Cuba, Castro and Anti-Semitism

The Soviets provided Cuba with the model of attacking human rights activities and organizations as a necessary extension of the Jewish Zionist conspiracy. The identification of Castro with forces dedicated to the destruction of Israel was made plain in proclamation and practice. The Cuban position is that the war on terrorism is actually an example of “Liberation Imperialism.” Cubans make no reference to the repeated assaults on Israel, or the actual causes of the Middle East conflict—the denial of the right of Israel to exist as a Nation-State in that region. Anti-Semitism is so powerfully rooted as a cultural element in authoritarian cultures that even when, as in the case of Cuban communism, it entails the tortured twisting of doctrinal elements within Marxism–Leninism, such as doctrinal claims about the “materialist foundations of society,” its leaders will sacrifice the ideology to the reality. Part of the Castro attachment to communism is an overall contempt for the Jewish mini-Diaspora within the larger flight of Cubans to the United States and other places where the practice of free speech remain unimpeded. The regime of Fidel Castro has changed little in the past 49 years, compared to the rest of the world.     

Stressful life events, motives for Internet use, and social support among digital kids.

This study presents the interrelationships between stressful life events, motives for Internet use, social support, and the use of the Internet among a sample of adolescents and children aged 8 to 18 (N = 717). The results show that stressful life events are significantly associated with the consumption of the Internet for mood management (such as entertainment and information seeking) and social compensation (such as recognition gaining and relationship maintenance) motives. Secondly, the more children and adolescents exhibit high levels of social support, either online or offline, the less they find stressful life events upsetting. Thirdly, as individuals exhibit greater ability to personally access different types of social support to meet their needs, their motivations for Internet use are characteristically more allied to mood-management and social-compensation. This study reasserts that the mental and physical impact of stressful life events are in fact buffered by one's degree of social support and Internet use, particular examples of which are entertainment and relationship maintenance, and positive coping strategies, which temporarily reduce stress and anxiety.     

Noncontingent reinforcement for the treatment of severe problem behavior: An analysis of 27 consecutive applications

Noncontingent reinforcement (NCR) is a commonly used treatment for severe problem behavior displayed by individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The current study sought to extend the literature by reporting outcomes achieved with 27 consecutive applications of NCR as the primary treatment for severe problem behavior. All applications of NCR were included regardless of treatment outcome to minimize selection bias favoring successful cases. Participants ranged in age from 5 to 33 years. We analyzed the results across behavioral function and with regard to the use of functional versus alternative reinforcers. NCR effectively treated problem behavior maintained by social reinforcement in 14 of 15 applications, using either the functional reinforcer or alternative reinforcers. When we implemented NCR to treat problem behavior maintained by automatic reinforcement, we often had to add other treatment components to produce clinically significant effects (five of nine applications). Results provide information on the effectiveness and limitations of NCR as treatment for severe problem behavior.     

On the need for negative local item dependence

While negative local item dependence (LID) has been discussed in numerous articles, its occurrence and effects often go unrecognized. This is due in part to confusion over what unidimensional latent trait is being utilized in evaluating the LID of multidimensional testing data. This article addresses this confusion by using an appropriately chosen latent variable to condition on. It then provides a proof that negative LID must occur when unidimensional ability estimates (such as number right score) are obtained from data which follow a very general class of multidimensional item response theory models. The importance of specifying what unidimensional latent trait is used, and its effect on the sign of the LIDs are shown to have implications in regard to a variety of foundational theoretical arguments, to the simulation of LID data sets, and to the use of testlet scoring for removing LID.This paper is based in part on a chapter in the first author's doctoral dissertation, written at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign under the supervision of William Stout. Part of this research has been presented at the annual meeting of the National Council on Measurement in Education, San Diego, California, April 14–16, 1998.The research of the first author was partially supported by a Harold Gulliksen Psychometric fellowship through Educational Testing Service and by a Research and Productive Scholarship award from the University of South Carolina.     

Spatial learning in the 5-HT1B receptor knockout mouse: selective facilitation/impairment depending on the cognitive demand

Age-related memory decline is associated with a combined dysfunction of the cholinergic and serotonergic systems in the hippocampus and frontal cortex, in particular. The 5-HT1B receptor occupies strategic cellular and subcellular locations in these structures, where it plays a role in the modulation of ACh release. In an attempt to characterize the contribution of this receptor to memory functions, 5-HT1B receptor knockout (KO) mice were submitted to various behavioral paradigms carried out in the same experimental context (water maze), which were aimed at exposing mice to various levels of memory demand. 5-HT1BKO mice exhibited a facilitation in the acquisition of a hippocampal-dependent spatial reference memory task in the Morris water maze. This facilitation was selective of task difficulty, showing thus that the genetic inactivation of the 5-HT1B receptor is associated with facilitation when the complexity of the task is increased, and reveals a protective effect on age-related hippocampal-dependent memory decline. Young-adult and aged KO and wild-type (WT) mice were equally able to learn a delayed spatial matching-to-sample working memory task in a radial-arm water maze with short (0 or 5 min) delays. However, 5-HT1BKO mice, only, exhibited a selective memory impairment at intermediate and long (15, 30, and 60 min) delays. Treatment by scopolamine induced the same pattern of performance in wild type as did the mutation for short (5 min, no impairment) and long (60 min, impairment) delays. Taken together, these studies revealed a beneficial effect of the mutation on the acquisition of a spatial reference memory task, but a deleterious effect on a working memory task for long delays. This 5-HT1BKO mouse story highlights the problem of the potential existence of "global memory enhancers."