Developing coordination of services between a mental health center and a public school system

A child-and-family oriented community mental health center of necessity is concerned with the manner in which the school system in its community is providing for the psychological, social, and emotional development of children. Fortunately, over the last decade, the number of school systems that are aware of their responsibility in this regard has greatly increased, and many affluent and enlightened school systems have moved to develop extensive pupil personnel services, functioning in many ways as in-house mental health programs. Where there are mental health providers both within the community and within the school system, however, problems may develop such as professional competition, overlapping functions, and differences with regard to how mental health problems are best dealt with. This paper will examine the relationship of a town-supported mental health program and the town's public school system. Highlighted will be the variety of problems which develop, including those mentioned above, and strategies adopted to resolve the problems.     

Delayed attentional engagement in the attentional blink

Observers often miss the 2nd of 2 visual targets (first target [T1] and second target [T2]) when these targets are presented closely in time; the attentional blink (AB). The authors hypothesized that the AB occurs because the attentional response to T2 is delayed by T1 processing, causing T2 to lose a competition for attention to the item that follows it. The authors investigated this hypothesis by determining whether the AB is attenuated when T2 is precued. The results from 4 experiments showed that the duration and magnitude of the AB were substantially reduced when T2 was precued. The observed improvement in T2 report did not occur at the expense of T1 report, suggesting that processing of T1 was already completed or was at least protected when the cue was presented. The authors conclude that, during the AB, there is a delay between detection and the selection of target candidates for consolidation in short-term memory.     

Neuropsychological executive functioning in children at elevated risk for alcoholism: findings in early adolescence

One component of individual risk for alcoholism may involve cognitive vulnerabilities prodromal to alcoholism onset. This prospective study of 198 boys followed between 3 and 14 years of age evaluated neurocognitive functioning across three groups who varied in familial risk for future alcoholism. Measures of intelligence, reward-response, and a battery of neuropsychological executive and cognitive inhibitory measures were used. Executive functioning weaknesses were greater in families with alcoholism but no antisocial comorbidity. IQ and reward-response weaknesses were associated with familial antisocial alcoholism. Executive function effects were clearest for response inhibition, response speed, and symbol-digit modalities. Results suggest that executive deficits are not part of the highest risk, antisocial pathway to alcoholism but that some executive function weaknesses may contribute to a secondary risk pathway.     

Ethnicity, expressed emotion, attributions, and course of schizophrenia: family warmth matters

The authors examined the role of family factors and the course of schizophrenia by carrying out additional assessments and analyses in 2 previously published studies of Mexican American and Anglo American patients and families. The authors found partial support for an attributional model of relapse for families who are low in emotional overinvolvement. Attributions of control, criticism, and warmth together marginally predicted relapse. The data also indicated that for Mexican Americans, family warmth is a significant protective factor, whereas for Anglo Americans, family criticism is a significant risk factor. These findings suggest that the sociocultural context shapes the pathways by which family processes are related to the course of illness. Moreover, the warmth findings suggest that families may contribute to preventing relapse.     

Grammatical intuitions about irregular verb inflections

If people possess a rule that the root of a verb plus -ed produces the past tense, why does this rule produce an unacceptable form when applied to an irregular verb (e.g., comed)? One possibility is that the unacceptability of comed is the result of lexical priming. That is, comed primes the correct form came, and the awareness of came causes comed to be perceived as unacceptable. If so, then the acceptability of a misinflected form should be determined by the factors that influence the priming of its correct form, such as the frequency and hence speed of retrieval of its correct form. Three experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, subjects were faster to reject misinflected irregular verbs when the correct irregular form had a higher frequency than when it had a lower frequency. Furthermore, the higher the frequency of the correct form, the more unacceptable the misinflected form seemed. Experiment 2 used the naming task to confirm that the presentation of a misinflected form facilitated the naming of its correct form. In Experiment 3, subjects were faster to accept an irregular verb when it was primed by a misinflected irregular verb than with a correct regular verb. This was taken as evidence that the misinflected irregular verb accesses the correct form.     

