The assessment of cortisol using salivary ultrafiltrate

Cortisol can be used to indicate stress level as well as to monitor certain disease states. Although cortisol can be sampled from blood and urine, saliva sampling has decided advantages. Unfortunately, whole saliva contains a number of substances that can metabolize or bind with cortisol, potentially confounding analysis and quantitation. We introduce a semipermeable pouch that accumulates a contaminant-free salivary ultrafiltrate, thereby overcoming a number of the problems encountered with whole saliva. In three studies, we demonstrate accuracy and utility of the device for cortisol determination: (1) in an artificial medium, 60%–77% of the cortisol was recovered in the ultrafiltrate; (2) in vivo, ultrafiltrate cortisol correlated highly with whole-saliva cortisol collected under ideal conditions; and (3) ultrafiltrate cortisol evinced positive relationships with depression and cigarette use, consistent with studies in the literature. We conclude that this device and saliva-filtering technologies in general are useful in applications requiring quantitation of cortisol.     

The Role of Asymmetrical Coding of Duration Samples in Producing the Choose-Short Effect in Pigeons

Pigeons were trained on two independent matching-to-duration-samples tasks; one involved 2- and 10-s durations and color choice stimuli, and the other involved 4.5- and 22.5-s durations and line choice stimuli. Accuracy was above chance on mixed-choice probes in which either of the short-duration samples was followed by the two short-associated stimuli. Following explicit training on mixed-choice trials involving choice between the two short- and the two long-associated stimuli, a choose-short effect was demonstrated with both sets of duration samples. These findings are inconsistent with the possibility that the choose-short effect reflects processes of asymmetrical-sample coding and default responding.     

U.S.- and Mexico-born Hispanic teen mothers: a descriptive study of factors that relate to postpartum compliance

Compliance with postpartum visits after teenage births in the US was examined among 289 Hispanic teenagers, of whom 127 were born in Mexico or border towns, who delivered at Harris County Hospital District and scheduled postpartum appointments at the Teen Health Clinic. The mean age was 17.31 years for mothers and 21.95 years for fathers. 56.7% (164) were married. 49.8% lived with husbands, 25.8% with parents, 22.3% with friends/relatives, and 2.1% alone. 74.7% stated that they had no social supports. 88.9% had a term delivery, 8.3% a preterm delivery, and 2.8% a fetal loss. 67.5% were first births, 5.5% had a previous abortion, and 3.1% had a previous miscarriage. 23.2% had a previous child, and 0.7% had a previous preterm delivery. Some form of prenatal care was received by 85.1%. 34.3% reported no further educational plans. 17.3% (50) returned for a scheduled postpartum visit. Mothers with a prior history of a premature birth or miscarriage were more likely to return postpartum compared to mothers with a first or prior birth. The differences are marginally significant. None of the mothers with a prior abortion returned. 34.9% of the returning teen mothers were more likely to have had prenatal care. Returning mothers also were a larger percentage of those with no future educational plans. 13.4% of returning mothers had an available social support system. Country of origin was not associated with support systems, prenatal care, return status, educational plans, pregnancy history, or current birth outcome. Out of the 50 returning, 20 were Mexican-born and married. Only Mexican marital status was found to be a significant variable explaining differences. Marital status had no effect on the 26 US native-born returnees. 92% of the Mexican-born teens were married and had a support system. The most dramatic feature of this study is the high level of noncompliance among both US-born and Mexican-born adolescents. There were few distinguishing features between these two groups. Return status was affected by very few features and was achieved by a very small percentage of the study population. The suggestion is made that poverty, a lack of health insurance, and poor knowledge of English, as representative of cultural dissimilarity, may be responsible for poor use of preventive care.     

Report of the ACA Ethics Committee: 1993–1994

The activities of the American Counseling Association (ACA) Ethics Committee are reviewed for the year 1993–1994. Summary data of ethical complaints and formal inquiries received during the year are presented followed by a brief discussion of trends noted. Updated information about the revision of the ACA Ethical Standards and the Policies and Procedures for Processing Complaints of Ethical Violations is also provided.     

