Readability of prescription drug labels by older and younger adults

This experiment investigated the readability of medication labels using various combinations of fonts, sizes, and weights of print. Older and younger adult reading speeds and error rates for different print types were compared for both bottle and flat labels. Findings of the study indicated significant differences in reading speed, error rates, and subjective evaluations for print characteristics investigated. Furthermore, the effects of these print characteristics varied for different age groups. Implications of these findings for the design of medication labels for older adults are discussed.     

Racial differences in birth outcomes: the role of general, pregnancy, and racism stress.

OBJECTIVE: This study examined the role of psychosocial stress in racial differences in birth outcomes. DESIGN: Maternal health, sociodemographic factors, and 3 forms of stress (general stress, pregnancy stress, and perceived racism) were assessed prospectively in a sample of 51 African American and 73 non-Hispanic White pregnant women. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The outcomes of interest were birth weight and gestational age at delivery. Only predictive models of birth weight were tested as the groups did not differ significantly in gestational age. RESULTS: Perceived racism and indicators of general stress were correlated with birth weight and tested in regression analyses. In the sample as a whole, lifetime and childhood indicators of perceived racism predicted birth weight and attenuated racial differences, independent of medical and sociodemographic control variables. Models within each race group showed that perceived racism was a significant predictor of birth weight in African Americans, but not in non-Hispanic Whites. CONCLUSIONS: These findings provide further evidence that racism may play an important role in birth outcome disparities, and they are among the first to indicate the significance of psychosocial factors that occur early in the life course for these specific health outcomes.     

Theoretical and methodological implications of language experience and vocabulary skill: priming of strongly and weakly associated words

The effect of second language experience and vocabulary ability was investigated in a semantic priming experiment with weakly related English word pairs (e.g., city-grass). Participants made lexical decisions to targets preceded by unrelated or weakly related primes or to nonword targets preceded by words. Reliable priming was found for monolingual participants; participants who had acquired a second language showed either marginal or nonreliable effects. A similar pattern of results was found with the analysis of vocabulary ability. Only participants with the greater vocabulary ability showed a priming effect. Although previous research has shown that participants with a broad range of linguistic backgrounds demonstrate the typical semantic priming effect (e.g., green-grass) with strongly associated word pairs, weaker relationships seem to require an extensive contextual history for retrieval.     

Team Climate Inventory with a merged organization

The present study examines the team climate for innovation in work teams within a newly merged organization. Four teams working at a regional head office of a Social Insurance organization answered the Team Climate Inventory. The results were compared to those of a study by Agrell and Gustafson of more stable teams. The comparison showed that participative safety and support for innovation were rated lower and that vision was rated higher in the newly merged teams. The 38-item original inventory was used and based on the results, a 1999 proposed shortened version of 14 items by Kivim?ki and Elovainio was compared with the original one. Analysis indicated that the short version can be a valid alternative to the original version but that further testing of the short version is needed.     

A method for increasing empirical discriminability and eliminating top‐row preference in photo arrays

It is important to consider the two parameters of signal detection theory, discriminability and response bias, when evaluating eyewitness identification from simultaneous lineups. On the basis of the diagnostic feature‐detection hypothesis, we tested a method for increasing discriminability that encourages eyewitnesses to carefully rank each lineup member based on match to their memory for a perpetrator. This procedure increased empirical discriminability and also eliminated a response bias that is largely overlooked in the literature: Participants were biased to choose from the top row of the six‐pack (2 × 3) lineup commonly used in the United States. We argue that suspect position in the simultaneous lineup is an important variable to consider for researchers and the criminal justice system. We also encourage researchers to test the ranking procedure to determine if such a simple set of instructions could be utilized by police to help eyewitnesses correctly sort innocent versus guilty suspects.     

Principia genetica grundbegriffe und grundtatsachen der vererbungswissenschaft

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