Selective influence through conditional independence

Let each of several (generally interdependent) random vectors, taken separately, be influenced by a particular set of external factors. Under what kind of the joint dependence of these vectors on the union of these factor sets can one say that each vector is selectively influenced by “its own” factor set? The answer proposed and elaborated in this paper is: One can say this if and only if one can find a factor-independent random vector given whose value the vectors in question are conditionally independent, with their conditional distributions selectively influenced by the corresponding factor sets. Equivalently, the random vectors should be representable as deterministic functions of “their” factor sets and of some mutually independent and factor-independent random variables, some of which may be shared by several of the functions.     

Children's working-memory processes: a response-timing analysis

Recall response durations were used to clarify processing in working-memory tasks. Experiment 1 examined children's performance in reading span, a task in which sentences were processed and the final word of each sentence was retained for subsequent recall. Experiment 2 examined the development of listening-, counting-, and digit-span task performance. Responses were much longer in the reading-and listening-span tasks than in the other span tasks, suggesting that participants in sentence-based span tasks take time to retrieve the semantic or linguistic structure as cues to recall of the sentence-final words. Response durations in working-memory tasks helped to predict academic skill and achievement, largely separate from the contributions of the memory spans themselves. Response durations thus are important in the interpretation of span task performance.     

What predicts adjustment among law students? A longitudinal panel study

Although at the time of this article's publication, many anecdotes and cross-sectional studies had reported that law students experience significant distress during their 1st year, few researchers had controlled for prelaw school status (e.g., M. Garrison, B. Tomko, & I. Yip, 1996; L. Guinier, M. Fine, J. Balin, A. Bartow, & D. L. Stachel, 1994), and only a single group of researchers had explored a psychosocial factor that predicted these changes. The present authors tested 3 sets of potential predictors of adjustment: sources of stress, coping strategies, and relationship factors. The present data replicated declines in students' psychological health, physical health, and attitudes toward law over the 1st year of school. That result supports the generalizability and currency of previous studies. In contrast to other researchers, the present authors found few gender differences. Less relationship happiness, less emotional support, and use of less active coping tactics at the beginning of the year predicted poorer outcomes at the end of the year. Strain from academic pressures, lack of personal time, and social isolation were correlated with poorer outcomes.     

Sex differences in recall of real or nonsense words

Women perform better than men on tests of verbal memory, but the nature of this advantage has not been precisely established. To examine whether phonemic memory is a factor in the female advantage, we presented, along with other verbal memory tasks, one containing nonsense words. Overall, there was the expected female advantage. However, an examination of the individual tests showed female superiority in recall of the real words but not the nonsense words.     

Gender Stereotypes in Japanese Television Advertisements

The aim of this study was to reveal gender portrayal types in Japanese television advertisements through content analysis. Five hundred and thirty-one adult main characters were coded for sex, age, ethnic background, credibility, role, place, dress, background, persuasion type, camera work, camera angle, product type, target, and sex of voice-over. Five types were found by performing quick cluster analysis: beautiful and wise housewives, young ladies attracting people's attention, young celebrities, middle- and old-aged people enjoying private time, and middle-aged worker bee. The first three were mainly women and the latter two were mainly men. The results indicate that in Japanese television advertisements men and women are portrayed differently, and the differences correspond with traditional gender stereotypes.     

Patients' versus informants' reports of personality disorders in predicting 7 1/2-year outcome in outpatients with depressive disorders

Concordance between patients' and informants' reports of personality disorders (PDs) is low, raising the questions of which source provides more valid data and whether both contribute unique information. This study compared patients' and informants' reports of PDs in predicting outcome in a 7 1/2-year follow-up of 85 depressed outpatients. Patients and informants were independently evaluated using structured interviews; outcome was assessed using structured interviews with patients. Both patients' and informants' reports of PD diagnoses and dimensional scores independently predicted depression symptoms and global functioning at follow-up. However, only informants' reports made a unique contribution to predicting social adjustment. This finding indicates that both patients and informants provide unique information on Axis II psychopathology and argues for the use of both sources in the assessment of PDs.     

Incremental validity and the assessment of psychopathology in adults

Results from studies on incremental validity are described for (a) interviews, (b) personality inventories, (c) projective techniques, and (d) brief self-rated and clinician-rated measures. In some of the studies (clinical judgment studies), psychologists were given increasing amounts of information. In other studies (statistical prediction studies), increasing amounts of assessment information were entered into a statistical prediction rule. Although relatively little research has been conducted on incremental validity, results that have been obtained tend to favor the use of interviews, personality inventories (e.g., the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory--2; J. N. Butcher, W. G. Dahlstrom, J. R., Graham, A. Tellegen, & B. Kaemmer, 1989), and brief self-rated measures (e.g., the Anxiety Sensitivity Index, S. Reiss, R. A. Peterson, D. M. Gursky, & R. M. McNally, 1986). Results are generally less encouraging for projective techniques.     

Out of sight,out of mind: Occlusion and the accessibility of information in narrative comprehension

Do readers encode the perceptual perspectives of characters during narrative comprehension? To address this question, we conducted two experiments using stories that sometimes described situations in which certain information was occluded from the protagonists’ views. We generated two related hypotheses concerning the potential impact of occlusion events on text representations. One, theevent boundary hypothesis, suggested that any salient narrative event would reduce the accessibility of prior story information. The second, theperceptual availability hypothesis, suggested that accessibility would decrease most for information no longer visible to story protagonists. In Experiment 1, the participants were slowest to respond to verification questions that asked about occluded information. In Experiment 2, we demonstrated that this effect did not extend to other, nonoccluded information. These results suggest that readers encode text information from the perceptual perspective of story protagonists. This is consistent with recent perceptual symbol views of language comprehension.     

The use of prosodic cues in language discrimination tasks by rats

Recent research with cotton-top tamarin monkeys has revealed language discrimination abilities similar to those found in human infants, demonstrating that these perceptual abilities are not unique to humans but are also present in non-human primates. Specifically, tamarins could discriminate forward but not backward sentences of Dutch from Japanese, using both natural and synthesized utterances. The present study was designed as a conceptual replication of the work on tamarins. Results show that rats trained in a discrimination learning task readily discriminate forward, but not backward sentences of Dutch from Japanese; the results are particularly robust for synthetic utterances, a pattern that shows greater parallels with newborns than with tamarins. Our results extend the claims made in the research with tamarins that the capacity to discriminate languages from different rhythmic classes depends on general perceptual abilities that evolved at least as far back as the rodents. Electronic Publication     

Discrete varieties of care in the clinical pastoral tradition: continuing the dialogue

In the current cultural context, clinically trained ministers, lay and ordained, offer themselves to troubled souls through at least three distinct varieties of assistance: pastoral care, pastoral counseling, and pastoral psychotherapy. This essay delineates three accepted disciplines, emphasizing the importance of ascertaining, and perhaps re-evaluating, the particular needs and desires of persons who are in physical, mental, or spiritual distress. "Pastoral care," "pastoral counseling," and "pastoral psychotherapy" each play an important role in fulfilling the traditional mandate for "the cure of souls."