The relative efficacy of thought-stopping and covert assertion

The relative efficacy of Rimm's (1973) thought-stopping and covert assertion, thought-stopping alone, covert assertion alone and a placebo control was tested. All three experimental treatments were predicted to be superior to the control and differences among the experimental treatments were expected. Thirty-six volunteers with a strong fear of harmless snakes were given one of the four treatments. Results demonstrated the efficacy of the combined treatment, as had been shown in previous research, but also demonstrated the efficacy of the individual components alone. Scheffée Planned Comparisons at the post test and four week follow-up indicated that the three experimental groups were superior to the control on the three self-report and behavioral tests of fear of snakes (p < 0.01 for each) but not on a test of fears in general. Scheffée Post Hoc Comparisons showed no significant differences between the experimental groups. The possible overlapping functions of the components are discussed.     

Issues to consider in the differential diagnosis of normal childhood nonfluencies and stuttering

Historically more attention has been focused on the adult stutterer than on the young stutterer. This article discusses three key issues in the differential diagnosis of normal childhood nonfluencies and childhood stuttering. The three issues are (1) whether early childhood disfluencies are heterogeneous or homogeneous phenomena, (2) whether the relationship between normal childhood nonfluencies and early stuttering is continuous or dichotomous, and (3) whether normal nonfluencies and stuttering differ quantitatively or qualitatively. Theoretical research as well as clinical implications of these issues are discussed.     

Effects of Refutational Messages,Thought Provocation,and Decision Deadlines on Signing to Donate Organs1

Across three experiments college students were given refutational messages or other treatments encouraging signing drivers' licenses to donate bodily organs in case of accidental death. An attitudinal measure (willingness to sign) predicted observed signing behavior, but relatively weakly. A measure of behavioral expectation to sign or not to sign predicted more strongly. A discussion with family was encouraged, the impact of that discussion also predicted signing but less strongly so. In Study 1 groups given a refutational message signed at no greater rates than a group given a control message. In Study 2 a refutational message group and a group asked to think about donating for 2 min signed at higher rates than a true control group. In Study 3 groups asked to decide whether or not to sign by a certain date and time signed at a higher rate than a refutational message group as in earlier studies. These procedures are recommended for organ donation signing campaigns.     

Using empowerment theory in collaborative partnerships for community health and development

Models of community empowerment help us understand the process of gaining influence over conditions that matter to people who share neighborhoods, workplaces, experiences, or concerns. Such frameworks can help improve collaborative partnerships for community health and development. First, we outline an interactive model of community empowerment that describes reciprocal influences between personal or group factors and environmental factors in an empowerment process. Second, we describe an iterative framework for the process of empowerment in community partnerships that includes collaborative planning, community action, community change, capacity building, and outcomes, and adaptation, renewal, and institutionalization. Third, we outline activities that are used by community leadership and support organizations to facilitate the process of community empowerment. Fourth, we present case stories of collaborative partnerships for prevention of substance abuse among adolescents to illustrate selected enabling activities. We conclude with a discussion of the challenges and opportunities of facilitating empowerment with collaborative partnerships for community health and development. This work was supported by Kansas Health Foundation Grants 9206032B and 9206032A to support and evaluate community partnerships to prevent adolescent substance abuse. Thanks to Tom Wolff for sharing his wisdom about community coalitions so generously, and to Bill Berkowitz and anonymous reviewers for thoughtful comments on an earlier version of this manuscrpt. We also thank our colleagues from the Kansas Health Foundation, Mary K. Campuzano, Steve Coen, and Marni Vliet, and those from collaborating communities, who continue to teach us about ways to enhance community capacities to address local concerns.     

The association of assimilation and an increase in visibility in perceptual grouping

Subjects performed a series of forced-choice discriminations to determine whether both group-assimilation and group-visibility associations could be obtained from nearly identical strong and weak group patterns. The discrimination between the context+target and the context was better than between the target^– and background, as was the case for^—, whose context and target components were its left and right halves, but not for^—. and^— produced a better performance when their lines (halves) were the same in color, and a poorer performance when their lines were different in color, but produced the reverse. Likewise, only and^— produced a better performance when closed, and a poorer performance when open. These context+target etc., same-different, and closure results argue that and^— produced a greater increase in visibility of their component^–, more assimilation among their parts, and a stronger group than did . This evidence of a group-assimilation-visibility association cannot be attributed to the fortuitous occurrence of an increase in visibility with one object, assimilation with a second, and closure with a third, unlike previous evidence. This association cannot be explained by feature-based theories. Therefore, a superordinate unit is the cause of this association.     

