The statistical recommendations of the American Psychological Association Publication Manual: Effect sizes,confidence intervals,and meta‐analysis

Estimation based on effect sizes, confidence intervals, and meta‐analysis usually provides a more informative analysis of empirical results than does statistical significance testing, which has long been the conventional choice in psychology. The sixth edition of the American Psychological Association Publication Manual now recommends that psychologists should, wherever possible, use estimation and base their interpretation of research results on point and interval estimates. We outline the Manual's recommendations and suggest how they can be put into practice: adopt an estimation framework, starting with the formulation of research aims as ‘How much?’ or ‘To what extent?’ questions. Calculate from your data effect size estimates and confidence intervals to answer those questions, then interpret. Wherever appropriate, use meta‐analysis to integrate evidence over studies. The Manual's recommendations can assist psychologists improve they way they do their statistics and help build a more quantitative and cumulative discipline.     

Public Self-Disclosure and Speaker Persuasiveness1

Two experiments were conducted to examine the conclusion of several rhetorical critics that intimate self-disclosure by high-ranking officials will be viewed by an audience as inappropriate and will result in lowered speaker persuasiveness. In Experiment 1 college students viewed a videotape of a speaker described as either a member of an oratory club, a candidate for Congress, or a congressman. Half of the subjects heard a speech in which the speaker revealed some intimate information about himself. Little disclosure was included in the other speech. It was found that the greater the prestige of the speaker, the more self-disclosure was seen as inappropriate. The audience was least likely to be persuaded by the speaker when he was perceived as a congressman who had disclosed personal information. This effect was replicated in Experiment 2, where individual differences in the audience members' l]evels of perceptiveness about disclosure appre priateness were examined. No significant effects for this individual difference variable were uncovered.     

The VIC-20 computer and an interface system for controlling operant chambers

In this article, we describe the interfacing of the VIC-20 microcomputer with an operant chamber. An example of an experiment with its corresponding BASIC program is presented.     

A case of thalamic aphasia with postmortem verification

This study discusses a case of aphasia after dominant thalamic lesion, a hemorrhagic infarction. Unlike other such cases, both repeated standardized assessment and postmortem verification were available. The patient was assessed at 3 weeks and again at 9 weeks postonset. The aphasia demonstrated the syndrome common to dominant thalamic hemorrhage: fluent but paraphasic output sometimes deteriorating to jargon, comprehension less impaired than this type of output usually indicates, and the least impairment in repetition. As sometimes reported in previous cases, semantic paraphasias were more common than phonemic paraphasias. The lesion was located in the dorsal aspect of the lateral nucleus, but it extended into the pulvinar, including the anterior superior lateral aspect which has been implicated in language by previous studies. Thus, data from this case are consistent with an involvement of the dominant pulvinar in language and suggest that this role involves the semantic aspects of language.     

Communicating Price-Quality Relationships

Despite myriad studies concerning the effects of price on perceived-quality, the results are inconsistent. These inconsistencies have prompted the call for greater theory development to help provide a more comprehensive understanding of the process through which consumers develop perceived-quality. A theory the Elaboration Likelihood Model, could be applied to suggest that it is essential to identify the level of involvement when predicting the effects of variables on perceived-quality. Yet, previously reported perceived-quality research has not examined whether a change in price also changes the level of involvement. The impact of price savings on the level of involvement was examined in the experiment reported in this paper. Results of this research suggest that communicating price savings can affect the level of involvement. Experimental results also suggest that consumers with high involvement develop their attitudes and perceptions of technical quality from a careful evaluation of the arguments presented in the message. Conversely, consumers with low involvement lack motivation to evaluate those arguments and they have little effect on attitudes or perception of technical quality. Consequently, the experimental results support the Elaboration Likelihood Model.     

Parent-completed and adolescent-completed CDIs: Relationship to adolescent social and cognitive functioning

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship of both young adolescents' scores on the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) and their mothers' ratings of the adolescents' depression (parent-completed CDI) to indices of their social and cognitive functioning obtained from a source outside the home. Subjects consisted of a nonclinic sample of 85 young adolescents (11–15 years of age), their mothers, and their social studies teachers. Recent school grades and teacher-completed measures served as the indices of adolescent social and cognitive competence. The results indicated that both adolescents' and mothers' CDI scores were significantly and negatively correlated with measures of adolescent cognitive and social functioning. Multiple regression analyses, utilizing adolescent- and parent-completed CDI scores as predictors, indicated that both predictor variables entered into the equations for cognitive functioning while only the mother-completed CDI entered into those for social functioning. When maternal depression was also entered into the multiple regressions, the findings regarding mother- and adolescent-completed CDI scores were not altered. The relationship of these findings to other somewhat disparate findings concerning the utility of mother and child reports of child depression is discussed.This research was supported, in part, by the William T. Grant Foundation and the University of Georgia's Institute for Behavioral Research.     

Sex-role stereotypes and commitment of rape

Sociologists sometimes speculate that sexual offenses are related to the process of sex-role stereotyping of the female while simultaneously over-reacting in the form of “macho” behavior. In order to determine the validity of this proposed relationship, a series of paper and pencil attitude tests were administered to three populations of men. This sample included sex offenders, other offenders, and nonoffenders. A total of 119 subjects participated. The sample was selected from Lima State Hospital (Ohio), Lebanon Correctional Institution (Ohio), and nonincarcerated males working in the private sector of Dayton, Ohio. The testing instruments included the Attitude Toward Women Scale, Bem Sex-Role Inventory, the Macho Scale, and the Open Subordination of Women Scale. A multivariate analysis of variance did not establish statistical significance for either the factors of location, offense committed, or the victim orientation.