Detectability of the deletion of a tone from a tone-plus-noise background

The deletion of a 1,000-Hz tone from a tone-plus-noise background is much harder for humans to detect than the insertion of the same tone into a background of noise. A mathematically ideal O, oblivious to the context in which an observation interval occurs, performs equally well under conditions of insertion and deletion. Human listeners, not oblivious to context, produced the function d_s = 0.036 E/N_o under deletion; the slope of this linear function is no more than half that of the typical slope of the comparable insertion function. The underlying reasons for the superiority of detection of insertion to that of deletion remain unclear.     

INSTRUCTIONS,FEEDBACK, AND REINFORCEMENT IN REDUCING ACTIVITY LEVELS IN THE CLASSROOM

The biomotometer, an electronic device which simultaneously measures motor activity and provides auditory feedback, was used in combination with material reinforcers in an experiment to reduce children's activity level in a classroom setting. Subjects were nine boys and two girls, aged 9–13, from a day hospital program for emotionally disturbed children. After five baseline trials, each child had five contingent reinforcement trials in which he/she received feedback “beeps” from the biomotometer and was given toy or candy rewards after each trial in which activity fell at least 20% below mean baseline level. Then five noncontingent reinforcement trials were run in which children received rewards for wearing the apparatus without the feedback attachment. Results indicated that the intervention “package,” including instructions, feedback, and contingent reinforcement, was successful in all five trials for 8 of 11 children. Activity levels increased during the final noncontingent phase.     

The changing American family: For better or worse

This article deals with the viability of the American family. The family as a socio-biological phenomenon has existed throughout history. While it has frequently altered its constellation and membership it has preserved its basic function of the rearing and the socialization of the young. Since as other living organisms its survival depends on a certain balance between forces maintaining stability and others promoting change, the rapid changes occurring in the outside world have had profound effects on today's family. These technological and political changes have especially affected the power structure and the role distributions within the family (e.g., the women's movement, sexual revolution, greater egalitarianism) leaving it more vulnerable and unsettled, while at the same time opening new areas which it is hoped will lead to a new consciousness and growth.     

Eye movements do not cause induced motion

An eye-movement theory of induced motion was compared to one based on object-relative displacement as modified by adjacency. Two lines moving in opposite directions served as the inducing stimuli, and a stationary target could be placed in one of three positions: adjacent to the top line, midway between the lines, or adjacent to the bottom line. In the fixation condition, the observer was instructed to fixate the stationary target during each of the three target placements. In the tracking condition, the subject was instructed to follow with his eyes one of the moving lines when the target was in each of its placements. Adjacency determined the results in both conditions, suggesting that eye movements do not cause induced motion.     

Occupational injury among immigrants

The growth in immigrant populations demands an understandign of determinants of their health, including occupational health. The study reported here involved a survey of a non-probability non-clinical sample of immigrants. The results indicate that length of stay, a proxy for acculturation, had no relationship to injury, but working in a language other than English and professing Buddhism did; thus, lack of congruence between individual level culture and workplace culture affects rates of injury. The conclusion is that looking for individual level explanations of differences in workplace injury will do little to advance the field of occupational health promotion.     

Parenting style as a mediator between children's negative emotionality and problematic behavior in early childhood

Negative emotionality is considered to be the core of the difficult temperament concept (J. E. Bates, 1989; R. L. Shiner, 1998). In this correlational study, the authors examined whether the relations between children's negative emotionality and problematic behavior (internalizing and externalizing) were partially mediated by parenting style (authoritative and authoritarian) in a community sample of 196 3-year-old children and their mothers. The authors assessed maternal perception of child negative emotionality using the Children's Behavior Questionnaire (M. K. Rothbart, S. A. Ahadi, K. L. Hershey, & P. Fisher, 2001) and assessed problematic child behavior by means of maternal report using the Child Behavior Checklist (T. M. Achenbach, 1992). The results showed that the relations between child negative emotionality and internalizing and externalizing behaviors were partially mediated by mothers' authoritative parenting style. Moreover, when the authors used confirmatory factor analysis to decontaminate possible overlap in item content between measures assessing temperament and problematic behavior, the association between negative emotionality and internalizing behavior was fully mediated by authoritative parenting.     

Understanding the factors that promote employability orientation: The impact of employability culture,career satisfaction,and role breadth self‐efficacy

This study among 702 Dutch employees working in the health care and welfare sector examined individual and organizational factors that are related to workers' employability orientation and turnover intention. Additionally, push and pull motives were examined of employees who aimed to leave their job. Results indicated that a strong employability culture adds extra variance over and above individual factors such as career satisfaction and role breadth self‐efficacy in the explanation of employability orientation, turnover intention, and push motives of employees who aim to leave their job. That is, employability culture is positively related to employability orientation, but negatively related to turnover intention and to push motives of those who aim to leave. Pull motives of employees who want to leave are explained by individual factors only, such as career dissatisfaction and role breadth self‐efficacy, but not by employability culture. These findings suggest that organizations that need to adapt to changing environments should implement a strong employability culture, because such a culture stimulates employability orientations among their employees while simultaneously decreasing turnover intentions.     

The effect of severe carotid occlusive disease and its surgical treatment on cognitive functions of the brain

Surgery of a high-grade carotid stenosis is evidence-based stroke prevention. Also cognitive effects are reported after carotid endarterectomy (CEA): both deterioration and improvement, the former attributed to perioperative complications and the latter often to learning effect. By imaging, brain perfusion and diffusion changes were shown in subjects with a high-grade stenosis undergoing CEA. We wanted to find out if the cognition of patients undergoing CEA display postoperative worsening or true improvement in association with findings in serial MR imaging. The patients had a poorer overall cognition than healthy matched controls. The cerebral hemisphere ipsilateral to the stenosis had higher diffusion and more sluggish perfusion leading to perfusion deficits. These asymmetries were abolished by CEA. Postoperatively, the patients showed a trend for cognitive worsening, most often attentional, but over months, the group performance improved similarly to the controls. Still, lower baseline perfusion was associated with a greater cognitive improvement, most clearly in executive functions. Consequently, despite the risk for transient decline, true cognitive benefit by CEA seems possible.     

Shared reading interaction in families with and without genetic risk for dyslexia: implications for toddlers’ language development

Shared reading represents a unique context for language learning. Little is known, however, about the quality of shared reading and its developmental implications in families with reading disabilities. In the present study, these questions were addressed in the context of a longitudinal follow‐up. Maternal interactional behaviors and children's participation in a book reading situation were analyzed at 14 months of age in a subsample involving 39 mothers who were diagnosed as reading disabled and had a familial background of reading difficulties (the RD group) and 89 normally reading mothers (the NR group) and their children. Information on the children's concurrent and subsequent vocabulary comprehension and production was obtained at 14 and 18 months. The results indicated that the children who displayed a high interest and engagement in shared reading at 14 months had more advanced language skills 4 months later. Also found was support for a link between maternal strategies and children's subsequent vocabulary comprehension and production. In accordance with the literature, maternal activation was more strongly related to the children's language development than the mere describing of the elements in the book. No differences emerged between the NR and RD groups in the frequencies of maternal interactional behaviors, children's participation in shared reading, or their language skills at this early age; maternal orienting of the children's attention was, however, found to be positively related to later language development in the NR group, while in the RD group the association was negative. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.