Family system functioning: behavior in the laboratory and the family treatment setting

The Family System Functioning (FSF) scale is a new instrument for measuring dimensions of the intrafamilial environment thought to be important in recovery from major psychiatric illness. Modest statistical correlations were obtained when FSF ratings of laboratory-based family interactions were compared with researcher-guided therapist ratings of FSF based upon the family's behavior in family therapy sessions during the subsequent month. The data from these two settings provide support for the validity of some of the scales. Because of the modest size of the correlations, however, behavior in the laboratory setting may not always be an accurate indicator of how the family will behave in the early weeks of family therapy.     

Effectiveness of time-out: a comparison of psychiatric, correctional and day-treatment programs

The effectiveness of a time-out intervention for adolescent psychiatric patients, adjudicated (delinquent) youth, and behaviorally disordered youngsters was explored in this study. The research was conducted in three psychiatric hospitals for children and adolescents, a facility for adjudicated youth, and in a day-treatment program. Utilizing a comparative outcome model, 813 occurrences of time-out with 274 youth were investigated in order to assess levels of effectiveness. The results indicated that time-out had a significant impact, and the use of a child-care specialist as time-out monitor improves overall effectiveness. Important implications for practicing professionals and clinical researchers are noted.     

Jewish medical ethics in the care of the cancer patient

The care of the patient with cancer requires the development not only of a medical plan, but an ethical plan as well. This plan should integrate the physician's and the patient's perceptions of medical and ethical propriety. Jewish biomedical ethical principles are based on the teaching of the Old Testament and its various interpretations. In this paper, I discuss how these principles can be used to help guide the physician caring for the patient with cancer. Other ethical systems could be applied in a similar fashion.     

The precaution adoption process

This article presents a critique of current models of preventive behavior. It discusses a variety of factors that are usually overlooked-including the appearance of costs and benefits over time, the role of cues to action, the problem of competing life demands, and the ways that actual decision behavior differs from the rational ideal implicit in expectancy-value and utility theories. Such considerations suggest that the adoption of new precautions should be viewed as a dynamic process with many determinants. The framework of a model that is able to accommodate these additional factors is described. This alternative model portrays the precaution adoption process as an orderly sequence of qualitatively different cognitive stages. Data illustrating a few of the suggestions made in the article are presented, and implications for prevention programs are discussed.     

The epistemic efficacy of stupidity

I show that it follows from both externalist and internalist theories that stupid people may be in a better position to know than smart ones. This untoward consequence results from taking our epistemic goal to be accepting as many truths as possible and rejecting as many falsehoods as possible, combined with a recognition that the standard for acceptability cannot be set too high, else scepticism will prevail. After showing how causal, reliabilist, and coherentist theories devalue intelligence, I suggest that knowledge, as contemporary theories construe it, is not a particularly valuable cognitive achievement, and that we would do well to reopen epistemology to the study of cognitive excellences of all sorts.I am grateful to Warren Goldfarb for sharing his knowledge of wines with me, and to Kenneth Winkler for sharing his knowledge of birds.