Cultural considerations in release of information

In most mental health professions, confidentiality is probably the most important ethical principle in psychology, aside from nonmalfeasance. However, confidentiality is embedded in the Western values of individuality and autonomy. This creates a moral and ethical dilemma for clinicians working with clients from other cultures. This article presents 3 cases to highlight the conflict that many clinicians are likely to face with regard to confidentiality when working with clients from South Asia and similar cultures. The importance of understanding how cultural values may contradict professional ethics and some ways in which the clinician can address them are also discussed.     

Multiple environmental contexts and communication in pygmy marmosets (Cebuella pygmaea)

There are multiple components to the concept of Umwelt experienced by an organism that may constrain the type and structure of communication signals as well as the usefulness of these signals. To illustrate the impact of these multiple environmental components, the authors used signals of the pygmy marmoset (Cebuella pygmaea), a small primate from the western Amazon. The authors summarize studies to show how the physical effects of the habitat; effects of other species, both predators and nonpredators; anthropogenic effects on the communication environment; within-group and between-groups influences other pygmy marmosets exert; and ontogeny influence the structure and usage of vocal signals. Communication within a species can be understood only in consideration of each of these contexts.     

Implicit and explicit alcohol-related cognitions in heavy and light drinkers

Implicit and explicit alcohol-related cognitions were measured in 2 dimensions: positive-negative (valence) and arousal-sedation, with 2 versions of the Implicit Association Test (IAT; A. G. Greenwald, D. E. McGhee, & J. L. Schwartz) and related explicit measures. Heavy drinkers (n = 24) strongly associated alcohol with arousal on the arousal IAT (especially men) and scored higher on explicit arousal expectancies than light drinkers (n = 24). On the valence IAT, both light and heavy drinkers showed strong negative implicit associations with alcohol that contrasted with their positive explicit judgments (heavy drinkers were more positive). Implicit and explicit cognitions uniquely contributed to the prediction of 1-month prospective drinking. Heavy drinkers' implicit arousal associations could reflect the sensitized psychomotor-activating response to drug cues, a motivational mechanism hypothesized to underlie the etiology of addictive behaviors.     

高一学生学校适应与教师领导行为关系之初探

采用整群抽样的方法,选取538名学生被试,然后运用“学生在校行为问卷”和“教师领导行为问卷”考察学生的学校适应状况同他们感知到教师领导行为的关系,并分析了不同领导模式下学生学校适应状况的差异及性别因素的影响。结果发现学生的学校适应与其感知到的教师民主行为是正相关,而与权威和放任行为是负相关;民主型的领导模式明显好于权威和放任型的领导模式,而权威和放任之间的差距不明显,该结果不受学生和教师性别因素的影响。     

Probability cuing of target location facilitates visual search implicitly in normal participants and patients with hemispatial neglect

We explored how variability in the probability of target locations affects visual search in normal individuals and in patients with hemispatial neglect, a deficit in attending to the contralesional side of space. Young and elderly normal participants responded faster when targets appeared in the more probable region than when targets appeared in the less probable region. Similarly, patients were sensitive to the distribution of targets, even in the neglected field. Although the attentional gradient that characterizes neglect was not eliminated, the response facilitation due to the probability distribution was proportionate to that of control participants and equal in magnitude across the neglected field. All participants exploited the uneven distribution of targets to enhance task performance without explicit instructions to do so or awareness of biases in their behavior. These results suggest that attentional orientation and sensitivity to external probabilities are possibly dissociable. An early sensory and a late motor mechanism are postulated as possibly being involved in the observed probability–matching behavior of participants.     

Commitment Shift during Organizational Upheaval: Physicians' Transitions from Private Practitioner to Employee

This longitudinal study examines the individual transition journeys of physicians as their private medical practices are acquired by a large integrated health care system. We test the proposition that transition patterns (trends in an individual's commitments to organization and profession over time) are a function of individual differences in years in profession and perceived organizational enabling characteristics (change involvement, openness to ideas, and work discretion). Three years of survey data were obtained from a panel of 48 physicians who transitioned through an organizational change process. Results challenge traditional assumptions that tenure reinforces commitment and cast doubt on the effectiveness of current medical school curricula in preparing medical graduates to practice in an administrative environment. In addition, results strongly suggest that enabling characteristics of organizational change are critical for compatibility between the organizational and professional attachments of transitioning physicians.     

The processing and representation of Dutch and English compounds: peripheral morphological and central orthographic effects

In this study, we use the association between various measures of the morphological family and decision latencies to reveal the way in which the components of Dutch and English compounds are processed. The results show that for constituents of concatenated compounds in both languages, a position-related token count of the morphological family plays a role, whereas English open compounds show an effect of a type count, similar to the effect of family size for simplex words. When Dutch compounds are written with an artificial space, they reveal no effect of type count, which shows that the differential effect for the English open compounds is not superficial. The final experiment provides converging evidence for the lexical consequences of the space in English compounds. Decision latencies for English simplex words are better predicted from counts of the morphological family that include concatenated and hyphenated but not open family members.