Inhibition of return to occluded objects

Since many visual objects are vulnerable to occlusion, an active process that tracks objects behind occluders confers considerable ecological validity to the visual system. We studied this possibility by testing whether inhibition of return can be observed with occluded objects. In our experiments, two moving objects disappeared or reappeared behind occluders while a cue and a probe were presented. Contrary to the results of a previous study (Tipper, Weaver, Jerreat, & Burak, 1994), responses were consistently delayed for the cued object that was occluded when it was cued (Experiment 1), when it was probed (Experiment 2), or both (Experiment 3). These results suggest that attention can select occluded objects that are out of view. Our findings are in line with prior studies that have demonstrated similar perceptual/attentional effects for occluded objects, as well as for visible objects.     

Top-Down Attentional Guidance Based On Implicit Learning of Visual Covariation

The visual environment is extremely rich and complex, producing information overload for the visual system. But the environment also embodies structure in the form of redundancies and regularities that may serve to reduce complexity. How do perceivers internalize this complex informational structure? We present new evidence of visual learning that illustrates how observers learn how objects and events covary in the visual world. This information serves to guide visual processes such as object recognition and search. Our first experiment demonstrates that search and object recognition are facilitated by learned associations (covariation) between novel visual shapes. Our second experiment shows that regularities in dynamic visual environments can also be learned to guide search behavior. In both experiments, learning occurred incidentally and the memory representations were implicit. These experiments show how top-down visual knowledge, acquired through implicit learning, constrains what to expect and guides where to attend and look.     

Differences in neuronal activity explain differences in memory forming abilities of different populations of Lymnaea stagnalis

The ability to learn and form long-term memory (LTM) can enhance an animal's fitness, for example, by allowing them to remember predators, food sources or conspecific interactions. Here we use the pond snail, Lymnaea stagnalis, to assess whether variability between natural populations (i.e., strains) in memory forming capabilities correlates with electrophysiological properties at the level of a single neuron, RPeD1. RPeD1 is a necessary site of LTM formation of aerial respiratory behaviour following operant conditioning. We used strains from two small, separate permanent ponds (TC1 and TC2). A comparison of the two populations showed that the TC1 strain had enhanced memory forming capabilities. Further, the behavioural phenotype of enhanced memory strain was explained, in part, by differences in the electrophysiology of RPeD1. Compared to RPeD1 from the naive TC2 strain, RPeD1 from the TC1 strain has both a decreased resistance and decreased excitability. Moreover, 24h after a single 0.5h training session, those membrane properties, as well as the firing and bursting rate, decrease further in the TC1 strain but not in the TC2 strain. The initial differences in RPeD1 properties in the TC1 strain coupled with their ability to further change these properties with a single training session suggests that RPeD1 neurons from the TC1 strain are "primed" to rapidly form memory.     

Student ethics in an era of personal entitlement

397 students arriving to take an exam in a junior level Principles of Management course were clearly warned on several occasions to keep cell phones outside the testing area or receive a failing test grade if the policy was violated. Just before the examination was administered, with all students sitting in their assigned seats, the professor made a final announcement that anyone still in possession of a cell phone would have one last opportunity to come forward and place it in a box at the front of the testing room. After eight students accepted this final "opportunity," the professor produced a hand-held metal detector, demonstrated how it could detect cell phones placed inside clothing, and informed the class that random screening of students would be conducted as they handed in their examinations. He then added that, as a special favor, he would allow a two-minute amnesty period during which any student could bring a cell phone to the front of the room for storage during the test. 38 students responded by turning in cell phones they had retained in direct violation of course policy. Implications of this cell phone dishonesty for creating viable business ethics and the role of perceived entitlement in shaping the behavior of these future business leaders were discussed.