Effects of minor phrasing variations in traffic-related questionnaires – Comparison of objective equivalences and respondents’ subjective statements

This paper examines questionnaire-related issues of variations in the wording of questions and the objective accuracy of the response, in terms of three traffic-related phenomena (accident frequency, incident frequency, and speeding). ca. 900 survey respondents, living along four major arterial streets in Malmö, Sweden, estimated the occurrence of the phenomena in question. The dispatch consisted of two parallel questionnaires with minor variations in question wording which showed significant differences in the given estimates of accident and incident frequency depending on the phrasing. The correspondence between the subjective estimates and objectively measured accident and speeding figures is discussed along with the potential impact of wording, the phenomenon’s characteristics and response scales. Increased knowledge of these factors could ease communication with the public in the municipal traffic-planning process.     

Domestic Violence Between Same‐Sex Partners: Implications for Counseling

Over the past 2 decades, awareness and concern about the incidence and severity of domestic violence have increased. Although information about domestic violence has grown, much of the literature does not address domestic violence between same‐sex partners. This article discusses the dynamics of domestic violence between partners of the same sex. The social and cultural issues in the gay and lesbian communities play a large part in perpetuating the myths of domestic violence, which keeps the abuse hidden. This article is based on an extensive review of the literature and a clinical consensus among experts in the field.     

Dissociable learning processes,associative theory,and testimonial reviews: A comment on Smith and Church (2018)

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Smith and Church (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25, 1565–1584 2018) present a “testimonial” review of dissociable learning processes...     

Scripts we live by: on inheriting canonical texts

ABSTRACT

In this article, I theorize the interpretation of harmful canonical texts with special reference to John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. As a result of the actions and rhetoric of some of its North American evangelical readers, the Institutes has come to function as an intellectual foundation for certain expressions of modern homophobia. In conversation with Jacques Derrida on inheritance and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick on reparativity, I thus consider how queer evangelicals (especially those who wish to continue identifying themselves as such) ought to engage both Calvin’s text, particularly, as well as, more generally, those other canonical texts that are sources of trauma. In so doing, I proffer a capacious view of interpretation as not only what one says but also how one lives.     

Learned irrelevance: A contemporary overview

This article reviews the recent literature on the topic of learned irrelevance. It asks whether the retardation of subsequent conditioning produced by uncorrelated preexposure is indeed the result of the animal learning that a conditioned stimulus (CS) and unconditioned stimulus (US) are unrelated, or whether it is better explained either as a result of the context specificity of latent inhibition, or as some other artefact of the uncorrelated schedule employed. The conclusion is that there is as yet no good evidence to support the existence of a “genuine” learned irrelevance effect.