Evidential support and undermining: Revision of Håkan Törnebohm's theory of confirmation

In 1975, An Essay on Knowledge Formation by H. Törnebohm was published in this Journal. Its content in revised form was included in a work in Swedish of 1983 on knowledge development.HT defines his confirmation criterion in terms of a measure oftruth degree T, which is based on a measure ofmatching M, which is also used as a measure of the degree to which propositionp (an hypothesis) is supported or undermined by another propositionq (the evidence forp),M is defined in terms of a measure of thecontent C.     

No attentional bias for pictoral stimuli in spider-fearful subjects

A number of experiments have shown that (spider) fearful subjects direct their attention to fear-relevant words, even when these words are irrelevant to the completion of a target task (e.g., color naming). The present study examined whether subjects with an intense fear of spiders also display such attentional bias for a fear-relevant pictoral stimulus. Female spider-fearful (n=13) and control subjects (n=13) saw neutral patterns (i.e., horizontal and vertical bars). One pattern served as target for a reaction time, while the other pattern served as nontarget. Targets and nontargets were accompanied by either fear-relevant or neutral pictoral material (i.e., a picture of a spider or a picture of a flower, respectively). The fear-relevant picture did not selectively delibate reaction time performance of spider-fearful subjects. Thus, no evidence was found for an attentional bias for fear-relevant pictoral material in subjects with an intense fear of spiders. Instead, fearful subjects exhibited a general inhibition of performance which became stronger over trials. This suggests that the fear-relevant picture induced a state of anxious arousal or defensive withdrawal that interfered with reaction time performance on both fear-relevant and neutral trials.     

Disordered Communication and Grieving in Deaf Member Families

When a deaf child is born to hearing parents, a grieving process is initiated in the parents. Unresolved grieving over their child's deafness often makes it difficult for hearing parents to accept the importance of signing, thus increasing the child's problems — further source of grief for these parents. Clinical illustrations are provided of (1) the reciprocal relationship between disruption of the mourning process and disturbance of communication between family members, and (2) the transmission of the dysfunctional relationship between hearing parents and deaf children to the subsequent relationship between the deaf children, when they reach adulthood, and their hearing children.     

Sensitivity of persons with hearing impairment to visual emotional expression — compensation or deficit?

The research examined whether subjects with hearing impairment would differ from normal hearing subjects in their ability to decode emotions from video stimuli (48 video takes in which two actors portrayed six different emotions). Studies in tactile and visual perception lead one to expect deficits, while there is also some evidence for compensation. Twenty-six subjects with hearing impairment and 26 matched normal hearing subjects participated (average age = 25.5 years; nine female, 17 male subjects in each group). Results indicate that in general subjects with hearing impairment were slightly less successful in decoding emotions from the visual stimuli than the normal hearing subjects. A comparison between highly (loss > 60–90 dBA) and moderately (loss about 30–60 dBA) impaired subjects on the other hand indicated poorer emotion decoding only for the moderately impaired group. Post-hoc analyses indicated that these effects were specific to males. Results are discussed with respect to compensation versus deficit, and with respect to issues of training.     

Item Variances and Median Splits: Some Encouraging and Reassuring Findings

ABSTRACT The article by Bissonnette, Ickes, Bernstein, and Knowles (1990) presented in this issue contains a series of simulations which vary widely in the degree to which they resemble the parameters that have been found in actual data. Their conclusions feature warnings based on simulations containing large confounds between trait extremity and item variance. In real data, however, the corresponding confounds typically have been small. When Bissonnette et al. used appropriately small confounds in their simulations, their results showed that median split techniques failed to inflate Type I error rates. The constructive implications of Bissonnette et al.'s simulations indicate that moderator-variable researchers should always perform a simple check for range restriction and for variance-extremity confounds, and that there is no danger of spurious conclusions as long as these checks conform to what has typically been found with real data.     

LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF PROCRASTINATION, PERFORMANCE, STRESS, AND HEALTH:

Abstract— Procrastination is variously described as harmful, innocuous, or even benefical. Two longitudinal studies examined procrastination among students. Procrastinators reported lower stress and less illness than nonprocrastinators early in the semester, but they reported higher stress and more illness late in the term, and overall they were sicker. Procrastination thus appears to be a self-defeating behavior pattern marked by short-term benefits and long-term costs.