Acceptability in France of Induced Abortion for Adolescents

Background: This study investigated the factors affecting the acceptability in France of abortions. Method: 80 study participants from Toulouse and 124 from Metz judged the acceptability of abortion in 64 vignettes composed of five factors: 1) the adolescent's age (15 or 17.5 years), 2) the adolescent's plans to continue schooling or not, 3) the fetus' age (1, 2, 3, or 4 months), 4) the adolescent's parents' agreement or not, and 5) the agreement or not of baby's father. Results: Three clusters were noted: 1) abortion is never acceptable (8% of participants), 2) abortion is always acceptable (23%), and 3) acceptability of abortion depends on the circumstances (63%). In the majority cluster (3), all five factors had significant effects, but the fetus's age accounted for most of the variance (78%). Conclusion: Most subjects in this study judged, in accordance with French law, that the acceptability of induced abortion in minors depends on the circumstances and, in particular, on the fetus' age.     

Under what conditions would people be willing to make a living organ donation?

The aim was to examine the factors involved in people's willingness to make a living organ donation. A convenience sample of 200 people in southern France rated willingness to be a living donor in 48 scenarios consisting of all combinations of five factors: recipient's identity (close family member and city resident); donor's surgical risk (little and some); donor's possible long-term health consequences (none, some lessening over time, and durable); transplant success ("generally durably successful" and "durably successful one time out of two"); and likelihood of other donors (subject is one of the rare compatible donors or one among others). Cluster analyses showed the existence of three distinct organ donation philosophies. For the largest cluster (49% of participants), willingness to donate was very high to a family member, but low to a city resident. For the second cluster (37%), willingness was high to family, but also moderately high to a city resident. For the third cluster (14%), willingness was always low. Thus, most participants judged themselves ready to make a living organ donation to a family member and many even to a stranger.     

Understanding the family in multiple cultural contexts: Avoiding therapeutic traps

Developing a balanced picture of a family's functioning is difficult when the family is culturally different from the therapist. Open-minded family therapists often translate culturally different traits and behaviors as culturally appropriate and exclude them from clinical judgment, which can limit therapeutic range and effectiveness. The following case study about an Indian family with a mentally retarded child is especially illustrative of the dilemmas facing the therapist working with families of different backgrounds. Therapeutic traps were avoided by having the family assess its own differences, while the therapist held steadfast to social interconnectedness as essential to healthy family functioning.An earlier and somewhat different version of this material appeared under a different title in Families, published by the Family Institute of Philadelphia.     

Artificial intelligence and animal psychology: A response to Boden, Margolis and Sloman

We propose the elements of an epistemological framework in which to situate the fundamental problem of ascribing mentalistic concepts to animals and machines that is posed by Margaret Boden's, Aaron Sloman's and Joseph Margolis' discussion of artificial intelligence and animal psychology.     

Future Time Perspective according to women's age and social role during adulthood

The purpose of the present research was to describe the kind of transformation Future Time Perspective (FTP) undergoes during adulthood and to investigate the differences that may occur in the extension and the content of goals of women according to their age groups and social roles (homemakers, students, and careerwomen). With a sentence completion technique, 622 Caucasian French-Canadian women (20 to 64 years of age) expressed their aspirations. These goals were classified into specific categories according to their temporal extension and their motivational content. Results indicate that the extension and the content of FTP undergo numerous changes during adulthood, revealing different goal profiles according to women's age and social role. Results are discussed in relation with current research.The authors are most grateful to the psychology students of the University of Sherbrooke for their contribution during the data gathering.     

Applying the M-92, A Self-Knowledge Technique for Determining Job Aspirations and Expectations

The M-92 technique is aimed at helping teenagers become aware of: (a) the relationships between certain classic determinants such as prestige, income, and job opportunities and their system of job aspirations and/or expectations; (b) the strong and weak points in their system of information about jobs; (c) the internal structure of their system of occupational representations; and (d) possible conflicts in values or discordancies between aspirations and expectations. From a theoretical standpoint the M-92 draws directly on Coombs (1975) and Gottfredson (1981). Methodologically, it is an extension of the Hammond et al. (1988) Social Judgement Theory to the case of pair comparisons. Several concrete examples of the M-92 in use are described.     

A comparison of the effects of fimbria-fornix, hippocampal, or entorhinal cortex lesions on spatial reference and working memory in rats: short versus long postsurgical recovery period.

Using a radial maze task and different postoperative recovery periods, this experiment assessed and compared the reference and working memory performances of adult Long-Evans male rats subjected to entorhinal cortex, fimbria-fornix, and hippocampus lesions. Sham-operated rats were used as controls. In order to see whether the duration of the postsurgical recovery period would influence acquisition of the complex radial maze task, training began 1 month following surgery (Delay 1) for half the rats in each group, while for the other half training was started 6.5 months following surgery (Delay 2). The results indicated that at both recovery periods the entorhinal cortex lesions failed to affect either working or reference memory in the spatial task. Conversely, both fimbria-fornix and hippocampus lesions impaired both reference and working memory. While the reference memory deficit was generally similar in both fimbria-fornix and hippocampal lesion groups, analysis of the results for working memory indicated that at the longer delay rats with fimbria-fornix lesions were still impaired but in animals that had the hippocampus removed, working memory did not differ from that of controls. These results suggest that there was some recovery in those rats with hippocampal lesions (e.g., on the working memory task) but both hippocampal and fimbria-fornix animals were still impaired compared to controls when training was delayed 6.5 months following the operations.