Microcomputer Applications: “Statistics: For the Rest of Us”

Training accurately predicted sales forces' performance nearly 50% of the time in a national research study of paper and plastics merchant wholesalers' sales force effectiveness. The top performing sales forces front-load the length of training for new salespeople and broaden its methods, sources, and contents. Managerial recommendations are to: (a) reallocate training budgets that balance new and experienced salespersons' training, (b) re-focus on training content to balance strategy-oriented training with knowledge and interpersonal communication skill areas of training content, (c) diversify training sources and methods for new salespersons' training, and (d) involve suppliers and customers in merchant sales force training.     

Applying the Creating Lasting Family Connections Marriage Enhancement Program to Marriages Affected by Prison Reentry

Divorce proportions are currently high in the US and they are even higher among those who are incarcerated with substance abuse problems. Although much research has examined marital interventions, only two studies have examined marital interventions with prison populations. There is some empirical evidence that incarcerated couples benefit from traditional marital therapy (O'Farrell and Fals‐Stewart, 1999, Addictions: A comprehensive guidebook, New York, Oxford University Press). An adaptation of the evidence‐based Creating Lasting Family Connections program was implemented with 144 married couples, where one spouse was incarcerated, in a southern state with particularly high divorce and incarceration proportions. Results suggested that married men exposed to the program had larger improvements in some relationship skills relative to a convenience sample of men not so exposed. Both husbands and wives exposed to the program exhibited similar and significant increases in relationship skills. The results were comparable to a Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program adaptation for inmates. The implications of the findings for prevention practitioners are discussed.     

Culture Change in Elite Sport Performance Teams: Examining and Advancing Effectiveness in the New Era

Reflecting the importance of optimizing culture for elite teams, Fletcher and Arnold (2011) recently suggested the need for expertise in culture change. Acknowledging the dearth of literature on the specific process, however, the potential effectiveness of practitioners in this area is unknown. The present paper examines the activity's precise demands and the validity of understanding in sport psychology and organizational research to support its delivery. Recognizing that sport psychologists are being increasingly utilized by elite team management, initial evidence-based guidelines are presented. Finally, to stimulate the development of ecologically valid, practically meaningful knowledge, the paper identifies a number of future research directions.     

Expanding White Racial Identity Theory: A Qualitative Investigation of Whites Engaged in Antiracist Action

This article presents outcomes of a qualitative exploration of White racial identity. Ten participants whose characteristics were reflective of Helms's ( 1990 ) autonomy status defined their racial identities and related lifestyle choices. Findings are conceptualized within the framework of Helms's ( 1990 , 1995 ) theory of White racial identity development. Suggestions are intended to enhance White racial identity theory and provide empirical support for characteristics of Whites who are engaged in antiracist activities.     

Grain orientation effects on delamination during fatigue of a sensitized Al–Mg alloy

Fatigue crack growth experiments were conducted in humid air (RH~45%) at 25 °C on 29-mm-thick plate samples of an aluminium–magnesium (Al–Mg) 5083-H131 alloy in the long transverse (LT) direction. Samples were tested in both the as-received condition and after sensitization at 175 °C for 100 h. Delamination along some grain boundaries was observed in the short transverse plane after fatigue testing of the sensitized material, depending upon the level of ΔK and K_max. Orientation microscopy using electron backscattering diffraction and chemical analyses using transmission electron microscopy and energy dispersive spectroscopy of grain boundaries revealed that Mg segregation and the orientation of grains had key roles in the observed grain boundary delamination of the sensitized material.     

Acute Stress,Depression, and Anxiety Symptoms Among English and Spanish Speaking Children with Recent Trauma Exposure

A growing literature suggests the clinical importance of acute stress disorder symptoms in youth following potentially traumatic events. A multisite sample of English and Spanish speaking children and adolescents (N = 479) between the ages of 8–17, along with their caregivers completed interviews and self-report questionnaires between 2 days and 1 month following the event. The results indicate that children with greater total acute stress symptoms reported greater depressive (r = .41, p < .01) and anxiety symptoms (r = .53, p < .01). Examining specific acute stress subscales, reexperiencing was correlated with anxiety (r = .47, p < .01) and arousal was correlated with depression (r = .50, p < .01) and anxiety (r = .55, p < .01). Age was inversely associated with total acute stress symptoms (r = ?.24, p < .01), reexperiencing (r = ?.17, p < .01), avoidance (r = ?.27, p < .01), and arousal (r = ?.19, p < .01) and gender was related to total anxiety symptoms (Spearman’s ρ = .17, p < .01). The current study supports the importance of screening acute stress symptoms and other mental health outcomes following a potentially traumatic event in children and adolescents. Early screening may enable clinicians to identify and acutely intervene to support children’s psychological and physical recovery.     

Knowledge is power: How conceptual knowledge transforms visual cognition

In this review, we synthesize the existing literature demonstrating the dynamic interplay between conceptual knowledge and visual perceptual processing. We consider two theoretical frameworks that demonstrate interactions between processes and brain areas traditionally considered perceptual or conceptual. Specifically, we discuss categorical perception, in which visual objects are represented according to category membership, and highlight studies showing that category knowledge can penetrate early stages of visual analysis. We next discuss the embodied account of conceptual knowledge, which holds that concepts are instantiated in the same neural regions required for specific types of perception and action, and discuss the limitations of this framework. We additionally consider studies showing that gaining abstract semantic knowledge about objects and faces leads to behavioral and electrophysiological changes that are indicative of more efficient stimulus processing. Finally, we consider the role that perceiver goals and motivation may play in shaping the interaction between conceptual and perceptual processing. We hope to demonstrate how pervasive such interactions between motivation, conceptual knowledge, and perceptual processing are in our understanding of the visual environment, and to demonstrate the need for future research aimed at understanding how such interactions arise in the brain.     

Information Density and Dependency Length as Complementary Cognitive Models

Certain English constructions permit two syntactic alternations.

1. a. I looked up the number. b. I looked the number up.
2. a. He is often at the office. b. He often is at the office.

This study investigates the relationship between syntactic alternations and processing difficulty. What cognitive mechanisms are responsible for our attraction to some alternations and our aversion to others? This article reviews three psycholinguistic models of the relationship between syntactic alternations and processing: Maximum Per Word Surprisal (building on the ideas of Hale, in Proceedings of the 2nd Meeting of the North American chapter of the association for computational linguistics. Association for Computational Linguistics, Pittsburgh, PA, pp 159–166, 2001), Uniform Information Density (UID) (Levy and Jaeger in Adv Neural Inf Process Syst 19:849–856, 2007; inter alia), and Dependency Length Minimization (DLM) (Gildea and Temperley in Cognit Sci 34:286–310, 2010). Each theory makes predictions about which alternations native speakers should favor. Subjects were recruited using Amazon Mechanical Turk and asked to judge which of two competing syntactic alternations sounded more natural. Logistic regression analysis on the resulting data suggests that both UID and DLM are powerful predictors of human preferences. We conclude that alternations that approach uniform information density and minimize dependency length are easier to process than those that do not.