The number of active sweat glands (PSI, palmar sweat index) in stress caused by blood donation

The number of active sweat glands (PSI), heart rate, systolic (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) were assessed every 2 minutes in 109 male blood donors. Three measurements were taken at the beginning (adaptation phase), three later but before blood donation (baseline), one during the venous puncture (phase 3), three thereafter but still during donation (phase 4), and four after removal of the cannula (phase 5). Analysis of variance yielded significant differences between phases; PSI and SBP behaved similarly, decreasing from adaptation to baseline, rising during puncture, and decreasing again thereafter. Mean within-subject correlations between variables were significantly above 0. Between-subjects correlations were significantly negative for PSI and DBP. This is best explained by the influence of age on both variables. Correlations of PSI values as determined by three raters had a mean of 0.90. The study shows that the PSI is a very sensitive indicator of stress that is easily accessible also in field studies.     

A kinematic analysis of anticipatory coarticulation in the speech of anterior aphasic subjects using electromagnetic articulography

An investigation was made into the extent and time course of anticipatory coarticulation in the speech of two normal and two anterior aphasic, German-speaking subjects. Both labial and velar coarticulation gestures were investigated. Subjects produced sentences containing target words contrasting in postconsonantal vowel rounding (e.g., [geli:ge]/[gely:gel]) and in nasality (e.g., [ti:de]/[ti:ne]). Speech kinematics were monitored by means of electromagnetic articulography. The data revealed that for correct productions, aphasic speakers' coarticulatory patterns were more highly variable than those of control subjects. These differences, however, were found chiefly for spatial displacement characteristics, while the temporal aspects of articulator movement necessary for anticipatory coarticulation appeared largely intact. Articulator mistiming did not appear to explain a small corpus of stop/nasal substitution errors produced by one of the aphasic speakers.     

Discursive logic towards a logic of rational discourse

Both logic and philosophy of science investigate formal aspects of scientific discourse, i.e. properties of (non-monotonic) consequence operations for discursive logic. In the present paper we handle two of them: paraconsistency and enthymematycity.Supported by grants from the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, form the Fulbright-Foundation and from the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh.Presented byJan Zygmunt     

Client Cognitive Responses as a Function of Quality of Counselor Verbal Responses

This study examined the relationship between high and low quality counselor responses in four response modes and client cognitions. Twenty-one university students participated in two sessions of brief counseling that included high and low quality counselor responses in paraphrasing, questioning, reflection of feeling, and self-disclosure. After each counseling session, participants used Kagan's (1975) interpersonal process recall method to report their cognitions in response to these counselor responses. Results indicated that the participants had more favorable cognitions toward the counselor associated with high quality counselor paraphrasing and reflection of feeling responses. Participants' cognitions directed toward themselves did not differ in response to any of the four high and low quality counselor responses. Implications of the results are discussed.     

Data selection and responsible conduct: Was millikan a fraud?

This paper addresses a problem in reporting scientific research. The problem is how to distinguish between justifiable and unjustifiable data selection. Robert Millikan is notorious for an infamous remark that he used all his data when in fact he had used a selection. On this basis he has been accused of fraud. There is a tension here — historians and his defenders see his selection as understandable and legitimate, while current statements about the Responsible Conduct of Research imply his selection was illegitimate. This paper discusses two main issues that arise in assessing his conduct, whether he was intentionally misleading and whether he actually did mislead the scientific community about some facts of nature. It is argued that he was not intentionally misleading, and that it is unlikely that he misled the scientific community.     

The travails of Martin Orne: On privacy,public disclosure,and confidentiality in psychotherapy

The experiences of one psychotherapist have brought to the fore the entire issue of privacy and confidentiality and the responsibilities of mental health professionals. In a computer driven culture, where data about patients become subject to public scrutiny, how does the mental health professional practice, guided by the concept of confidentiality? Where does confidentiality begin and end? What about the patient's right to self-disclose? What about patient autonomy? In this paper, illustrated by one particular case where the rule of absolute confidentiality, an intrinsic part of the practice of psychotherapy, was questioned, our current confusion comes to the surface. The reader is urged to re-think the concept of confidentiality and patient self-disclosure.     

The Meaning and Intensity of the Near-Death Experience

This is the second in a three-part study exploring the hypothesis that near-death experiences (NDErs) assign the meaning of the NDE by using causal (effect) and semantic (affect) attributions. To test this hypothesis, 32 spontaneous verbal accounts of NDEs were analyzed. Each statement comprising the account was coded and classified according to the six attributional types in the Norton-Sahlman matrices of attributional classification. On the bases of these findings, we conclude that NDErs abstract the most significant aspects of meaning from their experiences by the use of attributions expressing the purposes of the experience and the intentions of the participants. Second, the meaning and intensity of the experience derives from attributions of both effect (causality) and affective significance: the assignment of subjective meaning to objects and events (affect). Third, the findings demonstrate that there are significant changes in NDErs' overt and affective states, reinforcing our argument that meaning and intensity of the NDE is a function of how the experiencer assigns causation, in addition to the affective significance that the experiencer places on the events constituting the NDE.     

Pharmacological dissociation of memory: anisomycin, a protein synthesis inhibitor, and leupeptin, a protease inhibitor, block different learning tasks

Inhibition of protein synthesis by anisomycin for a short duration impairs memory of a one-trial inhibitory avoidance task in rats. Memory of escape conditioning involving eight trials is disrupted only if the duration of protein synthesis is prolonged by repeated injections. In marked contrast, olfactory memory of rats trained on two odor discriminations is not affected by anisomycin even if the duration of inhibition is prolonged and the number of trials is reduced to a minimum. In previous work, leupeptin, a thiol proteinase inhibitor, was shown to impair olfactory discrimination learning, but left inhibitory and avoidance conditioning intact. Together, these results provide a pharmacological double dissociation of memory, and suggest that the same chemistries, or mixtures of chemistries, may not be involved in all types of memory.