Measuring desire for control of health care processes

We conducted three known-groups studies to obtain discriminant validity information among potential self-report measures of the construct desire for control over health care processes. In the first study we looked at types of preparation for childbirth; in Studies 2 and 3 we investigated choice of a place in which to die and signing a Living Will. With none of the measures could we adequately distinguish those who had signed a Living Will (or intended to) from those who did not intend to sign one. The best discriminator of a choice of a place to die (hospital vs. home or hospice) and type of preparation for childbirth (Lamaze vs. other types of classes vs. no classes) was the Information subscale of Krantz's Health Opinion Survey (KHOS; Krantz, Baum, & Wideman, 1980). With the Behavioral Involvement subscale of the KHOS and our newly designed situation-specific measure of desire for control, we could only inconsistently discriminate among the groups. The generalized measure, Burger and Cooper's (1979) Desire for Control Scale, did not help us to discriminate among these groups. Correlations of these measures with demographic variables are provided and discussed.     

Mental development: Family environment and genetic influences

A comprehensive home assessment was performed for 116 families whose twins were participants in a longitudinal study of early mental development. A large number of rating and observations made by a social worker during the home visit were condensed via factor analysis into four primary scores: adequacy of the home environment, maternal temperament, maternal cognitive skills, and maternal social-affect. The HOME scales of Caldwell (1978) were also completed, and all scores were combined with previously obtained measures of parental education and socioeconomic status. These scores were entered into a multiple regression analysis as predictors of off-spring mental development at 4 criterion ages: 6 months, 24 months, 3 years, and 6 years. The relationship was very weak at 6 months, but improved steadily over ages until reaching R_mult = .66 at 6 years. The four primary scores listed above plus father education all contributed significantly to the prediction of 6-year IQ scores, making it evident that home/family variables were substantially related to early mental development. However, a subsequent analysis using only parental education and SES as predictors yielded R_mult = .59. The qualitative features of home and mother thus appeared to augment a core linkage between parents and offspring representing intrinsic capabilities. The results are discussed in terms of both heritage and home environment as contributors to early mental development.     

Response scales and sequential effects in judgment

There are persistent sequential effects in judgment tasks. For example, responses tend to be similar to the value of the just-prior stimulus. This is called assimilation. Also, if feedback is or is not provided after each trial, then responses contrast with or assimilate to, respectively, each of several earlier stimuli in the sequence. These context effects have been shown to be independent of stimulus modality and of the range of stimulus values within a modality. By providing different sets of feedback in order to affect the responses used, this article shows that these sequential effects in judgment data are also independent of the form and range of the scale of responses used to label stimuli.     

Time Travel and Self-Consistency: Implications for Determinism and the Human Condition

In this paper I examine a recent scientific claim that travel into the past, so long as a 'consistent' trajectory is followed, may be possible. I then argue that the possibility of such travel has unexpected implications for the free will-determinism debate. In particular, human existence may be, at best, determinate but uncaused.     

Public Opinion and Political Philosophy: The Relation between Social-Scientific and Philosophical Analyses of Distributive Justice

This paper considers the relation between philosophical discussions of, and social-scientific research into popular beliefs about, distributive justice. The first part sets out the differences and tensions between the two perspectives, identifying considerations which tend to lead adherents of each discipline to regard the other as irrelevant to its concerns. The second discusses four reasons why social scientists might benefit from philosophy: problems in identifying inconsistency, the fact that non-justice considerations might underlie distributive judgments, the way in which different principles of justice can yield the same concrete distributive judgments, and the ambiguity of key terms. The third part distinguishes and evaluates three versions of the claim that normative theorising about justice can profit from empirical research into public opinion: that its findings are food for thought, that they amount to feasibility constraints, and that they are constitutive of normatively justified principles of justice. The view that popular opinion about justice has a strongly constitutive role to play in justifying principles of distributive justice stricto sensu is rejected, but it is argued that what the people think (and what they can reasonably be expected to come to think) on distributive matters can be an important factor for the political theorist to take into account, for reasons of legitimacy, or feasibility, or both.     

Memory for action events in the bottlenosed dolphin

We investigated whether a bottlenosed dolphin’s ability to recall and repeat actions on command would immediately generalize to actions performed with specified objects. The dolphin was tested on her ability to repeat 18 novel behaviors performed with potentially interchangeable objects specified using an artificial gestural language. Such “action events” were correctly repeated at above chance levels, indicating that the dolphin had access to memories of those events. Performance levels were, however, lower than in previous tests. The dolphin appeared to have difficulty recalling which object an action was performed with. Previous research has demonstrated that animals can recall features of their environment and features of their actions independently of one another. The results of this study demonstrate (1) that the dolphin’s concept of repeating extends beyond simply accessing memories of movement patterns, and (2) that dolphins’ memories of past events incorporate representations of both self-performed acts and objects, locations, or gestural instructions. Received:10 October 1998 / Accepted after revision: 22 December 1998     

Regular versus randomized sentences, nouns versus prepositions, and assimilation in salience.

The authors' research supports an alternative to the theory that organization improves retention by producing fewer elements for processing. College students' recall of randomized words was better for nouns than for prepositions. Regular sentences improved recall, but this improvement was less for nouns than for prepositions. According to the alternative theory, a part assimilates (increases in similarity) to its high-in-salience organization-produced group, thus increases in salience, and hence is retained better. The high-in-salience group for a regular sentence should be the sentence's meaning. Because the nouns were recalled better, they were more similar in salience to the regular sentences' meanings than were the prepositions. Assimilation should be minimal when parts are very similar. Therefore, the nouns' assimilation in salience should have been less than the prepositions', explaining the nouns' less improvement in recall.     

P-technique factor analyses of the Multiple Affect Adjective Check List (MAACL)

The Multiple Affect Adjective Check List (MAACL) has been found to have five first-order factors representing Anxiety, Depression, Hostility, Positive Affect, and Sensation Seeking and two second-order factors representing Positive Affect and Sensation Seeking (PASS) and Dysphoria. The present study examines whether these first- and second-order conceptions of affect (based on R-technique factor analysis) can also account for patterns of intraindividual variability in affect (based on P-technique factor analysis) in eight elderly women. Although the hypothesized five-factor model of affect was not testable in all of the present P-technique datasets, the results were consistent with this interindividual model of affect. Moreover, evidence of second-order (PASS and Dysphoria) and third-order (generalized distress) factors was found in one data set. Sufficient convergence in findings between the present P-technique research and prior R-technique research suggests that the MAACL is robust in describing both inter- and intraindividual components of affect in elderly women.This paper is based on the doctoral research of the first author and was partially supported by the National Institute of Aging Grant T32 AC 00048-12 to The Pennsylvania State University and a Grant-in-Aid of Research from Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. The authors wish to thank John R. Nesselroade for his helpful comments on an early draft of this paper.