junior colleges and universities; the differences in student bodies; and the importance of vocational guidance. This study addresses itself to elements of those areas.Male and female samples were drawn from two rural educational institutions: a four year university and a junior college. Differences in vocational interest orientations were explored through the nonoccupational scales of the Strong Vocational Interest Blank (SVIB). For males significant differences were found on the academic achievement, diversity of interest, managerial orientation, and occupational level scales. Females differed on the diversity of interest scales.     

JOB-RELATEDNESS OF A POSTTRAINING JOB KNOWLEDGE CRITERION USE TO ASSESS VALIDITY AND TEST FAIRNESS

Significant job-relatedness was found for a posttraining job knowledge test criterion using an application of Lawshe's content validity method. The aide test was used as a criterion to assess the predictive validity of a vocabulary test and a civil service test with samples of black ( N = 43) and white ( N = 62) psychiatric aides. Significant validities were found on both tests, but a vocabulary test proved to be the better predictor of the criterion in both samples. The obtained validities were discussed in terms of differential validity, test fairness, and sample size. This study demonstrated that a content validity method could be applied to criteria as well as selection tests. It was concluded that content validity methods may be able to help solve the problem of criterion relevance in validation research by providing quantitative evidence of the job-relatedness of criteria.     

"Queremos Aprender": Latino Immigrants' Call to Integrate Cultural Adaptation with Best Practice Knowledge in a Parenting Intervention

Despite the unique and challenging circumstances confronting Latino immigrant families, debate still exists as to the need to culturally adapt evidence-based interventions for dissemination with this population. Following the grounded theory approach, the current qualitative investigation utilized focus group interviews with 83 Latino immigrant parents to explore the relevance of culturally adapting an evidence-based parenting intervention to be disseminated within this population. Findings from this study indicate that Latino immigrant parents want to participate in a culturally adapted parenting intervention as long as it is culturally relevant, respectful, and responsive to their life experiences. Research results also suggest that the parenting skills participants seek to enhance are among those commonly targeted by evidence-based parenting interventions. This study contributes to the cultural adaptation/fidelity balance debate by highlighting the necessity of exploring ways to develop culturally adapted interventions characterized by high cultural relevance, as well as high fidelity to the core components that have established efficacy for evidence-based parenting interventions.     

COHERENTISM AND THE EPISTEMIC JUSTIFICATION OF MORAL BELIEFS: A CASE STUDY IN HOW TO DO PRACTICAL ETHICS WITHOUT APPEAL TO A MORAL THEORY

This paper defends a coherentist approach to moral epistemology. In “The Immorality of Eating Meat” (2000), I offer a coherentist consistency argument to show that our own beliefs rationally commit us to the immorality of eating meat. Elsewhere, I use our own beliefs as premises to argue that we have positive duties to assist the poor (2004) and to argue that biomedical animal experimentation is wrong (2012). The present paper explores whether this consistency‐based coherentist approach of grounding particular moral judgments on beliefs we already hold, with no appeal to moral theory, is a legitimate way of doing practical ethics. I argue (i) that grounding particular moral judgments on our core moral convictions and other core nonmoral beliefs is a legitimate way to justify moral judgments, (ii) that these moral judgments possess as much epistemic justification and have as much claim to objectivity as moral judgments grounded on particular ethical theories, and (iii) that this internalistic coherentist method of grounding moral judgments is more likely to result in behavioral guidance than traditional theory‐based approaches to practical ethics. By way of illustrating the approach, I briefly recapitulate my consistency‐based argument for ethical vegetarianism. I then defend the coherentist approach implicit in the argument against a number of potentially fatal metatheoretical attacks.     

Effective obesity treatments

To curb the epidemic of obesity in the United States, revised Medicare policy allows support for efficacious obesity treatments. This review summarizes the evidence from rigorous randomized trials (9 lifestyle trials, 5 drug trials, and 2 surgical trials) on the efficacy and risk- benefit profile of lifestyle, drug, and surgical interventions aimed at promoting sustained (= 2 years) reductions in weight. Both lifestyle and drug interventions consistently produced an approximate 7-lb (3.2-kg) weight loss that was sustained for 2 years and was associated with improvements in diabetes, blood pressure, and/or cardiovascular risk factors. Surgical interventions have a less solid empirical base but offer promise for the promotion of significant and sustained weight reduction posttreatment in the morbidly obese but with possible significant short-term side effects. In summary, there is strong and consistent support from rigorous randomized trials that lifestyle or drug interventions result in modest weight loss with minimal risks but disproportionate clinical benefit. Combinations of lifestyle, drug, and, where appropriate, surgical interventions may be the most efficacious approach to achieving sustained weight loss for the widest diversity of patients.     

Pardoning Puritanism: Community,Character, and Forgiveness in the Work of Richard Baxter

The English Puritan Richard Baxter (1615–1691) developed an account of forgiveness that resonates with twentieth‐century virtue ethics. He understood forgiveness as one component of a larger disposition of character developed in community as human beings recognize themselves as sinful creatures engaged in complex relationships of dependency and responsibility, with both God and one another. In the midst of these relationships, persons experience divine and human forgiveness and discover opportunities to practice forgiveness in return. Baxter thus negotiated a distinctive relationship between Christian hope for reconciliation and more stereotypical Puritan emphases on punishment, civil order, and justice. At the same time that recent moral reflection allows us to raise questions about some features of Baxter's argument (such as his treatment of anger), his work provides important resources for correlating dispositions with concrete obligations, establishing a place for forgiveness in the public realm, and counterbalancing the modern emphasis on individual rights.     

Lines of advance in psychoanalytic psychotherapy

Freud's 1919 paper is taken as a starting-point to review how far we have advanced towards fulfilment of his prophetic remarks about the need to develop psychoanalytic psychotherapy for the masses. A glance is taken back to some of the circumstances and characters involved in Budapest where the paper was given at the 1918 congress, where there was much talk about the need to do something about the war neuroses. Similar pressures led to the founding of the Tavistock Clinic and Cassel Hospital in the UK, long before the start of the NHS. The pressures of both world wars advanced the applications of psychoanalysis; the next wave of pressures may come from NHS changes and entry into Europe. The history of psychoanalytic psychotherapy in the UK is also considered via looking briefly at the history and development of psychoanalytic publications, of the Tavistock Clinic, of psychoanalytic training, of child psychotherapy and the emergence of adult (non-medical) psychotherapy. There have always been tensions between exponents of the pure gold of analysis and the needs of its wider applications. More flexible arrangements and boundaries are necessary if we are to spread psychoanalysis beyond London and to fulfil Freud's own hopes about the large-scale application of psychoanalytic therapy.     

WATCHING THE DETECTIVES: SEASONAL STUDENT EMPLOYEE REACTIONS TO ELECTRONIC MONITORING WITH AND WITHOUT ADVANCE NOTIFICATION

The present paper tested procedural justice hypotheses about seasonal high school and college student employees' reactions to electronic monitoring with video cameras. Study 1, a field study, explored (a) whether employees receiving advance notification of monitoring offered more favorable justice judgments than employees who did not, and (b) whether employees who saw monitoring procedures and/or consequences as fair returned to the organization the following summer. Results supported the hypotheses: employees viewed monitoring procedures as fairer if they received advance notice. Fairness judgments predicted reemployment Study 2, a scenario-based laboratory experiment, also found that advance notice elicited greater justice beliefs. In addition, Study 2 examined how variations in justification for the monitoring affected justice beliefs. Either strong or weak justifications produced greater procedural justice beliefs than no justification.