Response to A Different Vantage Point Commentary: Psychotherapeutic Genetic Counseling,Is it?

Whether genetic counseling is a form of psychotherapy is open for debate. Early practicioners in genetic counseling described it as such, and this claim has been replicated in recent publications. This commentary is a rebuttal to the claim that genetic counseling is distinct from psychotherapty. We argue that it is a a form of psychoterapy that aims to help clients manage a health threat that affects their psychological wellbeing, paralleling the goals of psychotherapy.     

Junior football players' classification of runners as their teammates from 400-msec. video clips

It was hypothesized that a specialized gait recognition skill enables humans to distinguish the gait of familiar from unfamiliar individuals, and that this may have relevance in team sports. Runners seen for less than half a second can be classified as teammates or not by adult players, so it may be asked whether this skill would also be demonstrated by young team players. In the current study, junior football players (M age = 10.0 yr., SD = 0.8, N = 13) viewed 400-msec. video clips of runners sprinting past a fixed forward facing digital video camera and similarly showed teammate recognition scores significantly above chance. Given the variation among the junior players in this skill, it seems possible for researchers to assess whether improvement can be obtained with structured training for young team players, where running teammates are seen in peripheral vision during training drills.     

The Baby Blanket or the Briefcase: The Impact of Evangelical Gender Role Ideologies on Career and Mothering Aspirations of Female Evangelical College Students

This study examines the relationship between the Evangelical gender role ideologies termed Complementarianism and Egalitarianism and mothering and career aspirations among Evangelical female college students. We surveyed 134 women from two colleges in the United States, one in the Midwest and one in the South. Using a cross-sectional, self-report survey design, we examined the interaction between career aspirations and mothering aspirations as well as the impact of Evangelical gender role ideologies on both types of aspirations. Results indicated that career and home aspirations were negatively correlated. Mothering aspirations were shown to be significantly affected by conservative gender role ideology. These findings suggest that aspirations for one’s mothering role may be influenced by ideological positions.     

Judicial gatekeeping and the social construction of the admissibility of expert testimony

Content analysis of 192 U.S. District Court cases was conducted to investigate judges' evaluations of expert characteristics and evidence characteristics for toxicology, psychological/psychiatric, and damages testimony. Judges evaluated more expert characteristics, but not more evidence characteristics, as the number of months post-Daubert increased (Hypotheses 1 and 2). More evidence characteristics were evaluated when evidence was quantitatively rather than qualitatively based (Hypothesis 3). The greatest number of evidence characteristics examined was for toxicology evidence (Hypothesis 4). Fewer expert characteristics were evaluated for admissible evidence, but more evidence characteristics were evaluated for inadmissible evidence (Hypothesis 5). All analyses were significant at .05. Implications for judges, attorneys, and experts are discussed.     

Social representations of history in Malaysia and Singapore: On the relationship between national and ethnic identity

Social representations of history were investigated using surveys among university populations of ethnic Malays, Chinese, and Indians in Singapore and Malaysia. Representations of history and historical leaders tended to be hegemonic or consensual, showing low levels of conflict across ethnicity and nationality, even regarding the separation of these two nations. Tendencies towards in-group favoritism and ontogeny were slight, but statistically significant on some measures. National and ethnic identity were positively correlated, with ethnic identity stronger than national identity in Malaysia, and strongest among Malays in Malaysia. National identity was strongest among Chinese in Malaysia, followed by Chinese in Singapore. Results of regression analyses on national identity suggest that ethnicity is more sensitive in Malaysia than in Singapore. Results are interpreted through the frameworks provided by social representations theory and social identity theory. It is argued that hegemonic representations of history are associated with positive correlations between national and ethnic identity.     

Does Mastery of ABLA Level 6 Make it Easier for Individuals with Developmental Disabilities to Learn to Name Objects?

Level 6 of the Assessment of Basic Learning Abilities (ABLA) assesses the ease or difficulty with which persons with developmental disabilities are able to learn a two-choice auditory-visual discrimination. We investigated whether participants who passed ABLA Level 6 (Group 1) would more readily learn object naming (vocal tacts) than those who failed ABLA Level 6 (Group 2). The groups were matched on the Communication Subscale of the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale. Results indicated that Group 1 met mastery criterion for a significantly larger number of naming responses and in significantly fewer trials than Group 2. The implications for language training are discussed.     

On leveraged learning in lexical acquisition and its relationship to acceleration

Children at about age 18 months experience acceleration in word learning. This vocabulary explosion is a robust phenomenon, although the exact shape and timing vary from child to child. One class of explanations, which we term collectively as leveraged learning , posits that knowledge of some words helps with the learning of others. In this framework, the child initially knows no words and so learning is slow. As more words are acquired, new words become easier and thus it is the acquisition of early words that fuels the explosion in learning. In this paper we examine the role of leveraged learning in the vocabulary spurt by proposing a simple model of leveraged learning. Our results show that leverage can change both the shape and timing of the acceleration, but that it cannot create acceleration if it did not exist in the corresponding model without leveraging. This model is then applied to the Zipfian distribution of word frequencies, which confirm that leveraging does not create acceleration, but that the relationship between frequency and the difficulty of learning a word may be complex.     

The Role of Lay Health Advisors in Cardiovascular Risk Reduction: A Review

Interventions are needed to reduce the negative impact of cardiovascular disease. The combination of health risks for disease, disability, and mortality, particularly among underserved populations, might be best addressed with programs designed to enhance awareness and development of resources within a context of community support. The objectives of this review were to: (1) provide a comprehensive review and evaluation of the roles, evaluation, and effectiveness of LHA in community-based programs with an emphasis on cardiovascular risk reduction; and (2) provide recommendations for future research involving LHA in such programs. Computer and manual searches were conducted of articles in the English-language literature from 1980 to 2007. Twenty articles were evaluated, which emphasized the role of the LHA in cardiovascular risk reduction. A review of research literature provides a starting point for determining salient approaches for intervention and evaluation, issues related to program implementation and sustainability, and strengths and limitations of existing approaches.