Religiosity, Spirituality, and the Subjective Quality of African American Men's Friendships: An Exploratory Study

The present study fills a crucial gap in literature surrounding the lives of African American men by exploring factors that shape the quality of these men's friendships. Drawing on data from a sample of 171 African American men, the study examines the relative utility of subjective religiosity, subjective spirituality, advice exchange, and affective sharing as predictors of the level of perceived support from male and female friends. Findings reveal age differences in subjective religiosity, subjective spirituality, and in level of advice and affective exchange in men's same-sex as well as cross-sex friendships. Age differences emerged in men's perceptions of the supportiveness of their friendships with women but not with men. Age was not a predictor of perceived supportiveness of same-sex or cross-sex friendships. Subjective religiosity did not predict support in same-sex or cross-sex friendships. Subjective spirituality positively predicted perceived support in men's same-sex friendships but not in cross-sex friendships. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

A low-cost method for digitizing videotaped continuous movements on the Macintosh

We describe an inexpensive means of digitizing videotaped positions of moving points, such as the positions of the joints of a person who is performing an action. Single-frame video images and a Macintosh computer monitor are optically superimposed, using a half-silvered mirror, and the positions of reference points in the video image are manually clicked in by the operator, so that the screen coordinates of the reference points on each frame can be stored in a text file for later analysis. The digitizing program records comments and identifying information along with the position data.     

Careers guidance and ethnic minorities in Holland and Britain: Confronting fear and anger

The development of equal opportunities for ethnic minorities through careers guidance is discussed. The provision of careers guidance services in Holland and Britain are described in relation to a model of organisational development. The emotional barriers of fear and anger are discussed in a structural context, both in relation to face-to-face client work, and in relation to service development. The concept of 'career negotiation' is presented to reflect the processes of internal and external dialogue needed to empower clients.     

Orientation to visual stimuli and the superior colliculus in the rat

Rats were trained in a six-choice jumping stand apparatus to enter the dark door, and avoid the five bright doors. Rats with bilateral superior collicular lesions were found to be severely impaired in this task, although further experiments showed that they were able to discriminate bright from dark stimuli and could perform correctly if allowed to approach each door in turn. It is suggested that the superior colliculus is important in orientation to visual cues, and there is some evidence that it is involved in orientation to brightness but not visual form cues.     

Simultaneous electronic recording of video and digital information on the video channel of a VTR or VCR

A technique is described that permits precise synchronization of video recorded behavior with discrete stimuli and responses. These discrete events are recorded as digital data on the video channel of a video recorder on a horizontal line that lies above the visible video information. These data may be observed in single-frame playback mode by underscanning the playback monitor. A circuit is described for computerized decoding of the digital data. Because each video field is uniquely coded, an updating of the data is possible 60 times each second. The described technique has several advantages over current approaches for synchronizing discrete stimulus and response events with video recorded behavior.     

What is Apple-Psych?

Apple Psych, a system of software subroutines written in Apple Pascal and 6502 assembly language, was designed to run real-time psychological experiments on the Apple II, II+, and IIe microcomputers. This paper describes the minimum system requirements necessary to run Apple-Psych, the capabilities of the basic system, and the advantages and disadvantages of using Apple-Psych. Because the utility of a system to a researcher is often linked to its flexibility and expandability, this paper includes a brief discussion of hardware expansions already supported by the Apple Psych software and hardware expansions that would require additional software support.