Procedural misconceptions and informed consent: insights from empirical research on the clinical trials industry

This paper provides a simultaneously reflexive and analytical framework to think about obstacles to truly informed consent in social science and biomedical research. To do so, it argues that informed consent often goes awry due to procedural misconceptions built into the research context. The concept of procedural misconception is introduced to describe how individuals respond to what is familiar in research settings and overlook what is different. In the context of biomedical research, procedural misconceptions can be seen to function as root causes of therapeutic misconceptions.     

A cultural-contextual perspective on the validity of the MMPI-2 with American Indians

This study investigated the normative validity of the MMPI-2 with two distinct American Indian tribes. Differences occurred on 8 of the 13 basic validity and clinical scales (F, 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) between the MMPI-2 norms and both tribal samples. Elevated MMPI-2 scores of American Indians may not only reflect the possibility of psychological distress spurred by historical oppression and present adversity, but also an expression of a divergent worldview. Considering the context of the historical and social production of knowledge about American Indians, it is argued that researchers and practitioners, when interpreting MMPI-2 results for American Indians, should seriously consider their interpretive points of reference, which may be impacted by dominant cultural belief systems.     

Stimulus selectivity of figural aftereffects for faces

Viewing a distorted face induces large aftereffects in the appearance of an undistorted face. The authors examined the processes underlying this adaptation by comparing how selective the aftereffects are for different dimensions of the images including size, spatial frequency content, contrast, and color. Face aftereffects had weaker selectivity for changes in the size, contrast, or color of the images and stronger selectivity for changes in contrast polarity or spatial frequency. This pattern could arise if the adaptation is contingent on the perceived similarity of the stimuli as faces. Consistent with this, changing contrast polarity or spatial frequency had larger effects on the perceived identity of a face, and aftereffects were also selective for different individual faces. These results suggest that part of the sensitivity changes underlying the adaptation may arise at visual levels closely associated with the representation of faces.     

Dynamic averaging and foraging decisions in horses (Equus callabus)

The variability of most environments taxes foraging decisions by increasing the uncertainty of the information available. One solution to the problem is to use dynamic averaging, as do some granivores and carnivores. Arguably, the same strategy could be useful for grazing herbivores, even though their food renews and is more homogeneously distributed. Horses (Equus callabus) were given choices between variable patches after short or long delays. When patch information was current, horses returned to the patch that was recently best, whereas those without current information matched choices to the long-term average values of the patches. These results demonstrate that a grazing species uses dynamic averaging and indicate that, like granivores and carnivores, they can use temporal weighting to optimize foraging decisions.     

Factor Structure of the Parenting Scale in a Low-Income African American Sample

We evaluated the relative goodness-of-fit of two factor structures of the Parenting Scale (Arnold, O'Leary, Wolf, {&} Acker, 1993) among two samples of low-income African American families. Participants included 271 mother-child dyads from urban and rural areas in the southern and southeastern US, who completed the Parenting Scale along with other measures of parenting style and dyadic relationship. Confirmatory Factor Analyses (CFA) indicated that a two-factor solution, comprising Laxness and Overreactivity dimensions, was the better fit to the data. Some direct evidence for convergent validity was provided by a correlation between the Laxness factor of the Parenting Scale and the Firm/Lax Control subscale of the Children's Report of Parenting Behavior Inventory (CRPBI). Results are discussed in term of Brody and Flor's (1998) “no nonsense” parenting style.     

Musical stem completion: humming that note

This study looked at how people store and retrieve tonal music explicitly and implicitly using a production task. Participants completed an implicit task (tune stem completion) followed by an explicit task (cued recall). The tasks were identical except for the instructions at test time. They listened to tunes and were then presented with tune stems from previously heard tunes and novel tunes. For the implicit task, they were asked to sing a note they thought would come next musically. For the explicit task, they were asked to sing the note they remembered as coming next. Experiment 1 found that people correctly completed significantly more old stems than new stems. Experiment 2 investigated the characteristics of music that fuel retrieval by varying a surface feature of the tune (same timbre or different timbre) from study to test and the encoding task (semantic or nonsemantic). Although we did not find that implicit and explicit memory for music were significantly dissociated for levels of processing, we did find that surface features of music affect semanticjudgments and subsequent explicit retrieval.     

Suicidal behavior in schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder: examining the role of depression

Understanding the relationship between depression and suicidal behavior among individuals with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder can aid assessment and treatment. In this study, 86 individuals with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder were assessed for past and current suicidal behavior, depression, hopelessness, and reasons for living. Thirty-four percent reported a history of suicide attempts. Suicidal behavior typically occurred 4.5 years after the onset of psychosis and 7.5 years after the onset of the first major depressive episode for those who had a history of major depression. Depression was frequent among both attempters and non-attempters, but only half of the attempters reported a suicide attempt during an episode of major depression. And almost half of those with depression never made a suicide attempt despite a long history of illness. Although depression is a potential stressor for triggering suicidal behavior in a vulnerable subset of individuals with schizophrenia, schizophrenia research must identify other risk factors for suicidal behavior. Clinicians should remember that even without a depressive episode there is still a significant risk for suicidal behavior in schizophrenia.     

Attending to faces: change detection,familiarization, and inversion effects

We tested detection of changes to eye position, eye color (brightness), mouth position, and mouth color in frontal views of faces. Two faces were presented sequentially for 555 ms each, with a blank screen of 120 ms separating the two. Faces were presented either both upright or both inverted. Measures of detection (d') were calculated for several different degrees of change for each of the four dimensions of change. We first compared results to an earlier experiment that used an oddity design, in which subjects indicated which of three simultaneously viewed and otherwise identical faces had been altered on one of these four dimensions. Subjects in both of these experiments were partially cued, in that they knew the four possible types of changes that could occur on a given trial. The change-detection results correlated well with the oddity data. They confirmed that face inversion had little effect upon detection of changes in eye color, a moderate effect upon detection of eye-position or mouth-color changes, and caused a drastic reduction in the detection of mouth-position changes. An experiment in which uncued and fully cued subjects were compared showed that cueing significantly improved detection of feature color changes, but there was little difference between upright and inverted faces. Full cueing eliminated all effects of inversion. Compared to partial cueing, changes in mouth color were poorly detected by uncued subjects. Last, a change in the frequency of the base (unaltered) face in an experiment from 75% to 40% showed that increased short-term familiarity decreased the detection of eye changes and increased the detection of mouth changes, regardless of face orientation and the type of change made (color or position). We conclude that uncued subjects encode the spatial relations of features more than the colors of features, that mouth color in particular is not considered a relevant dimension for encoding, and that familiarization redistributes attention from more to less salient facial regions. Inversion effects are not simply an exaggeration of the salience effects revealed by withdrawing cueing, but represent an interaction of spatial encoding with salience, in that the greatest inversion effects occur for spatial shifts in less salient facial regions, and can be eliminated through the use of focused attention.     

Islamic mission and call: The case of the International Islamic University,Islamabad

The following paper begins with an outline of the motives for da^cwah as presented by the du^cat themselves, followed by a discussion of the significance of mission in Pakistan. The International Islamic University and its da'wah wing is documented in detail, with a focus on its ideological foundations and its objectives. The main part of the paper is devoted to how the Da^cwah Academy tries to conduct its programmes among different target groups, especially students, and how it acts at the international level using workshops and various media.