Accreditation Standards for University and College Counseling Centers

The accreditation standards outlined in the article are used by the International Association of Counseling Services, Inc., as the basis for the formal accreditation of college and university counseling programs throughout the United States and Canada. They reflect the program elements and practice standards that are deemed essential in a counseling center that provides high-quality services to students.     

Towards reflexive practice: Engaging participants as co-researchers or co-analysts in psychological inquiry

This paper considers some of the implications of reflexivity for the practice of psychological research. After a brief consideration of the theoretical background to a concern with reflexivity, the paper goes on to examine how various researchers have attempted to incorporate components of reflexivity in their research practice. While a group of sociologists of science have operationalized reflexivity by self-conscious concern for their own role in the construction of social—scientific knowledge, new paradigm co-operative inquirers interpret a need for reflexivity by including their participants as fully self-reflexive co-researchers. Mulkay's suggestion for a dialogic analytical exchange with one's participants is also considered. The second half of the paper illustrates an attempt at reflexive practice in the authors' own research. This was a project concerned with identity change during the transition to motherhood, and aimed to allow the women a strong hand in helping to shape the project's direction. Preliminary analysis of a woman's data was taken back to her for her comments, and her reflections on the data were incorporated in the final case study. A detailed example of the investigator and participant's discussion of a piece of data is provided.     

Text-contingent color aftereffects: A reexamination

Five experiments reexamined color aftereffects contingent on the semantic properties of text (Allan, Siegel, Collins, & MacQueen, 1989). The influence of different assessment techniques and the effect of eye movements and overlapping contour information on the induction of color aftereffects by word and nonword letter strings were determined. Experiment 1 showed that no aftereffect was found when a traditional method of assessing color aftereffects was used. Experiments 2 and 4 demonstrated color aftereffects forboth words and nonwords, but only when subjects fixated the same locus during induction and testing and only when assessed with the technique described by Allan et al. (1989). If, however, eye movements were made during induction, no color aftereffect was obtained (Experiment 3). Induction to nontext patterns with properties similar to those of text but with fewer overlapping contours resulted in a strong color aftereffect (Experiment 5). These results suggest that the color aftereffect contingent on text is very weak and is not dependent on semantic factors, but that it is a product of induction to local color and orientation information.     

Tests of human olfactory function: Principal components analysis suggests that most measure a common source of variance

It is not known whether nominally different olfactory tests actually measure dissimilar perceptual attributes. In this study, we administered nine olfactory tests, including tests of odor identification, discrimination, detection, memory, and suprathreshold intensity and pleasantness perception, to 97 healthy subjects. Aprincipal components analysis performed on the intercorrelation matrix revealed four meaningful components. The first was comprised of strong primary loadings from most of the olfactory test measures, whereas the second was comprised of primary loadings from intensity ratings given to a set of suprathreshold odorant concentrations. The third and fourth components had primary loadings that reflected, respectively, mean suprathreshold pleasantness ratings and a response bias measure derived from a yes/no odor identification signal detection task. In an effort to adjust for potential confounding influences of age, gender, smoking, and years of schooling on the component structure, a matrix of residuals from a multiple regression analysis, which included these variables, was also analyzed. A similar component pattern emerged. Overall, these findings suggest, in healthy subjects spanning a wide age range, that (1) a number of nominally distinct tests of olfactory function are measuring a common source of variance, and (2) some suprathreshold odor intensity and pleasantness rating tests may be measuring sources of variance different from this common source.     

Semilattice-based dualities

The paper discusses regularisation of dualities. A given duality between (concrete) categories, e.g. a variety of algebras and a category of representation spaces, is lifted to a duality between the respective categories of semilattice representations in the category of algebras and the category of spaces. In particular, this gives duality for the regularisation of an irregular variety that has a duality. If the type of the variety includes constants, then the regularisation depends critically on the location or absence of constants within the defining identities. The role of schizophrenic objects is discussed, and a number of applications are given. Among these applications are different forms of regularisation of Priestley, Stone and Pontryagin dualities.