The Questions We Left Behind: Reflections from a Teaching Theologian

Abstract : While the ordination of women made great strides in ending gender injustice for women in church‐related vocations, women also have raised other questions, specifically: the appropriate role of experience in theological discourse and moral deliberation; the displacement of advocacy by representation; and the tension between the personal and the political. Fore‐mothers leave behind these issues for their after‐daughters, as they meet challenges their fore‐mothers in the faith could hardly imagine.     

Learning about the equal sign: Does comparing with inequality symbols help?

This study investigated whether instruction that involves comparing the equal sign with other relational symbols is more effective at imparting a relational interpretation of the equal sign than instruction about the equal sign alone. Third- and fourth-grade students in a comparing symbols group learned about the greater than, less than, and equal signs and had the opportunity to compare the inequality symbols with the equal sign. Students in an equal sign group learned about the equal sign only. A third group of students served as a control group. Three aspects of students’ knowledge were assessed before and after the lesson: (a) conceptual understanding of the equal sign, (b) equation encoding, and (c) problem solving. Students in the comparing symbols group showed greater gains in conceptual understanding from pretest to posttest than students in the other two groups, and students in the comparing symbols group also scored higher on a posttest that assessed knowledge about inequality symbols and inequality problem solving. Thus, they learned about three symbols in the same amount of time as other students learned about the equal sign alone or not at all. Therefore, an instructional approach involving comparison can be an effective tool for learning about concepts in mathematics.     

Emotional valence and arousal effects on memory and hemispheric asymmetries

This study examined predictions based upon the right hemisphere (RH) model, the valence–arousal model, and a recently proposed integrated model (Killgore & Yurgelun-Todd, 2007) of emotion processing by testing immediate recall and recognition memory for positive, negative, and neutral verbal stimuli among 35 right-handed women. Building upon methodologies of previous studies, we found that words presented to the right visual field/left hemisphere (RVF/LH) were recalled and recognized more accurately than words presented to the left visual field/right hemisphere (LVF/RH), and we found significant valence by visual field interactions. Some findings were consistent with one of the models evaluated whereas others were consistent with none of the models evaluated. Our findings suggest that an integration of the RH and valence–arousal models may best account for the findings with regard to hemispheric lateralization of memory for emotional stimuli.     

Two Simulated Feasibility Studies in Computerised Adaptive Testing

This paper describes two simulated feasibility studies conducted in support of a project to implement computerised adaptive testing on microcomputers for college placement purposes. The first study compares adaptive testing with alternative conventional peaked tests. The second study explores two stopping rules: fixed test length and fixed standard error of measurement. These studies typify the kind of psychometric research required to initiate and support operational adaptive testing programs.
Cet article décrit deux études de modèles de faisabilité conduites pour rendre fiable un projet de construction de batterie de tests informatisés sur micro, en vue ďorganiser le placement dans les collèges. La première étude compare cette catégorie de tests avec les tests conventionnels les plus connus. La deuxième explore deux règies: la longueur imposée du test et ľerreur standard imposée dans la mesure. Ces études fixent le type de recherche psychométrique requis par ľinitiation et le support opérationnel de programmes de tests informatisés.     

Spatial and temporal processing in the auditory and visual modalities

Three experiments tested the idea that auditory presentation facilitates temporal recall whereas spatial recall is better if the input modality is visual. Lists of words were presented in which the temporal and spatial orders were independent, and instructions to the subjects determined whether recall would be given in a spatial or temporal order. In all three experiments, a significant interaction between the input modality and the type of recall was found, such that visual presentation resulted in superior recall over auditory presentation in the spatial conditions and auditory presentation yielded superior recall to visual in the temporal conditions. The present results contradict an earlier study by Murdock that showed that auditory presentation resulted in better performance than visual presentation in a nominally spatial task. An explanation for the discrepancies between the results of that study and the present one is presented.     

CURRENTS AND FUTURES IN AMERICAN FEMINIST PSYCHOLOGY

The intellectual development of feminist psychology is discussed in terms of social change that is affecting the discipline. The issues that seem important are the changing sex ratio, changes in the practice of psychology, decline of interest in the pursuit of academic/research careers, and the generally conservative tenor of society.     

Social referencing in infants of mothers with symptoms of depression

The present study examined the acquisition of social referencing skills in infants of mothers with symptoms of depression (n = 44). We aimed to determine if a short discrimination training could facilitate infants’ social referencing. Mothers were instructed to pose either joyful or fearful facial expressions to cue infants’ approach/avoidance responses toward an ambiguous object. Maternal expressions were correlated with pleasant or unpleasant events occurring after the infant's response. The results showed that after the intervention, infants looked at their mothers more frequently and reached or avoided the ambiguous object based on the preceding maternal expression. The results suggest that discrimination training procedures can establish social referencing in infants of mothers with symptoms of depression.     

Behavioral family therapy symposium

Abstract

The Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center (AECOM/MMC) Department of Psychiatry and the Gralnick Foundation/ High Point Hospital jointly sponsored the Second Annual Einstein Symposium on November 7, 1985 commemorating the centennial year of Yeshiva University. The symposium, focusing on Behavioral Family Therapy, opened with the presentation of the Einstein Award for Research in Psychiatry to B. F. Skinner by Herman van Praag, Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry. After Skinner's discussion of the role of emotions in behavior analysis, several nationally renowned clinical researchers in the field of behavioral family therapy presented findings of their recent work.