Physician-assisted suicide: what's the story?

After telling a story of a family's inquiry into physician-assisted suicide on behalf of a loved one, John F. Kilner uses the story to discuss some specific ways in which modern medicine often fails to supply life-affirming alternatives in situations like the one this family faced. Knowing about these alternatives is important for Christians, since God is the author of freedom, justice, and life itself. Moreover, when medicine has nothing more to offer suffering patients, it should be prepared to assist them in their suffering, rather than simply eliminate the sufferer. The example of Jesus' suffering is important here.     

Self- and cross-citations in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis and the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior: 1983-1992

We examined self- and cross-citation practices in JABA and JEAB from 1983 through 1992. Mean levels of self-citation for JABA and for JEAB were 22.6% and 36.1%, respectively. Overall, 2.4% of JABA citations were JEAB articles, and 0.6% of JEAB citations were JABA articles, which suggests limited integration of basic and applied research.     

Nodality effects during equivalence class formation: An extension to sight-word reading and concept development

Three students with moderate disabilities were taught to read and match-to-sample sight words comprising stimulus sets based upon the four food groups. We taught students conditional discriminations within four four-member sets using a single-sample/four-comparison procedure. Students were taught A-B, B-C, and C-D conditional discriminations for each of the four potential stimulus classes. Subsequent probes tested for relations based upon symmetry and one-node and two-node transitivity. The performances for all students indicated that symmetric relations emerged before one-node transitive relations, and that one-node transitive relations emerged before two-node transitive relations. These results are consistent with a pattern of responding, referred to as a "nodality effect," in which relations with fewer nodes are demonstrated prior to the demonstration of relations with a greater number of nodes. These results extend this area of research to sight-word reading for students with moderate disabilities.     

ANALYSIS OF A HIGH-PROBABILITY INSTRUCTIONAL SEQUENCE AND TIME-OUT IN THE TREATMENT OF CHILD NONCOMPLIANCE

This study evaluated the effectiveness of high-probability requests and time-out as treatments for noncompliance that appeared to be maintained by contingent attention in 2 developmental normal children. The introduction of high-probability requests increased compliance for 1 child but not the other. Time-out was effective with both children, and improvements in compliance were maintained at an 8-week follow-up.     

Commentary: Psychodynamics and Social Cognition—Notes on the Fusion of Psychoanalysis and Psychology

ABSTRACT Interest in linking psychoanalysis with scientific psychology waxes and wanes. In part, the difficulties have been caused by the preference of psychoanalysts for Freud's clinical theory (and its emphasis on narrative truth) as opposed to his metapsychology (with its requirement for historical truth). Even though contemporary scientific psychology evolved largely independently of psychoanalysis, the articles on object relations, transference, and defense published in this special issue show that the theory remains a source of inspiration, observations, and hypotheses.     

CONSTRUCTING JOB FAMILIES: AN ANALYSIS OF QUANTITATIVE TECHNIQUES USED FOR GROUPING JOBS

A Monte Carlo study was conducted to examine the performance of several quantitative grouping strategies for the purpose of grouping jobs into job families. Two factors were found to substantially affect the accuracy of these grouping strategies in terms of identifying the correct number of families, and accurately classifying jobs into those families. Through simulation of job analysis data sets designed to reflect various underlying structures among a set of jobs, it was found that techniques based on the commonly used hierarchical cluster analysis model were relatively inaccurate when applied to data containing measurement error or overlap between job families. Alternatively, Q-type factor analysis and hybrid techniques involving a combination of factor and cluster analysis proved to be viable and robust grouping strategies for job classification research.     

Towards a Hierarchical Model of Self-concept for Hong Kong Chinese Adults with Physical Disabilities

This paper explores the basic facets and structure of the self-concepts of groups of 135 and 146 Hong Kong Chinese adults with and without physical disabilities, respectively. Comparison of responses to a 20-item scale indicated a very similar pattern of the importance the individuals in these groups attached to these areas of their lives. However, the non-disabled group did report higher satisfaction ratings on six of these areas and factor analysis of both the importance and satisfaction ratings showed a similar underlying factor structure for both groups. Content analysis of open-ended questions confirmed that both groups shared similar self-concept facets except that the subjects with physical disabilities most frequently reported the importance of “functional independence in daily living tasks”. It is proposed that this facet needs to be included in a self-concept instrument appropriate for subjects with physical disabilities. Models of self-concept were then suggested for each group.