Grouping and gambling: a Gestalt approach to understanding the gambler's fallacy.

The gambler's fallacy was examined in terms of grouping processes. The gambler's fallacy is the tendency to erroneously believe that for independent events, recent or repeated instances of an outcome (e.g., a series of "heads" when flipping a coin) will make that outcome less likely on an upcoming trial. Grouping was manipulated such that a critical trial following a run of heads or tails was grouped together with previous trials (i.e., the last trial of "Block 1") or was the first trial of another group (the first trial of "Block 2"). As predicted, the gambler's fallacy was evident when the critical trial was grouped with the previous trials, but not when it was arbitrarily grouped with the next block of trials. Discussion centres on the processes underlying the gambler's fallacy and practical implications of these findings.     

Discrete varieties of care in the clinical pastoral tradition: continuing the dialogue

In the current cultural context, clinically trained ministers, lay and ordained, offer themselves to troubled souls through at least three distinct varieties of assistance: pastoral care, pastoral counseling, and pastoral psychotherapy. This essay delineates three accepted disciplines, emphasizing the importance of ascertaining, and perhaps re-evaluating, the particular needs and desires of persons who are in physical, mental, or spiritual distress. "Pastoral care," "pastoral counseling," and "pastoral psychotherapy" each play an important role in fulfilling the traditional mandate for "the cure of souls."     

Computerizing reading training: Evaluation of a latent semantic analysis space for science text

The effectiveness of a domain-specific latent semantic analysis (LSA) in assessing reading strategies was examined. Students were given self-explanation reading training (SERT) and asked to think aloud after each sentence in a science text. Novice and expert human raters and two LSA spaces (general reading, science) rated the similarity of each think-aloud protocol to benchmarks representing three different reading strategies (minimal, local, and global). The science LSA space correlated highly with human judgments, and more highly than did the general reading space. Also, cosines from the science LSA spaces can distinguish between different levels of semantic similarity, but may have trouble in distinguishing local processing protocols. Thus, a domain-specific LSA space is advantageous regardless of the size of the space. The results are discussedin the context of applying the science LSA to a computer-based version of SERT that gives online feedback based on LSA cosines.     

Skewed autonomy-relatedness in preadolescents' conceptions of their relationships with mother, father, and best friend.

Healthy adaptation within all close relationships--whether with parents, friends, or romantic partners--involves striking a balance between connectedness to and independence from the relationship partner. For some individuals, adaptation within one or more relationships is skewed, or characterized by either an excessive concern for closeness that impedes autonomy (preoccupied stance) or an excessive concern for autonomy that inhibits closeness (avoidant stance). In this study with boys and girls aged 9-14 years, children who reported a preoccupied or avoidant stance toward their mother displayed increased social impairment in the peer group over time. There were predictable associations among children's stances toward mother, father, and best friend. Children resembled their best friend in relationship stance. The study illustrates the advantages of applying common relationship constructs (e.g., autonomy-relatedness) to the study of diverse close relationships.     

The Phenomenology of Homesickness in Boys

Homesickness is the distress or impairment caused by an actual or anticipated separation from home. It is characterized by acute longing and preoccupying thoughts of home and attachment objects. This study extended previous research on the phenomenology of childhood homesickness by assessing a sample of 316 boys, ages 8–16, who were spending 2 weeks at a single-sex residential summer camp. Some 18% of the children reported moderate or high levels of homesickness; 7% reported concomitant severe depressive and anxious symptoms. Homesickness intensity was negatively correlated with separation experience and age. It was most commonly associated with depressive symptoms and internalizing behavior problems. For severely homesick boys, intensity increased over time, decreasing just prior to their return home. Preseparation assessment suggested that severely homesick boys had elevated levels of homesickness and negative emotions months before arriving at camp. One-year follow-up data suggested that the intensity of severe homesickness decreased with age and experience. However, severely homesick boys were less likely than other boys to return to camp. The results demonstrate how brief separations can affect children's well-being and attitudes about separations. Severe homesickness is distinct from separation anxiety disorder, but has elements of this and other psychopathologies. Theories of negative emotion, attachment, and coping complement emerging theories of homesickness.     

Familiarity and pronounceability of nouns and names

Ratings of familiarity and pronounceability were obtained from a random sample of 199 surnames (selected from over 80,000 entries in the Purdue University phone book) and 199 nouns (from the Ku?era-Francis, 1967, word database). The distributions of ratings for nouns versus names are substantially different: Nouns were rated as more familiar and easier to pronounce than surnames. Frequency and familiarity were more closely related in the proper name pool than the word pool, although both correlations were modest. Ratings of familiarity and pronounceability were highly related for both groups. A production experiment showed that rated pronounceability was highly related to the time taken to produce a name. These data confirm the common belief that there are differences in the statistical and distributional properties of words as compared to proper names. The value of using frequency and the ratings of familiarity and pronounceability for predicting variations in actual pronunciations of words and names are discussed.