Editorial: Psychosocial Aspects of AIDS

This article comprises two parts.

In the first part, some general issues related to research training are discussed, including the “Scientist-Practitioner Model,” training for basic and applied research, differences between the USA and Europe at various levels of training, and types or areas of research students should be trained for.

In the second part, seven specific objectives of research training are discussed. These objective are (a) learning to write a review of the research literature, (b) learning to critically evaluate a journal article, (c) learning to plan and carry out a specific health psychology research study, (d) learning to communicate, (e) learning to enhance co-operation of professionals in the field, (f) learning to raise funds, (g) learning to respect ethical issues.     

The Effects of Leader Communication on a Worker's Intent to Stay: An Investigation Using Structural Equation Modeling

This study presents findings on the link between leader motivating language (ML) use and worker intent to stay. Structural equation modeling indicated that ML use significantly improves worker intent to stay—with a 10% increase in ML leading to an approximate 5% increase in worker intent to stay. Also, analysis showed that the full ML model better describes the data than any partial model based on a subset of the ML components, and this outcome helps advance researchers' understanding of the ML theory. Results indicate that proper leader language use can substantially improve the critical organizational outcome of worker retention. As such, this study identifies potential new paths for requisite leader communication research, training, and development.     

Leading Military Teams to Think and Feel: Exploring the Relations Between Leadership,Soldiers' Cognitive and Affective Processes,and Team Effectiveness

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between leadership and military teams' affective and cognitive processes and the subsequent links between these processes and team effectiveness. Soldiers (N = 148) from 32 teams completed questionnaires assessing these variables. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to analyze the data. Transformational leadership was positively associated with cognitive and affective processes, but only active management-by-exception leadership was related to negative affect. Neither form of management-by-exception leadership related to cognitive processes. Positive affect, negative affect, and cognitive processes were all related to team viability. Finally, some mediation effects were observed. Implications of the results for developing leadership in military teams are drawn.     

Producing the Post-Fordist Public: The Political Economy of Public Engagement with Science

The commercial exploitation of scientific knowledge and increased public participation in democratic decision-making about science and technology have emerged as the two central themes of contemporary science policy in Britain. We argue that the prominence of participatory discourse in contemporary science policy is primarily due to the close fit of this discourse with the post-Fordist and post-industrial economic strategy of the British state. Participation is a form of immaterial labour which gains currency in this phase of capitalism, blurring the distinctions between production and consumption, and between the economy and the political or communicative public sphere. Participation is cognitive, interpretative, affective, and social work which enters into the construction of technologies as bundled material artefacts and cultural meanings. Participation operates both in the production and consumption of goods and in the legitimation of social and political relations. Public engagement exercises prepare the product for the market and the market for the product. Such exercises therefore instantiate the way in which immaterial labour is both productive and political. Participation activates, but also disciplines, the subjectivities of post-Fordist publics. Contrary to the rhetoric of democratization that has accompanied public engagement efforts, these programmes potentially operate as forms of control and co-optation, and promote the shaping of publics as markets.     

Olfactory working memory: exploring the differences in n-back memory for high and low verbalisable odorants

ABSTRACT

We describe four experiments each examining n-back performance for high and low verbalisable odorants. Participants were presented with a sequence of odorants and were required to state if the current odorant was the same or different to the odorant presented two items earlier. Experiment 1 reported superior performance for high, relative to low, verbalisable odorants and was evident despite above-chance memory performance for the low verbalisable odorants. Experiment 2 showed that such superiority persisted with a concurrent articulation condition, suggesting that the memory benefit was not a consequence of verbal recording and rehearsal. Experiment 3 employed metacognitive judgments and showed that correct 2-back responses for high verbalisable odorants received more recollection responses compared to low verbalisable odorants. Experiment 4 compared n-back performance across different stimulus types and showed that, for high verbalisable odorants, performance correlated with both letters and abstract shapes, but such correlations were absent for low verbalisable odorants. Taken together, these findings show differences in n-back performance between high and low verbalisable odorants, and show that high verbalisable odorants exhibit performance similarities with both verbal and visual stimuli. We further argue that n-back performance for low verbalisable odorants operates differently to that of high verbalisable odorants.     

Visual object agnosia without prosopagnosia or alexia: Evidence for hierarchical theories of visual recognition

Abstract

A single case study is presented of a patient, Mr. W, with a selective deficit in recognizing pictures and real objects, linked to impaired stored visual knowledge about objects. Despite this, Mr. W maintained a preserved ability both to read aloud printed words and to recognize famous faces, when compared with age-matched control subjects. In addition, his access to semantic information from words was superior to that from pictures. The data provide evidence that visual agnosia can occur without alexia or prosopagnosia, contrary to recent proposals (Farah 1990, 1991). This finding is consistent with a hierarchical model of visual object recognition in which agnosia can reflect impaired stored knowledge of objects without accompanying perceptual deficits. The selective recognition deficit for objects further indicates that stored knowledge concerning different classes of visual stimuli (common objects, faces, and words) is separately represented in the brain.     

Speech‐evoked auditory brainstem responses reflect familial and cognitive influences

Cortical function and related cognitive, language, and communication skills are genetically influenced. The auditory brainstem response to speech is linked to language skill, reading ability, cognitive skills, and speech‐in‐noise perception; however, the impact of shared genetic and environmental factors on the response has not been investigated. We assessed auditory brainstem responses to speech presented in quiet and background noise from (1) 23 pairs of same sex, same learning diagnosis siblings (Siblings), (2) 23 unrelated children matched on age, sex, IQ, and reading ability to one of the siblings (Reading‐Matched), and (3) 22 pairs of unrelated children matched on age and sex but not on reading ability to the same sibling (Age/Sex‐Matched). By quantifying response similarity as the intersubject response‐to‐response correlation for sibling pairs, reading‐matched pairs, and age‐ and sex‐matched pairs, we found that siblings had more similar responses than age‐ and sex‐matched pairs and reading‐matched pairs. Similarity of responses between siblings was as high as the similarity of responses collected from an individual over the course of the recording session. Responses from unrelated children matched on reading were more similar than responses from unrelated children matched only on age and sex, supporting previous data linking variations in auditory brainstem activity with variations in reading ability. These results suggest that auditory brainstem function can be influenced by siblingship and auditory‐based communication skills such as reading, motivating the use of speech‐evoked auditory brainstem responses for assessing risk of reading and communication impairments in family members.     

Assigning Integration: A Framework for Intellectual,Personal, and Professional Development in Seminary Courses

This article explores assignments as a core teaching practice essential to integrating the cognitive, personal, and professional identities of seminary students. These core practices emerge in seminary curricula where there is a strong focus on the teaching of canonical texts and a goal of achieving textual mastery. We propose that carefully chosen and constructive assignments achieve the kind of integration necessary for building content knowledge and the professional, spiritual, and religious identities of our students. While the difference between the educational goals of clergy‐training in a seminary and training graduate students in the academy can be sharp, we argue here for ways to make that contrast both productive and generative.