Presidential Leadership Style and the Political Use of Force

A growing body of work seeks to explain the lack of clear evidence for the diversionary use of force by casting doubt on such strategies' attractiveness for policy makers: while domestic political and economic problems may provide incentives for diversion, such strategies involve political and military risks that frequently outweigh these incentives. Such theories correctly identify the objective risks involved in diversion but do not account for variation in leaders' risk‐taking propensities. We develop a “first image” theory of diversion that suggests a key psychological variable (locus of control) shapes leaders' willingness to engage in risky diversionary strategies. A statistical analysis of the American use of force, 1953–2000, finds strong support for this model. We conclude that the lack of clear evidence for diversion in general is a reflection of the contingent nature of the phenomenon and call for greater attention to how agents and structures interact to produce policy behavior.     

Conceptual and Moral Development of Substance Abuse Counselors: Implications for Training

The relationship among substance abuse counselors' education, experience, recovery status, and cognitive development (conceptual complexity and moral reasoning levels) was examined in a simultaneous multiple regression. Significant relationships were found between counselors' level of conceptual complexity and moral reasoning and their education. Implications for counselor training are presented.     

Sequence-related changes in sensory-evoked potentials in the dentate gyrus: a mechanism for item-specific short-term information storage in the hippocampus

Sensory-evoked potentials were recorded from the dentate gyrus of the rat hippocampus during performance of a differential auditory discrimination task. The short latency (20 ms) component (N1) of the sensory-evoked potential showed systematic amplitude fluctuations dependent upon the sequence of positive and negative trials preceding the presentation of a given trial and did not depend on the associated reward values of the individual tone stimuli which evoked the potential. The amplitude fluctuations could be accurately depicted by a model which retained the sequence for the five preceding trials in a "buffer" with exponentially decaying influence as a function of time of trial occurrence within the sequence. The results provide evidence that the hippocampus encodes accurate short-lasting representations of sensory events which can provide the basis for storage of information pertaining to past experiences.     

Issues in the assessment of social competence in children

Recent interest in children's social competence has been prompted by findings of correlational and retrospective studies that indicate a positive relationship between early social adjustment problems of children and their adjustment later in life. To date, the assessment methodology in the area has pursued two directions: (1) sociometric measures (peer nomination and peer rating scales), which have provided the major means of identifying the socially competent child, and (2) direct observation, principally employed in the specification of socially competent behaviors. The current uses and the inherent assets and limitations of both strategies are discussed along with suggestions for enhancing current data collection methods. Issues concerning the definition of social competence, generalizability of current findings, and social norms are also examined.     

Teacher attitudes toward educational and psychological services for conduct problem children

Ninety-nine teachers participated in a survey designed to assess teacher attitudes toward and experience with a variety of strategies for dealing with conduct problem children in regular classes. Results indicated that (a) a majority of teachers favored placing conduct problem children in regular rather than special classes; (b) current sources of assistance (school psychologists, clinical psychologists, principals, parents, and other teachers) were uniformly perceived as only slightly effective in helping teachers handle problem children; and (c) of 14 alternative educational and psychological assistance delivery strategies, teachers most frequently preferred smaller classes, teacher aides, increased counseling staff, and resource classrooms.This study was funded as part of Grant No. OEG-0-71-2872 from the U.S. Office of Education. The opinions expressed in this paper are in no way intended to reflect those of the granting agency. The suggestions of Marlene Schneider, Eleanor Wilcox, Ruth Shepard, and Susan O'Leary were extremely helpful in the initial formulation of the questionnaire used in this study. The authors are further indebted to Kenneth Kaufman, Marvin R. Goldfried, Leonard Krasner, Lillian Stevens, W. E. Hedley, and R. Mullaney for allowing us to use their continuing education courses as the sources of our sample of teachers, and to the many teachers who completed the questionnaire.     

A portable system for studying head movements in infants in relation to contingent and noncontingent sensory stimulation

A portable apparatus for studying infant head movements and programming sensory stimulation is described. Remote pushbuttons allow observation of vocalizations, smiles, and visual attention. Lightweight and compact, the system allows recording of data in a variety of locations, including home, hospital, and laboratory.     

Overshoot of curvature in visual apparent motion

If a curved line and a straight line are presented briefly, one above the other, in sequence to the eye, then, under appropriate conditions, visual apparent motion is obtained. Subjects report that the illusory figure moving and changing from the curved line to the straight line appears to overshoot the latter, gaining a small curvature in the opposite sense. Three experiments are described. In the first, the magnitude of this apparent curvature was quantified as a function of the delay between the onsets of the curved line and straight line (the stimulus onset asynchrony, SOA). It is shown that overshoot in curvature cannot be attributed to inappropriate patterns of eye fixations. In the second experiment, the stimulus configuration was modified to reveal the contribution to apparent curvature of classical curvature-contrast effects. Curvature overshoot due to apparent motion alone was thus estimated as a function of SOA. In the third experiment, an analogous position overshoot was measured for apparent motion elicited by two brief sequentially presented parallel line segments. It is argued that a combination of such position overshoots cannot explain curvature overshoot. Two schemes of a more general kind that might be used to interpret curvature overshoot are then outlined. One scheme is based on a neural-net model of apparent motion, and the other on a functional model of apparent motion that operates by laws analogous to those governing real physical motion.