The psychological sequelae of disaster stress prospectively and retrospectively evaluated

Aimed to document the psychological sequelae of a disaster in the adult (17-68 years) population of the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico, by surveying 912 persons (including 375 previously interviewed) with a Spanish version of the Diagnostic Interview Schedule. A rigorous methodology, which included both retrospective and prospective designs, was used, enabled by the occurrence of a catastrophic disaster only a year after a comprehensive survey was completed. Framed in a stress theoretical perspective, disaster effects for new depressive, somatic, and posttraumatic stress symptoms were identified, even after adjusting for demographic and methodologic factors. All the effects, however, were relatively small, suggesting that most disaster victims were rather resilient to the development of new psychological symptoms. Comparison of results with previous findings and its implications for both disaster and stress research are discussed, as well as the role of community psychologists in disaster action.     

ETUDE COMPARATIVE DE L'IMAGE DE LA PSYCHOLOGIE CHEZ LES ETUDIANTS EN PSYCHOLOGIE,BELGES, ESPAGNOLS,FRANCAIS, MEXICAINS ET QUEBECOIS*

1373 psychology students from Barcelona (Spain), Liège (Belgium), Lille (France), Mexico city (Mexico) and Montréal (Canada) responded to a questionnaire dealing with their image of the discipline at various points in their university career. The students were asked to designate the authors they felt to be the most important as well as their preferences in regard to various areas and tendencies in psychology. The results show more agreement than could have been expected considering the cultural diversity and the great distance among the groups examined. Relevant differences from the other universities studied were found only with the Mexican students.     

Social group salience and interethnic cooperation

This research was designed to test the adequacy of H. Tajfel's (1978, Differentiation between social groups: Studies in the social psychology of intergroup relations, New York/London: Academic Press) theory of social identity for predicting cooperative behavior among members of ethnically mixed groups. Equally divided by sex, subjects were 24 Anglo-American and 24 Hispanic undergraduate students attending the University of California, Riverside. Subjects were exposed to cooperative and competitive feedback in four-member, same-sex groups which varied in the ratio of Anglo to Hispanic subjects to create two conditions—a 3 to 1 versus a 1 to 3 in-group to out-group composition. Results showed that members of both ethnic groups were equally cooperative when their own group was in the numerical majority (low-salience condition). In the high-salience condition, however, when their own group was in the numerical minority, Hispanic subjects were significantly more competitive than Anglo subjects. In addition, while Hispanics were significantly more competitive in the minority than in the majority condition, Anglos showed a slight tendency to be less competitive in the minority than in the majority condition. These results are discussed in light of social identity theory and its application to the study of interethnic cooperation/competition in heterogeneous groups.     

Interpretation as a misunderstanding

In the following article ‘who’ as the agent in the clinical session becomes questioned. By speaking we are introduced in the world of misunderstanding, where we are not merely speaking but being spoken to. Listening to what is being said and in this way misunderstanding what the patient is trying to say helps us in order to locate where the subject of the unconscious places himself in relation to the desire of the Other. In the article, it is conveyed how interpretation is not something that clarifies or explains to the patient his difficulties, but instead locates them by letting them take part in the session. In Lacanian psychoanalysis, locating the subject of the unconscious is crucial as this gives the patient a clue about where they place themselves in relation to the Other. This is why cutting the session is an essential element of its technique, as it stops in this way something that can disturb or hide where the subject of the unconscious has appeared. This allows patients to experience where they are gratifying themselves in their own difficulty. Interpretation is not speaking about the truth but instead, making the truth present in the session.     

Item selection rules in a Computerized Adaptive Test for the assessment of written English

Item selection rules in a Computerized Adaptive Test for the assessment of written English. e-CAT is a Computerized Adaptive Test for the evaluation of written English knowledge, using the item selection rule most commonly employed: the maximum Fisher information criterion. Some of the problems of this criterion have a negative impact in the estimation accuracy and in the item bank security. In this study, the performance of this item selection rule is compared, by means of simulation, with two other rules: selecting the item with maximum Fisher information in an interval (Veerkamp y Berger, 1997) and a new criterion, called "maximum Fisher information in an interval with geometric mean". In general, this new rule shows smaller measurement error and smaller item overlap rates. It seems, thus, recommendable, as it allows the simultaneous improvement of estimation accuracy and the maintenance of the item bank security of e-CAT.     

Lightness compression and hue changes

Two experiments were performed to relate the Bezold-Brücke (B-B) and lightness compression effects. The first used a calibrated screen to present an achromatic luminance staircase. In addition, it reproduced, the methodology and the essential aspects the lightness compression effect discovered by Cataliotti and Gilchrist (1995). That is, observers perceived a truncated grey scale (from white to medium grey) when the staircase was the only stimulation in the near background (Gelb condition), but not when presented on a Mondrian background, because of the high articulation level provided by this background. Experiment 1 design also included two other backgrounds that produced a partial compression effect. In Experiment 2, two chromatic staircases were used. Employing a naming task, changes in hue perception were only observed for the susceptible staircase. The observed changes were of two types. First, for the full staircase presentations, a Gelb background produced maximum lightness compression (more similarity in the lightness of the staircase stimuli) and, also, a minimum B-B effect (fewer differences in hue). Second, only for the Gelb condition, there were changes in the hue of the lowest luminance staircase stimuli depending on the staircase extension. Results are discussed in the framework of the anchoring theory of lightness perception.     

"I am us": negative stereotypes as collective threats

Collective threat is the fear that an in-group member's behavior might reinforce a negative stereotype of one's group. In a field study, self-reported collective threat was higher in stereotyped minorities than in Whites and was linked to lower self-esteem in both groups. In 3 experimental studies, a potentially poor performance by an in-group member on a stereotype-relevant task proved threatening, as evidenced by lower self-esteem among minority students in 2 experiments and women in a 3rd experiment. The latter study demonstrated the generality of collective threat. Collective threat also undermined academic performance and affected self-stereotyping, stereotype activation, and physical distancing from the in-group member. Results further suggest that group identification plays a role in whether people use an avoidance or challenge strategy in coping with collective threat. Implications for theories of social identity and stigmatization are discussed.     

Effect-size indices for dichotomized outcomes in meta-analysis

It is very common to find meta-analyses in which some of the studies compare 2 groups on continuous dependent variables and others compare groups on dichotomized variables. Integrating all of them in a meta-analysis requires an effect-size index in the same metric that can be applied to both types of outcomes. In this article, the performance in terms of bias and sampling variance of 7 different effect-size indices for estimating the population standardized mean difference from a 2 x 2 table is examined by Monte Carlo simulation, assuming normal and nonnormal distributions. The results show good performance for 2 indices, one based on the probit transformation and the other based on the logistic distribution.     

Bilateral entorhinal cortex lesions impair acquisition of delayed spatial alternation in rats

Entorhinal cortex lesions induce significant reorganization of several homotypic and heterotypic inputs to the hippocampus. This investigation determined whether surviving heterotypic inputs after bilateral entorhinal lesions would support the acquisition of a learned alternation task. Rats with entorhinal lesions or sham operations were trained to acquire a spatial alternation task. Although the sham-operated rats acquired the task within about 3 weeks postsurgery, rats with bilateral entorhinal lesions failed to learn the task after 12 consecutive weeks of training despite heterotypic sprouting of the cholinergic septodentate pathway and the expansion of the commissural/associational fiber plexus within the dentate gyrus. Thus, heterotypic sprouting failed to ameliorate significantly the effects of bilateral entorhinal lesions. Rather, entorhinal lesions produced a persistent impairment of spatial memory, characterized by a mixture of random error production and perseverative responding.