The Munroe-Meyer Approach: Continuous Integration of Didactic Instruction,Research, and Clinical Practice

Increased demand for applied behavior analysis (ABA) services has increased the need for additional masters-level practitioners and doctoral-level academicians and clinical directors. Based on these needs, the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s (UNMC) Munroe-Meyer Institute has developed a PhD program. The academic structure at UNMC allowed us to create our PhD program in a relatively quick and efficient manner. Our PhD program has many unique features, including (a) close integration of didactic instruction with clinical and research training provided by leading experts in ABA in which students immediately apply concepts introduced in the classroom during coordinated clinical and research practica; (b) structured grant writing training in which students learn to write and submit an NIH-level grant; (c) financial support in the form of a stipend of $23,400 per year, free health benefits, and a full-tuition waiver for up to 12 credits per semester for UNMC courses (a benefits package worth approximately $50,000 per year for an out-of-state student); and (d) encouragement and financial support to present papers at local, regional, and national behavior analysis conferences.     

Verbalization of Decision Strategies in Multiple‐Cue Probabilistic Inference

In multiple‐cue probabilistic inference, people choose between alternatives based on several cues, each of which is differentially associated with an alternative's overall value. Various strategies have been proposed for probabilistic inference (e.g., weighted additive, tally, and take‐the‐best). These strategies differ in how many cue values they require to enact and in how they weight each cue. Do decision makers actually use any of these strategies? Ways to investigate this question include analyzing people's choices and the cues that they reveal. However, different strategies often predict the same decisions, and search behavior says nothing about whether or how people use the information that they acquire. In this research, we attempt to elucidate which strategies participants use in a multiple‐cue probabilistic inference task by examining verbal protocols, a high‐density source of process data. The promise of verbal data is in their utility for testing detailed information processing models. To that end, we apply protocol analysis in conjunction with computational simulations. We find converging evidence across outcome measures, search measures, and verbal reports that most participants use simplifying heuristics, namely take‐the‐best. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Ethnicity-Related Sources of Stress and Their Effects on Well-Being

Early research on ethnicity focused on the stereotyped thinking, prejudiced attitudes, and discriminatory actions of Euro-Americans. Minority-group members were viewed largely as passive targets of these negative reactions, with low self-esteem studied as the main psychological outcome. By contrast, recent research has increasingly made explicit use of stress theory in emphasizing the perspectives and experiences of minority-group members. Several ethnicity-related stressors have been identified, and it has been found that individuals cope with these threats in an active, purposeful manner. In this article, we focus on ethnicity-related stress stemming from discrimination, from stereotypes, and from conformity pressure arising from one's own ethnic group. We discuss theory and review research in which examination of ethnicity-related outcomes has extended beyond self-esteem to include psychological and physical well-being.     

Issues in the treatment of depressed children

Basic research into the cognitive, behavioral, familial, and physiological disturbances associated with depressive disorders during childhood is reviewed. Implications for the development of a treatment program are discussed and a comprehensive treatment model is proposed. The proposed model includes intervention strategies for the child, parents, family, and school. The child component consists of intervention strategies for the affective, cognitive, behavioral, and physiological disturbances that are evident from the existing research. The parent training component is designed to address disturbances in parenting due to cognitive disturbances and skills deficits. The family therapy component emphasizes changing interaction patterns that communicate schema-consistent maladaptive interactions. A school consultation component is proposed in which school personnel support the skills training through prompting use of the skills and reinforcement of the use of the coping skills.     

Psychological state and psychological strain in relation to infertility

The purpose of the study was to explore the relationship between psychological state and perceived strain in relation to fertility problems. Couples presenting at an infertility clinic completed, on two occasions seven months apart, a series of standardized measures to assess psychopathology. In addition, they completed a weekly diary rating their mood state or distress/strain over a period of 22 weeks, during which investigations and treatment were taking place. Little evidence of psychopathology was found in the sample; the weekly diaries also suggested a general lack of distress/strain, even in response to medical investigations and diagnosis. The results are discussed in the light of wide individual variations in ratings obtained from the diaries. Participants with high distress/strain scores tended to have significantly higher initial scores on the psychometric measures administered. Participants with high distress/strain scores were also more likely to show a further significant increase in distress/strain scores in relation to diagnostic information. It is argued that a task for future research is to determine the characteristics of those couples who are likely to experience difficulty in coping with the strain of infertility investigations so that counselling resources and support services can be most effectively targeted. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Religion in American Presidential Campaigns, 1952–2016: Applying a New Framework for Understanding Candidate Communication

The content and impact of religious communication in politics has been a topic of increasing public and scholarly interest in recent years. To provide a foundation for future research in this area, the present study theorizes five broad factors—historical trajectory, party expectations, audience religiosity, candidate attributes, and opponent strategy—that may help explain why political candidates use religious language. We employ this framework in a large‐scale computer‐assisted content analysis of U.S. presidential campaign speeches from 1952 to 2016. Findings reveal that the Reagan shift observed in prior research was driven specifically by God language, that the “God gap” between Democrats and Republicans is modest and topic‐specific, and that audience characteristics are crucial in explaining candidates’ religious communication.     

Modular Organization of Exploratory Force Development Under Isometric Conditions in the Human Arm

Muscle coordination of isometric force production can be explained by a smaller number of modules. Variability in force output, however, is higher during exploratory/transient force development phases than force maintenance phase, and it is not clear whether the same modular structure underlies both phases. In this study, eight neurologically-intact adults isometrically performed target force matches in 54 directions at hands, and electromyographic (EMG) data from eight muscles were parsed into four sequential phases. Despite the varying degree of motor complexity across phases (significant between-phase differences in EMG-force correlation, angular errors, and between-force correlations), the number/composition of motor modules were found equivalent across phases, suggesting that the CNS systematically modulated activation of the same set of motor modules throughout sequential force development.     

One standard to rule them all?

It has been argued that an epistemically rational agent's evidence is subjectively mediated through some rational epistemic standards, and that there are incompatible but equally rational epistemic standards available to agents. This supports Permissiveness, the view according to which one or multiple fully rational agents are permitted to take distinct incompatible doxastic attitudes towards P (relative to a body of evidence). In this paper, I argue that the above claims entail the existence of a unique and more reliable epistemic standard. My strategy relies on Condorcet's Jury Theorem. This gives rise to an important problem for those who argue that epistemic standards are permissive, since the reliability criterion is incompatible with such a type of Permissiveness.