BENCHMARKS AFFECT PERCEPTIONS OF PRIOR DISABILITY IN A STRUCTURED INTERVIEW

Though covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, job candidates with a record of a disability may be adversely evaluated. Two experiments demonstrate that subtle knowledge of a prior disability creates a bias that can be removed by a structured interview. A job candidate was labeled as having once suffered from depression, substance abuse, cancer, or no disability. The candidate who once suffered from depression or substance abuse was judged more negatively than a control candidate, while a cancer survivor was not. Though disabilities are not perceived equally, benchmarked rating scales can enhance attention to relevant behaviors, thus controlling the potential for bias.We thank Steven Gregson, Michael Records and Cynthia Strickland for their help with pilot studies. Shawn Bocketti is now with IBM, Stephen Maser is with Linkage Incorporated, and Craig Wennet is with the United States Coast Guard.     

Frequency selectivity for hearing-impaired and broadband-noise-masked normal listeners

When evaluating frequency selectivity, it is difficult to determine if the deviation from normal performance observed for hearing-impaired listeners reflects abnormal cochlear function or normal, level-dependent changes in frequency selectivity. This experiment was designed to investigate the dependence of frequency-selectivity measures on threshold and signal level. Auditory-filter characteristics, critical ratios, forward-masked psychophysical tuning curves, and narrowband-noise masking patterns were obtained from normal-hearing listeners in quiet and in the presence of broadband noise at five levels. These findings were then compared to previously obtained frequency-selectivity measurements for subjects with mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing loss whose absolute thresholds are comparable to the normal-hearing listeners' masked thresholds. The results suggest that frequency selectivity deterioriates as threshold increases for all subjects. However, the poor frequency selectivity exhibited by hearing-impaired listeners may not be explained entirely by the effects of threshold and signal level. Nevertheless, because frequency selectivity is poorer in the normal auditory system at higher stimulus levels, the deviation from normal performance observed for hearing-impaired listeners may not be as large as previously suggested.     

Case Report—Loyalty, Legacy, and Ledger: Contextual Therapy in a Patient with a Family History of Ovarian Cancer

A client's emotional experiences and reactions to those experiences are influenced by his/her family of origin and direct or indirect interactions with various family members. Contextual therapists propose that a client's satisfaction with a relationship depends on the equity of his/her emotional interactions with family members. When relationships are inequitable, trust between individuals disintegrates. In order to reestablish trust in a relationship, a balance of interests must be restored. If not, imbalances may be passed down to future generations. A case of a woman with a family history of ovarian cancer is reviewed with the principles of contextual therapy in mind. In her family, several legacies have resulted in unbalanced relationships between family members that lead to difficulty in establishing trust within the genetic counseling session.     

Somatic Countertransference as Evidence of Adhesive Identification in a Severely Traumatized Woman

This paper discusses the use of somatic countertransference as a means of learning about the patient, about projective and adhesive identification and about the object relating nature of the most traumatized and withdrawn part of the personality. It assumes an elemental knowledge of British Object Relations and uses clinical material to illustrate the hypotheses that somatic countertransference is an indicator of a very elemental communication occurring from the aspect of the psyche that is united in a body mind or mind body. The paper assumes that this body mind was object seeking at birth and perhaps before. Because these early aspects of the personality are non verbal and non conceptual, the analyst must rely not only on the verbal material in a session but on the emotional and sensual experiences within the transference and the countertransference. Such reliance requires a faith in one’s own intuition without a certainty that one is “right.” Because speaking of such early experience is difficult, often writers and analysts appear more certain than they are. This is a hazard of this type of analytic work. What I am writing about is conjecture or imagination or dream, but I am suggesting that such dream work is a valuable tool for analysis.     

The distinct contributions of age of acquisition and word frequency in auditory word perception

We report two studies of the distinct effects that a word's age of acquisition (AoA) and frequency have on the mental lexicon. In the first study, a purely statistical analysis, we show that AoA and frequency are related in different ways to the phonological form and imageability of different words. In the second study, three groups of participants (34 seven-year-olds, 30 ten-year-olds, and 17 adults) took part in an auditory lexical decision task, with stimuli varying in AoA, frequency, length, neighbourhood density, and imageability. The principal result is that the influence of these different variables changes as a function of AoA: Neighbourhood density effects are apparent for early and late AoA words, but not for intermediate AoA, whereas imageability effects are apparent for intermediate AoA words but not for early or late AoA. These results are discussed from the perspective that AoA affects a word's representation, but frequency affects processing biases.     

Factors Moderating Children's Adjustment to Parental Separation: Findings From a Community Study in England

Research findings show that there is marked variability in children's response to parental separation, but few studies identify the sources of this variation. This prospective longitudinal study examines the factors modifying children's adjustment to parental separation in a community sample of 5,635 families in England. Children's behavioral/emotional problems were assessed when children were aged 47 and 81 months; marital quality, maternal depression, socioeconomic circumstances, and demographic variables were assessed prior to the separation from maternal report. Results indicated that 346 mothers separated from their partners in the 3-year period. Preseparation differences were found for measures of family process and parent risk factors, with effect sizes ranging from small to trivial. Parental separation was associated with a significant but modest increase in behavioral/emotional problems, independent of marital quality, maternal depression, socioeconomic circumstances, and demographic variables. Moderation analyses showed that children of cohabiting parents had a greater increase in adjustment problems following parental separation than children of married parents. Further research elucidating the factors that moderate children's adjustment to parental separation is needed to improve our understanding of who may most likely benefit from preventive interventions.     

Sport psychologists' perceptions of sport and mental health practitioners

Abstract

This study surveys recently graduated sport psychology (SP) doctoral students' (N = 34) educational backgrounds, work experiences, and perceptions of the professional field of SP inside and outside the realm of academia. Special attention was given to subjects' perceptions and expectations with regard to applied work in SP, actual work experiences, and income. Findings indicate that almost all graduates are spending their time in a variety of work activities, i.e., some combination of teaching, research, consulting, administration, and coaching, with a strong emphasis on teaching in an academic institution. Gender analysis revealed that, in general, females earned 74% of what males earned; females earned 53% of what males earned outside academia. Graduates' personal comments suggest a concern about consumer demand and financial support offered applied professionals in SP as well as the adequacy of their own training to provide applied services. Implications for AAASP and SP program directors are provided.     

Do Undergraduate Student Research Participants Read Psychological Research Consent Forms? Examining Memory Effects,Condition Effects,and Individual Differences

Although research has examined factors influencing understanding of informed consent in biomedical and forensic research, less is known about participants' attention to details in consent documents in psychological survey research. The present study used a randomized experimental design and found the majority of participants were unable to recall information from the consent form in both in-person and online formats. Participants were also relatively poor at recognizing important aspects of the consent form including risks to participants and confidentiality procedures. Memory effects and individual difference characteristics also appeared to influence recall and recognition of consent form information.