Implementation and Assessment of an Empirically Validated Intervention Program to Prevent Tobacco Use Among African-American Middle-School Youth

Evaluated Project Towards No Tobacco Use (TNT), a tobacco-use prevention program delivered in schools with primarily African-American students. Students were assigned randomly by classroom to either the intervention (n=58) or to a no-treatment control group (n=40). Students in the intervention group received a curriculum-based program over the course of 10 sessions. Pre-and post-assessments of tobacco knowledge, attitudes, communication, peer refusal, and smoking tendency were gathered. Students in the intervention group differed from their peers in the control group by evidencing greater knowledge and communication skills. We found this tobacco-use prevention program useful for African-American students.This investigation was supported in full by the American Cancer Society Grant Award ACS IRG 97-151.     

The development of children's problem solving in a gears task: A problem space perspective

I examined two contexts of development in children's problem solving: (1) the macro-context of different age cohorts (8–9 vs 11–12 years of age); and (2) the micro-context of an approximately one-hour experimental session. Twenty subjects (even divided across sexes and these two age groups) were individually presented a collection of variously sized gears, a board onto which these gears could be easily attached and rotated, and a knob. Each subject was asked to find all solutions, in which two marked gears were turning the same way, and to represent these solutions graphically. Subjects applied four different problem spaces to the task: the Euclidean, the Kinematic, the Dynamic, and the Topological. The Arithmetic Modifier could be applied to any of these problem spaces, resulting in a numerical characterization of the gear constructions and/or production strategies. The 11–12's tended to shift problem spaces adaptively; the 8–9's seldom did so. Analysis of the pathways of transition between the problem spaces revealed a complex picture of partial or complete incorporation, and substitution.     

Attention during visual secondary tasks in driving: Adaptation to the demands of the driving task

Visual attention in driving with visual secondary task is compared for two visual secondary tasks. N = 40 subjects completed a 1 h test drive in a motion-base driving simulator. During the drive, participants either solved an externally paced, highly demanding visual task or a self paced menu system task. The secondary tasks were offered in defined critical and non-critical driving situations. Eye movement behavior was analyzed and compared for both tasks. Before starting the secondary tasks, eye movement behavior shows a smaller standard deviation of gaze as well as longer fixation durations for both tasks. The comparison between the two tasks indicates that drivers use the possibilities the self paced task offers: during the secondary task, they monitor the driving scene with longer fixations and show a greater standard deviation of gaze position. Furthermore, independently of the type of secondary task, drivers adapt their eye movement behavior to the demands of the situation. In critical driving situations they direct a larger proportion of glance time to the driving task. Last, the relation between glance behavior and collisions is analyzed. Results indicate that collisions go together with an inadequate distribution of attention during distraction. The results are interpreted regarding the attentional processes involved in driving with visual secondary tasks. Based on the similarities and differences between the two secondary tasks, a cognitive approach is developed which assumes that the control of attention during distraction is based on a mental situational model of the driving situation.     

"Proper" Binormal ROC Curves: Theory and Maximum-Likelihood Estimation

The conventional binormal model, which assumes that a pair of latent normal decision-variable distributions underlies ROC data, has been used successfully for many years to fit smooth ROC curves. However, if the conventional binormal model is used for small data sets or ordinal-category data with poorly allocated category boundaries, a "hook" in the fitted ROC may be evident near the upper-right or lower-left corner of the unit square. To overcome this curve-fitting artifact, we developed a "proper" binormal model and a new algorithm for maximum-likelihood (ML) estimation of the corresponding ROC curves. Extensive simulation studies have shown the algorithm to be highly reliable. ML estimates of the proper and conventional binormal ROC curves are virtually identical when the conventional binormal ROC shows no "hook," but the proper binormal curves have monotonic slope for all data sets, including those for which the conventional model produces degenerate fits. Copyright 1999 Academic Press.     

Higher-order omissions and the stacked view of agency

Omissions are puzzling, and theyraise myriad questions for many areas of philosophy. In contrast, omissions ofomissions are not usually taken to be very puzzling since they are oftenthought to just be a fancy way of describing ordinary “positive” events, statesof affairs, or actions. This paper contends that – as far as agency isconcerned – at least some omissions of omissions are omissions, not actions. First,this paper highlights how our actions are accompanied by many first-orderomissions - i.e., omissions to act – and that there already are many strongreasons to think that at least some of these first-order omissions are agentiallydistinct from simultaneous actions and from other first-order omissions. Itthen argues that our actions and first-order omissions are also accompanied byhigher-order omissions – i.e., omissions to omit to act – and that higher-orderomissions are distinct from actions and first-order omissions for similarreasons. Higher-order omissions also illuminate a more holistic picture of agency,which involves recognizing that our exercises of agency at a moment in timeinclude all of our overlapping behaviors – our actions, first-order omissions,and higher-order omissions. This paper concludes by exploring the impacts ofhigher-order omissions.     

Integrative Complexity Coding Raises Integratively Complex Issues

Conway, Conway, Gornick, and Houck (2014) report a major effort to automate integrative complexity coding. Judging this effort requires researchers to be more explicit in articulating key methodological assumptions about the coding process and theoretical assumptions about the construct. Unresolved issues include: (1) when, and on what basis, we should attribute divergences between human coders and algorithms to overestimations or underestimations by one or the other approach; and (2) to what extent second‐generation algorithms can yield Pareto improvements that reduce errors of both underestimation and overestimation. Further progress in developing natural language processing measures of this cognitive style will require sharper definitions of target constructs: in particular, different types of differentiation (dialectical and elaborative) and integration (hierarchical and flexible) and clearer guidelines for factoring context into assessments.     

Harmonizing global ethics in the future: a proposal to add south and east to west

This article considers how global ethical matters might be approached differently in the English-speaking literature if values salient in sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia were taken seriously. Specifically, after pointing out how indigenous values in both of these major parts of the world tend to prescribe honouring harmonious relationships, the article brings out what such an approach to morality entails for political power, foreign relations and criminal justice. For each major issue, it suggests that harmony likely has implications that differ from approaches that currently dominate Western thought, namely those of utility, autonomy and capability. Lacking the space to systematically defend harmony as a fundamental value, it nonetheless urges theorists not to neglect it in future work.     

The Nature of Poverty as an Inhuman Condition

In this article, part of a symposium devoted to Hennie Lötter’s Poverty, Ethics and Justice, my aims are threefold. First, I present a careful reading of Lötter’s original and compelling central conception of the nature of poverty as the inability to ‘obtain adequate economic resources….to maintain physical health and engage in social activities distinctive of human beings in their respective societies’. After motivating this view, particularly in comparison to other salient accounts of poverty, I, second, raise some objections to it, regarding relativistic implications that it has. Third, I propose another, more universalist conception of the nature of poverty, which is inspired by some of Lötter’s other remarks and which is all the stronger. According to this view, people are more poor, the less they can obtain adequate economic resources to pursue a wide array of finally valuable activities and states characteristic of human beings. I conclude by briefly pointing out how this view merits critical comparison with related views, such as Martha Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach.