The lived experience of alopecia areata: A qualitative study

This study explored experiences of individuals living with alopecia areata (AA) and alopecia universalis (AU) and investigated their accounts of adjusting to, and coping with, such conditions. Whilst previous research has primarily focused on the adverse psychosocial impact of alopecia, this investigation used Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis to provide a more holistic perspective. Biographical interviews were undertaken with 12 participants (7 women; 5 men) diagnosed with alopecia for periods ranging between 2 and 49 years. Results revealed that strategies used by participants evolved over time and that there were clear gender differences. In the early stages, participants did not want to contemplate that their hair loss would be lasting and managed the condition via concealment. Later coping strategies reflected an embodied acceptance with participants managing the effects of AA/AU and becoming more optimistic about living with the condition. Limitations of the study are discussed as well as implications for patient care.     

Infants' responses to mothers' imitative behaviors

Several investigators have suggested that young infants' smiles and vocalizations following their mothers' imitative behaviors might reflect infant recognition that the mother's behavior is imitative or at least contingent. This study investigated whether infants smile and vocalize more frequently subsequent to maternal imitative than non-imitative behavior during both spontaneous and imitative face-to-face interactions. Fourteen 3 1/2-month-old infants and their mothers were videotaped in these two face-to-face interaction situations. The infants vocalized more frequently during the imitative situation and infant vocalizations plus simultaneous smiling, and vocalizations occurred more often following maternal imitative than non-imitative behavior. Although these data suggest that infant vocalizations and simultaneous smiles and vocalizations may reflect the infants' recognition of maternal imitative behavior, they do not establish definitively that it is the imitation per se vs. the contingency aspect that is recognized by the infant.     

Modifying law enforcement training simulators for use in basic research

Several approaches to using simulation as a method for teaching good judgment in the use of firearms by law enforcement officers and military personnel were investigated for their potential applications to research: the GAMMA Live Fire Video Training System, the FireArms Training Systems Simulator (FATS), and the Judgment Under Stress Training (JUST) simulator. Each instrument uses real-time, computer-controlled, life-sized projected video images of scenarios that may or may not present a threat, and handguns that fire real or simulated ammunition. The subjects respond to a sequence of “shoot/no-shoot” judgment scenarios resulting in data on judgment, reaction time, and accuracy. The JUST simulator was found to be more easily modifiable in capturing data on performance at microanalytic levels. Although true interactive simulations are not feasible with this system, this was not seen as a hindrance to its usefulness for research.     

Data-driven Processing and Priming Effects in a Word-fragment Completion Task

An experiment was designed to examine the role and importance of data-driven processing in an implicit memory task: Word-fragment completion. We investigated the effects of priming and manipulating the context in which the target words had been read. Three main results emerged. First, replicating MacLeod's experiment (1989), we found that there was a very small priming effect for words previously studied in a text. Second, the magnitude of the priming effect increased with the perceptual difficulty of information intake during reading. Third, these variations in priming for the texts were functionally independent of subjects' recall of the text read. These results suggest that data-driven processing plays a critical role in priming. They are consistent with the transfer-appropriate processing theory recently advocated by Roediger, Weldon, and Challis (1989).     

Stochastic processes and the guttman simplex

The problem of whether a precise connection exists between stochastic processes of the type considered in mathematical learning theory and the Guttman simplex is investigated. The approach is to consider a class of models that characterize the sequential properties of discrete data, and to derive a set of conditions which a model must satisfy in order to generate inter-trial correlationsr _ij with the ‘perfect simplex’ property:r _ik =r _ij r _jk for all trialsi<j<k. It is shown that the Chapman-Kolomogorov Equations provide a necessary and sufficient condition for this property to hold. It follows that a process which is Markovian in the errors and successes will have this property. It is also shown that, if certain reliability assumptions are introduced, then the all-or-none model has the simplex property if the appropriate correlation coefficients are corrected for attenuation. This research was supported by a grant from the United States Public Health Service, NIMH 07722.     

Laws of language use and formal logic

After a review of recent work connected with Grice's maxims of conversation, special attention is paid to the principles related to the concept of informativeness. The operation of those principles constrains logic by limiting the meaning of logical particles and, more importantly, by contradicting axioms and many theorems of the propositional calculus. It is argued that, as the development of the individual's formal operations proceeds, a conflict with laws of language use arises. The notion of a conflict between two subsystems, logical and linguistic, is used in a developmental perspective to account, in a unified manner, for the observed discrepancy between subjects' behavior in deductive and inductive reasoning tasks and predictions based on formal logic.     

Intentional communication in the chimpanzee: The development of deception

Communication about the location of a hidden incentive was studied in chimpanzee-human dyads, in which each member of a pair served alternately as “sender” and “recipient” of information. When the human cooperated with the chimpanzee in finding the goal, from the very beginning the chimpanzees were able to produce and comprehend behavioral cues which conveyed accurate locational information. When the human and chimpanzee competed for the goal, the chimpanzees learned both to withhold information or mislead the recipient, and to discount or controvert the sender's own misleading cues. The chimpanzee's ability to convey and utilize both accurate and misleading information, by taking into account the nature of the sender or recipient, provides evidence of a capacity for intentional communication in this nonhuman primate species.