Effect of contingent and non-contingent social reinforcement on the cooperative play of a preschool child

The effect of adult social reinforcement on the cooperative play of a five-year old girl in a preschool setting was assessed under two conditions: (1) presented randomly throughout the school day, and (2) presented contingent on cooperative play. Only in the latter condition was a significant change in cooperative play observed.     

Selective reminding procedure in depression and dementia

Patients with mild dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT), patients with major depression, and normal elderly control subjects were administered a verbal learning task using the selective reminding procedure. Depressed patients were impaired on total recall and the proportion of items retained from one trial to the next without reminding and did not benefit from imagery in retaining items over consecutive trials. The DAT patients were impaired on all measures derived from the test, including storage and recognition memory. With the exception of the ability to benefit from imagery, all of the measures distinguished depressed and mild DAT patients. These findings are consistent with deficient encoding in DAT and performance deficits as a function of effortful cognitive processing in depression.     

Perceived family environments of depressed and anxious children: Child's and maternal figure's perspectives

This study examined perceived environment among families with a depressed, depressed and anxious, anxious, or normal child from the 4th to 7th grades. Fifty-one such children were classified according to criteria from the K- SADS and a set of self-ratings of depression and anxiety. Results showed that children in all three diagnostic groups, and to a lesser extent their mothers, experienced their families as more distressed on a host of dimensions relative to controls. In addition, significant differences were found between families with a depressed and anxious child and those with an anxious child. Discriminant function analyses revealed that 68.63 % of the youngsters could be classified correctly into depressed and anxious groups on the basis of their family ratings alone.     

Family Transitions and Developmental Processes in Panic-Disordered Patients

Although there is increasing evidence for a familial role in panic disorder, little research exists on the family interaction patterns and relational stressors that may contribute to this disorder. Using DSM-III-R criteria, 52 families were classified into Panic Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, and Nonclinical Control groups. A semi-structured interview and self-report measures were then used to examine family processes. MANOVA results were highly significant, suggesting that, compared to depressed and nonclinical control families, panic-disordered families had unresolved life-cycle issues, were enmeshed, used triangulation, and failed to resolve conflicts. These findings suggest that dysfunctional family processes may be involved in the expression and maintenance of panic disorder.     

Evidencefor implicitscaling in comparative judgment

In two experiments, we examined the effects of manipulating the density of stimuli on comparison difficulty in a comparative judgment task. In Experiment 1, subjects were slower at judging the relative size of a pair when the members were adjacent items in the linear order than when the members were separated by items of intervening magnitudes. In Experiment 2, the advantage of choosing the larger rather than the smaller of two large-stimuli (e.g., the congruity effect) increased when the linear order included many small items. In contrast, the advantage of choosing the smaller of two small items increased when the linear order included many large items. The applicability of the range-frequency theory (Parducci,1965) to these results is discussed.     

Ability estimation for conventional tests

Five different ability estimators—maximum likelihood [MLE ()], weighted likelihood [WLE ()], Bayesian modal [BME ()], expected a posteriori [EAP ()] and the standardized number-right score [Z ()]—were used as scores for conventional, multiple-choice tests. The bias, standard error and reliability of the five ability estimators were evaluated using Monte Carlo estimates of the unknown conditional means and variances of the estimators. The results indicated that ability estimates based on BME (), EAP () or WLE () were reasonably unbiased for the range of abilities corresponding to the difficulty of a test, and that their standard errors were relatively small. Also, they were as reliable as the old standby—the number-right score.     

The demand for effectiveness,efficiency and equity of health care

Effectiveness, efficiency and equity in health care are discussed in this article against the background of concerns that ‘cost containment’ may lead to reductions in quality of care. It is suggested that effectiveness is best seen from the patient's point of view and that it relates to more than simply improved health status. Efficiency and equity are better viewed from a societal stance. The paper discusses the role of the medical profession in effectiveness, efficiency and equity and argues that the role of medical doctors needs to be constrained.