Responding to Student or Teacher Death: Preplanning Crisis Intervention

Crisis caused by the sudden death of a student or teacher can be averted or diminished via a preplanned team intervention approach. The guidelines and strategies of a field-proven intervention program are described.     

Age differences in the acculturation process

Age differences were assessed in a conceptual model that seeks to explain how acculturation affects psychological well-being among Mexican Americans. The data were from a national probability sample of 859 persons of Mexican decent. It was hypothesized that low acculturation creates financial stress. Moreover, low acculturation and financial stress were in turn predicted to erode feelings of personal control and self-esteem. Finally, diminished feelings of control and low self-esteem were hypothesized to exert a negative impact on psychological well-being. When data from respondents of all ages was assessed, empirical support was found for all of the hypotheses except the linkage between acculturation and financial stress. However, few age differences emerged in the model. The authors conclude that older Mexican Americans may not be more vulnerable to the stressors associated with acculturation.     

Age, exercise, and coding performance

We investigated the effects of exercise on the coding performance of young and older subjects. Hypotheses were tested that exercise either facilitates spatial localization or reduces susceptibility to distraction in older subjects. In a balanced design, we administered Digit Symbol and Symbol Digit coding tasks to exercisers and nonexercisers at two age levels under conditions of low or high within-task interference. The findings showed higher performance by the exercisers than by the nonexercisers only at the older age level and only with the Symbol Digit task. These findings support the hypothesis that exercise compensates for a loss of spatial localization skills with age. We found no evidence that susceptibility to distraction either increased with age or was affected by chronic exercise.     

Comparative analysis of actual and mental movement times in two graphic tasks

This study compared the temporal organization of graphic movements executed either actually or mentally. Six subjects had to perform two tasks, writing a sentence and drawing a cube, either as a real performance or as an imagined one, with either the right or the left hand, and with either a small or a large tracing amplitude. In the same subject, for the same hand, mental and actual movement times were both very stable and very close from trial to trial regardless of the tracing amplitude. Thus, mental movements mimic closely real movements in their temporal organization and are likely to involve the same planning program.     

Mental health expert witnesses: Of science and crystal balls

This article reviews the history of and basis for mental health testimony. It surveys the roles of such experts in the legal system and the concomitant problems with current approaches. Finally, it suggests specific reforms that may improve the use of mental health experts in legal proceedings.     

Principles in judgment/decision making research pertinent to legal proceedings

Principles in the judgment/decision making literature relevant to the legal community are reviewed. These principles are divided into four areas: the decision process itself, communicating a judgment to others, evaluating a decision, and possible ways of “debiasing.” Several influences on the decision process are enumerated, among them being insufficient consideration of base rates, selective memory for relevant material, the framing of the decision in either the domain of losses or the domain of gains, and consideration of the “cues to causation.” Particular attention is paid to suboptimal consideration of covariation information. In communicating the decision to others the two most prominent findings are overconfidence in expressing one's decision and the inability to describe accurately the bases of one's decision. Evaluating a decision is plagued by two biases. The first is the hindsight bias. After an event has occurred we tend to exaggerate how easily we could have predicted the event beforehand. The second is the outcome bias. We tend to base our evaluation of the decision upon the evaluation of the outcome. Among the debiasing techniques mentioned are the admonition to “consider the opposite” of the preferred option, the reduction of reliance on memory, and the use of decision aids.     

Perioral somatosensory determinants of nursing behavior in Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus)

Prior to assuming the upright crouching posture over their pups during nursing bouts, lactating rats typically engage in several oral behaviors, including nuzzling, licking and rearranging pups. By acutely depriving dams of various aspects of perioral stimulation from pups (with anesthesia of the mystacial pads or of the tongue, with mouth suturing, or with muzzling), we found the following: (1) Distal stimulation from pups maintains proximity-seeking behavior, but is insufficient to stimulate nursing behavior. (2) Lack of tongue feedback decreases pup licking and hastens the onset of crouching. (3) Snout, but not tongue, contact with pups is required for hovering over them. (4) The position of the dam while hovering over her litter enables the pups to gain access to her ventrum, thereby provoking her upright, crouching posture. (5) Older pups are capable of bypassing the dam's perioral attentions and stimulating crouching directly by burrowing under the dam's ventrum.     

Relationship of racial stressors to blood pressure responses and anger expression in black college students

The physiological effects of racism, as a stressor, were examined as they related to blood pressure (BP) and anger experiences in Black college students. Current research has failed to consider the stressful effects of racism as a factor contributing to the higher incidence of essential hypertension among Blacks. Twenty-seven Black college students viewed three excerpts showing racist situations involving Blacks; anger-provoking, nonracist situations; and neutral situations. After each scene, BP was taken, and a mood checklist was administered. The Framingham Anger Scale and the Anger Expression Scale were administered. Analyses revealed that BP significantly increased during the presentation of racist stimuli but not of anger-provoking or neutral stimuli. Self-reports of state anger, as measured by the mood checklist, were significant for both the anger-provoking and racist stimuli. BP scores were significantly correlated to the two trait anger measures. Exposure to racist stimuli was associated with BP increases among Blacks. Such cumulative exposure to racism may have important implications for the etiology of essential hypertension.     

Cross-sex comparisons: A word of caution

A cross-sex difference on one variable is often hypothesized to be related to a gender difference on a second variable. However, caution should be exercised in making such comparative hypotheses. We gathered the expected and actual examination grades for 168 female and 163 male college students. As in prior research, males had higher expectancies than females (p<.05). But analysis of the intrasex regression equations indicated that the relationship of expectancies to performance was different for women than it was for men. Thus, a cross-sex difference in expectancies did not correspond to a parallel difference in grades. This finding highlights the potential hazards of making certain cross-sex comparisons, and we argue for more caution in their application.