Lead and hyperactivity: Lead levels among hyperactive children

Previous work has demonstrated an association between hyperactivity and increased body lead burdens in school-age children. In the present study it is shown that within a group of hyperactive children those for whom an organic etiology is present have lead burdens lower than in those for whom no apparent cause could be found. These data lead us to reject the notion that hyperactivity per se is responsible for the acquisition of elevated lead levels, and further strengthen the suspicion that for some children lower lead level absorption may be implicated in the development of the hyperkinetic disorder.This work was supported in part by the Office of Child Development, Grant #OCD-CB482. We thank Dr. Bernard Davidow for blood and urine determinations done by the Bureau of Laboratories, Lead Poison Division, Public Health Service, New York City. We also wish to thank Merck, Sharpe and Dohme for supplying the penicillamine for this study.     

The 1979 division 27 award for distinguished contributions to community psychology and community mental health: Emory L. Cowen

Summary The metaphor of the paper's title offers a framework for a brief summary. Effective wooing of primary prevention requires that we take seriously, and adhere to, its clear, sensible defining guidelines; systematize, and further develop, its generative base; use that base to guide the formulation of new primary prevention programs; further develop frameworks to promote informed choices of programs derecions from among many attractive possibilities; and be more hard-nosed as program evaluators. That type of courtship should improve our love life with — and perhaps even, science of — primary prevention in mental health. Editor's Note: Emory L. Cowen was honored at the 1979 annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in New York, New York, on September 4, 1979, receiving the Division of Community Psychology Award for Distinguished Contributions to Community Psychology and Community Mental Health. The selection was made by an Awards Committee composed of all the past-Presidents of the Division. Dr. Cowen was introduced by Jack M. Chinsky of the University of Connecticut, and Julian Rappaport of the University of Illinois at Urbana—Champaign.This paper bears some (superficial) resemblance to a talk given at division 27's Distinguished Contribution Award ceremony, during the 87th Annual APA Meetings, New York, N.Y., 9/4/79. This draft is surely lengthier, more convoluted,no more informative, and muchless fun than the spoken version. Conceivably, the main accomplishment of my incessant revisions will prove to be the significant incapacitation of 10 gifted typing fingers attached to the hands of Sharon DeVita — the prime initial victim of my obsessionality. To Sharon, who suffered the indignity and boredom of eternal retypings, my boundless gratitude for her patience, forbearance, and good cheer, well beyond the call of duty.Preparation of this paper was done under support of a grant from the NIMH Experimental and Special Training Branch (MH 14547-02-03), which the author acknowledges with gratitude.     

Citizen participation,perceived control,and psychological empowerment

The research integrates the citizen participation literature with research on perceived control in an effort to further our understanding of psychological empowerment. Eleven indices of empowerment representing personality, cognitive, and motivational measures were identified to represent the construct. Three studies examined the relationship between empowerment and participation. The first study examined differences among groups identified by a laboratory manipulation as willing to participate in personally relevant or community relevant situations. Study II examined differences for groups defined by actual involvement in community activities and organizations. Study III replicated Study II with a different population. In each study, individuals reporting a greater amount of participation scored higher on indices of empowerment. Psychological empowerment could be described as the connection between a sense of personal competence, a desire for, and a willingness to take action in the public domain. Discriminant function analyses resulted in one significant dimension, identified as pyschological empowerment, that was positively correlated with leadership and negatively correlated with alienation.     

The role of the school psychologist: Teachers'' preferences as a function of personal and professional characteristics

Teachers were surveyed concerning the importance of 12 potential roles for school psychologists (e.g., counseling, case or program consultation, community liaison, psychodiagnostics). Results showed that direct and remedial services which did not require the school psychologist to intrude on the teacher's prerogatives were in general considered to be most important. However, teachers who reported using “open education” methods were significantly more likely to value more indirect, preventive, and collaborative school psychology services than their colleagues. Grade level taught, gender, experience, and teaching specialty had virtually no effect on respondents' ratings of the school psychologist roles.     

Neural Processing to Visual Stimuli in a Three-Choice Reaction-Time Task

Some authors have suggested that certain components of the event-related potentials (ERPs) reflect underlying stages in the discrimination process. Previous studies have shown that in an auditive three-choice reaction-time task the discrimination is accomplished as a two-stage process, with the more frequently occurring stimulus discriminated at an earlier point than the rarer stimulus and the subjects could be classified as fast and slow responders in function of their response to the most frequent of the three tones. We continuously recorded the electrocerebral activity (EEG) from the scalp and the electromyographic activity (EMG) from the responding muscles in a visual three-choice reaction-time task in 10 strictly right-handed subjects. EEG and EMG responses were subsequently analyzed off-line by aligning them by the onset of either the stimulus (stimulus-synchronized) or the response (response-synchronized). The results suggest that processes of visual stimuli evaluation and response execution are continuously integrated. The discrimination and response systems to visual stimuli is accomplished as a three-stage process, one to frequent tone, another for rare 1, and the last for rare 2. The subjects were classified as fast and slow responders in function of their response to the most frequent of the three tones.     

Predicting workplace aggression: a meta-analysis

The authors conducted a meta-analysis of 57 empirical studies (59 samples) concerning enacted workplace aggression to answer 3 research questions. First, what are the individual and situational predictors of interpersonal and organizational aggression? Second, within interpersonal aggression, are there different predictors of supervisor- and coworker-targeted aggression? Third, what are the relative contributions of individual (i.e., trait anger, negative affectivity, and biological sex) and situational (i.e., injustice, job dissatisfaction, interpersonal conflict, situational constraints, and poor leadership) factors in explaining interpersonal and organizational aggression? Results show that both individual and situational factors predict aggression and that the pattern of predictors is target specific. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Hoops and Barns: a new dilemma for Sosa

Synthese - This paper critically assesses Sosa’s normative framework for performances as well as its application to epistemology. We first develop a problem for one of Sosa’s central...