Bereavement support groups: Who joins; who does not; and why

Compared widowed spouses who joined (n = 40) bereavement support groups (BSGs) during the first 13 months of bereavement with those who declined to join (n = 96). Controlling for gender, age, and socioeconomic status, no differences were found for perceived levels of social support, but joiners, compared with nonjoiners, reported experiencing more stressful events and scored significantly higher on measures of depression, anger, anxiety, and subjective stress. Nonjoiners and, to a lesser extent, joiners viewed those attending groups as less self-sufficient (e.g., need help, lonely), suggesting a mildly stigmatizing image of BSGs. A dialectical model is proposed in which BSG utilization rates are seen as the product of an avoidance-avoidance conflict involving the choice between suffering emotional distress on one's own or the perceived stigma of joining a BSG. Implications for future research on participation in self-help and mutual support groups are discussed.     

In Defense of Epistemic Arithmetic

This paper presents a defense of Epistemic Arithmetic as used for a formalization of intuitionistic arithmetic and of certain informal mathematical principles. First, objections by Allen Hazen and Craig Smorynski against Epistemic Arithmetic are discussed and found wanting. Second, positive support is given for the research program by showing that Epistemic Arithmetic can give interesting formulations of Church's Thesis. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Self-stimulating rats combine subjective reward magnitude and subjective reward rate multiplicatively

For rats that bar pressed for intracranial electrical stimulation in a 2-lever matching paradigm with concurrent variable interval schedules of reward, the authors found that the time allocation ratio is based on a multiplicative combination of the ratio of subjective reward magnitudes and the ratio of the rates of reward. Multiplicative combining was observed in a range covering approximately 2 orders of magnitude in the ratio of the rates of reward from about 1:10 to 10:1) and an order of magnitude change in the size of rewards. After determining the relation between the pulse frequency of stimulation and subjective reward magnitude, the authors were able to predict from knowledge of the subjective magnitudes of the rewards and the obtained relative rates of reward the subject's time allocation ratio over a range in which it varied by more than 3 orders of magnitude.     

A Defence of van Fraassen's Critique of Abductive Inference: Reply to Psillos

Psillos has recently argued that van Fraassen's arguments against abduction fail. Moreover, he claimed that, if successful, these arguments would equally undermine van Fraassen's own constructive empiricism, for, Psillos thinks, it is only by appeal to abduction that constructive empiricism can be saved from issuing in a bald scepticism. We show that Psillos' criticisms are misguided, and that they are mostly based on misinterpretations of van Fraassen's arguments. Furthermore, we argue that Psillos' arguments for his claim that constructive empiricism itself needs abduction point up to his failure to recognize the importance of van Fraassen's broader epistemology for constructive empiricism. Towards the end of our paper we discuss the suspected relationship between constructive empiricism and scepticism in the light of this broader epistemology, and from a somewhat more general perspective.     

College major and career choice: A retest of Holland's theory

In an effort to examine whether the previously established relationship between vocational choice and self-ratings on Holland's personality stereotypes among college freshmen would be strengthened with a sample of male college seniors, 109 subjects, sampled on the basis of major field choice, completed a questionnaire to select career stereotypes which described them best. The relationship between self-ratings and academic major was also to be examined. Significant relationships were obtained for four stereotypes (realistic, conventional, enterprising, and artistic) on the basis of both major and vocational choice, although significant stereotypes were not identical in each. Three of these significant relationships based on vocational choice matched those obtained previously. An additional finding suggested that vocational choice was slightly more valid than major field as a basis for utilizing this technique. The more restricted class sample emphasized did not, however, produce a more substantial relationship between self-ratings and occupational choice as expected.     

Letter recognition: Effects of interitern similarity and report requirements

The effects. of auditory similarity, visual similarity, and position of letters within the Visual field upon letter recognition were investigated in two experiments. In Experiment 1, significant differences associated with visual, but not. auditory, similarity were found when Os were asked to report one, three, or all Items from five-item linear arrays. As report requirements increased left-right differences in report accuracy increased, although items in the center of the field were reported most accurately. In Experiment 2, either one or five items were requested from the arrays presented in Experiment 1 after a delay of 2 or 4 sec. Significant effects associated with both auditory and visual similarity were found, together with a tendency for items to the left of fixation to be reported most accurately. These results were discussed in terms of recent theories dealing with the encoding of visually presented material.     

Selective migration—Again

Wolff (1979) has recently reinterpreted the data of Lee (1951). The Lee data, according to Wolff, indicate that Black migration from the south to Philadelphia had been selective in an IQ-relevant manner. Thus, according to Wolff, north- south differences in mean IQ among Blacks are at least in part a consequence of selective migration. However, Wolff's deduction from Lee's data is shown to depend entirely upon an insupportable assumption about cumulative IQ deficit in southern Black children.     

Accessing integrated and nonintegrated propositional structures in memory

This paper investigates the access properties associated with different propositional structures. Two memory experiments are reported, in which the underlying structures of sentences were integrated or not. Some sentences tested had the same concept repeated across the propositions (integrated), whereas other sentences had no explicit repeated arguments (non-integrated). Accessibility to the memory traces of the sentences was manipulated through the acquisition and the testing conditions. In Experiment 1, subjects received either immediate or delayed recall tests, under free or cued conditions. Integrated sentences were recalled better than nonintegrated ones under conditions of high accessibility (immediate recall or delayed cued recall). In contrast, under the low-access condition (delayed free recall), nonintegrated sentences were recalled slightly better than the integrated ones. Experiment 2 confirmed and extended the results for delayed free recall. Here again, under conditions of low sentence access, nonintegrated sentences were recalled better. These results were interpreted according to theory dealing with the lag effect in list learning.     

Configural-like effects observed in the course of second-order conditioning in rats

After receiving first-order CER (conditioned emotional response) conditioning, four groups of rats were exposed to the first-order conditioned stimulus (CS₁) and a new stimulus (CS₂) according to one of three paradigms. For different groups, CS₂ preceded CS₁, was simultaneously compounded with it, or was explicitly unpaired with it. There was evidence of second-order conditioning (SOC) only when CS₂ preceded CS₁, with the effect diminishing when SOC training was continued for a long time. Though suppression to CS₁ extinguished in the course of SOC training, animals which had experienced CS₂ preceding CS₁ suppressed almost completely when later tested with CS₁ alone. This “protection-from-extinction” is formally similar to an analogous effect observed in the simultaneous compound group. Animals appear to “configure” elements of both simultaneous and successive compounds.     

The significance of difference between means without reference to the frequency distribution function

Most existing tests for significance of difference between means require specific assumptions concerning the distribution function in the parent population. The need for a test which can be applied without making any such assumption is stressed. Such a statistical test is derived. The application of the test involves converting scores to rank orders. The exact probabilities may then be calculated for specified differences between samples by means of which the null hypothesis may be tested. The application of the test is simple and requires a minimum of calculation. The test loses in precision because of the conversion to rank orders but gains in generality since it may be safely used with any kind of distribution.This study was started at the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station of the State University of Iowa. I should like to express my gratitude for the help I received there.