Response competition effects insame-different judgments

An account ofsame-different discriminations that is based upon a continuous-flow model of visual information processing (C. W. Eriksen & Schultz, 1979) and response competition and inhibition between the responses by which the subject signifies his judgment is presented. We show that a response signifyingsame will on the average be executed faster due to less priming or incipient activation of the competing response,different. In the experiment, the subjects matched letters on the basis of physical identity. The degree of priming ofdifferent responses on same trials and ofsame responses ondifferent trials was manipulated by an extraneous noise letter placed in the display. Latency for judgments onsame trials increased as the feature overlap of noise and target letters decreased. Latencies were shorter ondifferent trials when the noise letter was dissimilar to either target letter than when the noise letter was the same as one of the targets. These results were consistent with the response-competition interpretation.     

How do group meetings make a community Therapeutic?

Summary Following an abrupt shift from a therapeutic community with emphasis on group meetings to a hierarchical medical model on a mental hospital floor, disturbed patients required extensive individual nursing care. This increased work load for the nursing staff resulted in admissions having to be limited to the rare cases who needed little or no nursing care. As patients were discharged, the vacancy rate went up to approximately 20% for a week and remained high for another two weeks. Nursing staff-patient relations deteriorated.Subsequently, it was possible to resume the emphasis on the groups of a therapeutic community and to observe the contrast. The experience showed how groups can effect and support a therapeutic community. It clarified some of the mechanisms by which groups positively affected disturbed patients. Some mechanisms by which the staff, community, and group meetings favorably influenced the nursing staff-patient relationship and intrastaff communications became clear also.     

Opposing effects of phonological similarity on item and order memory of words and nonwords in the serial recall task

This study shows that the classical phonological similarity effect (PSE) in immediate serial recall is critically affected by the lexicality of list items, the type of phonological similarity involved, and the scoring procedure. PSE was present in the serial recall score when phonologically distinct words were compared to words that share the middle vowel and end consonant (rhyming lists). PSE was absent in the serial recall score when phonologically distinct words were compared to words that share the initial and final consonants (consonant frame lists). There was a reversal of PSE in serial recall of nonwords when comparing distinct lists to both types of similar lists. Recall accuracy on the other hand was higher for distinct lists regardless of lexicality. Item errors dominated in relation to order errors in the case of nonwords, whereas order errors dominated in relation to item errors in the case of words. Furthermore, order errors were more common for phonologically similar lists, whereas item errors were more common for phonologically distinct lists. This may be the result of intra-list and inter-list interference, respectively. The dominance of the former error type may cause a classical PSE, whereas the dominance of the latter error type may cause a reversal of PSE. Finally, an item identification task yielded no evidence of an association between intra-list interference and discriminability of items in a list.     

The concept of risk and responsible conduct of research

Assessment of risk is one of the key issues in the field of responsible conduct of research which covers discourses of research ethics and research integrity. The principle of minimizing risks and balancing of risks and benefits is one of the main requirements of research ethics. In addition, the content of informed consent that is another fundamental principle of research ethics derives from the assessment of risks and benefits related to a particular research project. Risk assessment also plays a crucial role in methodological design of the research project. This is an important point where research ethics and research integrity discourses overlap. Firstly, because the choice of a control group (e.g., placebo control) is a key ethical issue related to the protection of the research subjects' interests. Secondly, because the quality of the research data, that is one of the key elements of research integrity, is closely connected to the choice of research methodology as well. The problem of biased interpretation or manipulation of risk related features of biomedical research should also be taken into account. Despite the importance of the concept of risk to the field of biomedical research, its relevance has not yet attracted a sufficient attention in the responsible conduct of research debate.