Recent advances in operant conditioning technology: a versatile and affordable computerized touchscreen system.

We report the construction of a new operant chamber that incorporates modern computer, touchscreen, and display technologies. An LCD display was housed in the front wall of a lightweight Plexiglas chamber. An Apple eMac computer was used to present visual stimuli on the monitor and to control other chamber events. Responses to the stimuli were recorded using a transparent resistive-type touchscreen that overlaid the monitor. The resulting system is simple and inexpensive to construct but powerful and flexible enough to explore a broad range of issues in animal learning and behavior.     

Personality patterns of physicians in person-oriented and technique-oriented specialties

This study investigated differences in personality patterns between person-oriented and technique-oriented physicians. It tested an integrative framework by converting the scores on the Personality Research Form (PRF) to the Big-Five factors and built a predictive model of group membership in clinical specialty area. PRF scores from 238 physicians (153 person-oriented and 85 technique-oriented) were used for this retrospective study. Significant personality differences between group means existed for seven of the traits on the PRF and two Big-Five factors. Results of a stepwise discriminant analysis indicated that two PRF traits and one Big-Five factor had the greatest ability to discriminate between person-oriented and technique-oriented physicians. Findings of this study provide support for establishing personality profiles of physicians interested in person-oriented versus technique-oriented specialties. Examining personality differences among male and female physicians is discussed as an area for future research.     

Why did I right that? Factors that influence the production of homophone substitution errors

Despite considerable research on language production errors involving speech, little research exists in the complementary domain of writing. Two experiments investigated the production of homophone substitution errors, which occur when a contextually appropriate word (e.g., beech) is replaced with its homophone (e.g., beach tree). Participants wrote down auditorily presented sentences containing dominant or subordinate homophones. Homophones were preceded by a lexical prime that overlapped in phonology and orthography (e.g., teacher) or only orthography (e.g., headmaster) with the target homophone. Results showed more substitution errors when the context elicited a subordinate homophone than when it elicited a dominant homophone. Furthermore, both types of primes equivalently increased production of homophone errors relative to control words (e.g., lawyer), suggesting that only orthographic overlap between the prime and target was necessary to influence errors. These results are explained within dual-route models of spelling, which postulate an interaction between lexical and sublexical routes when spelling.     

Missional Discipleship

Most communities of the world, and particularly in the continent of Africa, are multi‐faith and multicultural. Christianity is a major religion in the continent that has succeeded in persuading adherents of African traditional religions to switch off from their indigenous belief and switch on to Christian belief. 1 Christianity is not the only religious faith in Africa. It has other sibling monotheistic religions and other religious expressions. Christianity, being a mission‐oriented religious faith, has a mandate to bring about transformation as reflected in its sacred text, the Bible. This article will explore how the transformation is stimulated and sustained. Meanwhile, it is necessary to state that African people were religious people even before the advent of Christianity and Islam. As a result, religion plays a critical role in their public engagements. Nevertheless, what may be investigated further would be whether religion, and Christian faith in particular, influences the people to be good citizens/disciples as they engage in the socio‐political and economic life of the society. The article seeks to use the notion of missional discipleship as a compelling stimulus for inclusive transformation in African societies.     

Inaccurate reporting and inappropriate variables: a reply to Vecchio's (1990) examination of cognitive resource theory.

In an article in the Journal of Applied Psychology, Vecchio (1990) purported to test cognitive resource theory (Fiedler, 1986; Fiedler & Garcia, 1987). We present evidence that Vecchio's article seriously misrepresented previous work on cognitive resource theory and also contained several flaws in methodology that call into question his conclusions regarding the validity of cognitive resource theory.     

A collection of 4,741 word fragments that have unique completions with respect to 146,205 words

A collection of 4,741 word fragments that have a unique completion is described. All word fragments are specified by two letters (e.g.,__Q__U__can only be completed by the word LIQUEURS). The words completing these fragments range in length from five to nine letters. The fragments are unique with respect to a pool of 146,205 words, which helps rule out the possibility that obscure words could be used as a completion to the fragments. The collection of fragments as well as the words that complete them is available in ASCII format on computer disks or in printed form.     

Organizational and extraorganizational factors affecting stress,employee well-being,and absenteeism for males and females

The purpose of this research is to examine separately for males and females, the effects of different sources of job and life stress on the emotional and physical well-being of those individuals, and in turn on absenteeism. Results using a sample of 170 males and 204 females indicated that females experienced higher levels of job stress, absenteeism, and poorer emotional well-being. Patterns of relationships for males and females were similar, however, the data suggest that sex moderates the effects of different sources of stress on emotional and physical well-being and absenteeism. The model developed as a part of this research was more complicated for females than for males.