Role of Informal Integration in Career Advancement: Investigations in Plural and Multicultural Organizations and Implications for Diversity Valuation

The major question which this research examinedis whether informal integration is likely to result incareer advancement and perceived resources within twodifferent organizational contexts (plural and multicultural). Specifically, we examinedinteractions of race, gender, and organization type onthe above two outcome variables. In pluralorganizations, employees are expected to assimilate intothe dominant culture, while in multicultural organizations,cultural change for the individual and the organizationis reciprocal. Hypotheses were tested with a combinedsample of 101 men, 35 women, 29 persons of color, and 107 whites. Results indicated that,congruent with predictions, greater social integrationoccurred in an organizational context in which valuingdifferences was a priority. Further, the influence of informal integration on career advancement wasstill important even after controlling for suchvariables as age, organizational tenure, education, andhierarchical level within the organization. Implications of these findings for valuing diversity arediscussed.     

α7 Nicotinic Receptor Subunits Are Not Necessary for Hippocampal-Dependent Learning or Sensorimotor Gating: A Behavioral Characterization of Acra7-Deficient Mice

The α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) subunit is abundantly expressed in the hippocampus and contributes to hippocampal cholinergic synaptic transmission suggesting that it may contribute to learning and memory. There is also evidence for an association between levels of α7 nAChR and in sensorimotor gating impairments. To examine the role of α7 nAChRs in learning and memory and sensorimotor gating, Acra7 homozygous mutant mice and their wild-type littermates were tested in a Pavlovian conditioned fear test, for spatial learning in the Morris water task, and in the prepulse inhibition paradigm. Exploratory activity, motor coordination, and startle habituation were also evaluated. Acra7 mutant mice displayed the same levels of contextual and auditory-cue condition fear as wild-type mice. Similarly, there were no differences in spatial learning performance between mutant and wild-type mice. Finally, Acra7 mutant and wild-type mice displayed similar levels of prepulse inhibition. Other behavioral responses in Acra7 mutant mice were also normal, except for an anxiety-related behavior in the open-field test. The results of this study show that the absence of α7 nAChRs has little impact on normal, base-line behavioral responses. Future studies will examine the contribution of α7 nAChR to the enhancement of learning and sensorimotor gating following nicotine treatments.     

Points of view analysis revisited: Fitting multidimensional structures to optimal distance components with cluster restrictions on the variables

Points of view analysis (PVA), proposed by Tucker and Messick in 1963, was one of the first methods to deal explicitly with individual differences in multidimensional scaling, but at some point was apparently superceded by the weighted Euclidean model, well-known as the Carroll and Chang INDSCAL model. This paper argues that the idea behind points of view analysis deserves new attention, especially as a technique to analyze group differences. A procedure is proposed that can be viewed as a streamlined, integrated version of the Tucker and Messick Process, which consisted of a number of separate steps. At the same time, our procedure can be regarded as a particularly constrained weighted Euclidean model. While fitting the model, two types of nonlinear data transformations are feasible, either for given dissimilarities, or for variables from which the dissimilarities are derived. Various applications are discussed, where the two types of transformation can be mixed in the same analysis; a quadratic assignment framework is used to evaluate the results.The research of the first author was supported by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW); the research of the second author by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO Grant 560-267-029). An earlier version of this paper was presented at the European Meeting of the Psychometric Society, Leuven, 1989. We wish to thank Willem J. Heiser for his stimulating comments to earlier versions of this paper, and we are grateful to the Editor and anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions.     

Right hemisphere participation in reading

This study examined whether the right hemisphere's contribution to lexical semantic processing is greatest when it is "disinhibited." Skilled reading may require the controlled modulation of interhemispheric interaction: the left hemisphere (or some other control mechanism) may regulate the subprocesses of reading by selectively "inhibiting" and "disinhibiting" right hemisphere function. Right-handed undergraduates concurrently performed two tasks: a lateralized semantic or rhyme task and a verbal memory task. It was hypothesized that right hemisphere reading processes would be disinhibited when the left hemisphere was "occupied" with the memory task. This hypothesis was supported for a subgroup of subjects who showed evidence of inhibition of right hemisphere function (i.e., left hemisphere dominance for lexical processing) when the lateralized semantic task was performed alone. Across subjects, there was a strong correlation between the degree of left hemisphere dominance in the single-task semantic conditions and the degree of disinhibition of right hemisphere function in the dual-task semantic condition.