Parental Smoking and the “Epidemic” Spread of Cigarette Smoking1

“Epidemic” models of transitions between stages of cigarette smoking describe the spread of smoking behavior through face-to-face encounters. An epidemic model was successfully fitted that allowed epidemic parameters to be conditioned on the smoking status of adolescents' parents. Model comparisons supported the conclusion that the transition from nonsmoker to trier involved social contacts, whereas the transition from trier to regular smoker was best modeled as a constant rate (i.e., did not depend on the population prevalence of smokers). The transition rate from nonsmoker to trier was more rapid in children of smoking parents than in children of nonsmoking parents. Adolescents with and without smoking parents did not differ in the rate of transition from trier to regular smoking.     

Clue-Efficiency and Insight: Unveiling the Mystery of Inductive Leaps

Results from two investigations examine the relationship between problem solving strategies (leaping and flexibility) and measures of insight and scholastic aptitude. In Study 1, university students were asked to use minimal information to solve perceptual and linguistic items on a clue-efficiency task. Results reveal a significant relationship between both leaping and insight scores and flexible-leaping and scores on the quantitative subtest of the SAT. A second study examined the developmental trajectory of flexibility, leaping, and clue-efficiency. Developmental declines, notably between fifth and sixth grades, are reported in the use of flexibility and leaping. These developmental declines do not result from shifts to more sophisticated (e.g., efficient) strategies, as no developmental differences in efficiency were observed.     

The Career Satisfaction of the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision Members

Members of the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision completed a questionnaire on career satisfaction. A majority reported being quite satisfied with their careers. Most experienced only occasional burnout, and over half perceived their career stress as no greater than moderate.     

Detection of faking on the MMPI-2: differentiation among faking-bad, denial, and claiming extreme virtue

The purpose of this study was (a) to evaluate the ability of the existing validity indices of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2) in detecting faking. bad and faking-good profiles, (b) to differentiate between two strategies for faking-good (denial and claiming extreme virtue), (c) to determine the effectiveness of the new MMPI-2 validity scale, the S scale, in detecting people's tendency to present themselves in a superlative manner, and (d) to explore the response strategy under conditions in which individuals we known to be distorting their responses to the MMPI-2 Participants were 167 undergraduate, college students who were administered the test under different conditions, and 50 hospitalized, psychiatric patients. Mean profile configurations and optimal cutoff scores obtained in this study were similar to those reported in previous studies. Accurate identification of faked profiles was achieved. The new S scale and its subscales, especially S2 (Serenity), S3 (Contentment With Life), and S5 (Denial of Moral Flaws), showed particular promise in detecting faking-good (denial and claiming extreme virtue) profiles, Participant's debriefing provided valuable information about the participants' understanding of the instructions and their deception strategies. The attempts to differentiate between two strategies for faking-good, denial and claiming extreme virtue, were not successful, However, these results should not be taken to indicate that the particular strategies assessed in this study cannot be differentiated. Methodological issues reviewed suggest that further research might yield more understanding of the nature of any deception efforts made by respondents. In addition, future, research is needed to discover if the findings from this study generalize to other clinical settings and populations.     

Data and issues to consider in reconciling self-report and the Rorschach

Archer and Krishnamurthy (1993a, 1993b) systematically reviewed the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)-Rorschach research and found that there is minimal if any association between the two tests. In response to this review, data are reported demonstrating a positive association between various Rorschach variables and objective criteria. Data gleaned from published and yet unpublished sources suggest that the Rorschach is related to various self-report, other-report, and behavioral criteria, with children and adults, for psychosis and other constructs. Data are also presented suggesting that part of the disagreement between the two tests may be due to different types of response bias and positive self-presentations on the two tests. Research findings pertinent to differential validity as a function of the number of Rorschach responses protocol are also explored. I conclude with research recommendations regarding test-specific understandings of response bias and Rorschach protocol complexity as a moderator variable.     

Estimating the polyserial correlation coefficient

We develop simple noniterative estimators of the polyserial correlation coefficient. A general relationship between the polyserial correlation and the point polyserial correlation is exploited to give extensions of Pearson's, Brogden's, and Lord's biserial estimators to the multicategory setting. The small sample and asmptotic properties of these estimators are studied in some detail. A comparison with maximum likelihood estimates shows that Lord's polyserial estimator is fairly efficient across three probability models.The authors would like to thank the referees for suggestions that improved the presentation of the paper.     

Semilattice-based dualities

The paper discusses regularisation of dualities. A given duality between (concrete) categories, e.g. a variety of algebras and a category of representation spaces, is lifted to a duality between the respective categories of semilattice representations in the category of algebras and the category of spaces. In particular, this gives duality for the regularisation of an irregular variety that has a duality. If the type of the variety includes constants, then the regularisation depends critically on the location or absence of constants within the defining identities. The role of schizophrenic objects is discussed, and a number of applications are given. Among these applications are different forms of regularisation of Priestley, Stone and Pontryagin dualities.     

General education,cultural diversity,and identity

The issue of this paper is cultural plurality as a problem for public, general education and for (personal) identity. In order to examine this question, one needs to be clear about the meaning of the concepts of general education, on the one hand, and cultural diversity on the other. In the first section, we will fix the meaning of these concepts. A conceptual distinction between cultural diversity and cultural pluralism will be introduced. In the second section, it will be argued that open pluralism can only be maintained if there is a basic common culture apart from the cultural diversity that pluralism affirms. Therefore, there is yet an indispensable role for general education in an open, pluralistic society. In the third section we will look at two metaphors that give an opposite significance to the relation between identity and diversity: the conversational metaphor and the food metaphor mishmash. The final section expands on the conversational metaphor by way of an exposition of Ricoeur's hermeneutics of the self. It supplies us with a promising concept of identity that is not in complete opposition to diversity.