Dual-career Couples: The Selection Dilemma in International Relocation

No one factor could have as great an impact on multinational corporations (MNCs) than the dual-career phenomena. The selection of expatriate candidates is a complex process made more arduous by the career orientation of the expatriate's spouse. The need for a social support network is essential for the dual-career family to increase the probability of successfully completing an expatriate assignment.     

Der Einfluß somatischer und psychosozialer Faktoren auf Entstehung und Verlauf chronisch-entzündlicher Darmerkrankungen

Zusammenfassung Chronisch-entzündliche Darmerkrankungen (Morbus Crohn, Colitis ulcerosa) werden traditionellerweise zu den psychosomatischen Erkrankungen gez?hlt. In jüngster Zeit wurde diese Zuordnung aber mehrfach in Frage gestellt; zugleich wurden biomedizinische Faktoren beschrieben, die in der Entstehung und im Verlauf der Erkrankungen eine Rolle spielen k?nnten. Die vorliegende übersichtsarbeit hat das Ziel, den aktuellen Stand der biomedizinischen und psychosomatischen Forschung zur ?tiologie und Verlaufsgestaltung bei chronisch-entzündlichen Darmerkrankungen darzustellen und unter methodischen Gesichtspunkten kritisch zu bewerten. Forschungsergebnisse zu folgenden Themenbereichen werden referiert: Epidemiologie; soziodemographische Merkmale; Genetik; di?tetische Faktoren und Zigarettenrauchen; Medikamente; Permeabilit?tsst?rung der Darmepithelien; immunologische Faktoren; mikrobiologische Faktoren; psychiatrische St?rung; emotionale Symptomatik, Pers?nlichkeitsmerkmale; kritische Lebensereignisse und psychosozialer Stre?; Lebensqualit?t und Krankheitsbew?ltigung.      

Case vignette: cybertherapy

Dr. Neuro Transmitter, a psychotherapist in Paramus, New Jersey, provides services through an online, real-time consultation service known as CyberShrink, Inc., of Dallas, Texas. He is paid by the hour for his consultation services to subscribers who are billed by credit card through CyberShrink. One afternoon he logs on and is connected via private "chat channel" to a new subscriber to the service. She is Ann Hedonia of Simi Valley, California. Ten minutes into the session, Dr Transmitter recognizes that Ms. Hedonia is seriously depressed with suicidal ideation and is feeling on the edge of her ability to cope. He gently suggests that perhaps she ought to think about hospitalization near her home. Ms. Hedonia replies, "Even you don't care about me! That's it. I'm going to do it!" and disconnects. Discussion questions: Is offering psychotherapy services online ethical? What are Dr. Transmitter's obligations in general and at this particular moment to Ms. Hedonia? Suppose Ms. Hedonia has a complaint about Dr. Transmitter. From whom can she seek a remedy? Which state's laws apply regarding professional practice, confidentiality, or licensing qualifications? Must Dr. Transmitter be licensed in any state to offer this service?     

Ethical issues in a study of Internet use: uncertainty, responsibility, and the spirit of research relationships

In this article we explore ethical issues arising in a study of home Internet use by low-income families. We consider questions of our responsibility as educational researchers and discuss the ethical implications of some unanticipated consequences of our study. We illustrate ways in which the principles of research ethics for use of human subjects can be ambiguous and possibly inadequate for anticipating potential harm in educational research. In this exploratory research of personal communication technologies, participants experienced changes that were personal and relational. These unanticipated changes in their way of being complicated our research relationships, testing the boundaries of our committment to the principle of trustworthiness and forcing us to reevaluate our responsibilities.     

Event-related brain potentials elicited by rhyming and non-rhyming pictures differentiate subgroups of reading disabled adolescents

Event-related brain potentials were recorded while disabled adolescent subjects read and judged whether two sequentially presented pictures had names that rhymed. Subjects with relatively good phonetic skills displayed an N400 priming effect, i.e., a significant reduction in the amplitude of the negative peak, occurring approximately 400 msec post-stimulus, for pictures with names that rhymed with preceding pictures as compared with pictures that had names that did not rhyme with the prime. No such effect was evident for subjects with relatively poor phonetic skills. This lack of an N400 priming effect provides evidence for a reduction in neural capacity and/or activation during phonological processing in the subjects with poor phonological skills. Demonstrating the N400 priming effect to be stronger in one group of reading disabled subjects, compared to another, supports the position that specific subtypes of reading disability exist. In addition to the stronger N400 priming effect, the phonetically stronger group also exhibited an enhanced negativity, from 700 to 1,000 msec after target stimulus onset, compared to phonetically inferior subjects. This finding replicates earlier work and possibly reflects a higher level of confidence in the group with better phonetic skills.     

H-Comp: A program to calculate information complexity

Scott’s (1969)H is a statistic that represents the number of independent dimensions in a set of binary (1,0) data.H has been used by personality and social psychologists to measure the complexity of thought people have about themselves (self-complexity) and about other people. This article describesH-Comp, a program that calculatesH. Using data input from either the keyboard or from an ASCII data file,H-Comp calculatesH and writes the resulting score and raw data to output files.H-Comp provides an accurate and efficient way to calculateH.     

The Effects of Intra-amygdala Infusion of the AMPA Receptor Antagonist CNQX on Retention Performance Following Aversive Training

The aim of these experiments was to determine whether impaired retention performance in aversively motivated tasks, induced by blockade of amygdala AMPA receptors, is due to influences on mechanisms underlying memory retrieval or to other influences on performance. Rats received either footshock escape training (1 or 10 trials), or no foot shock, in a two-compartment straight alley and bilateral intra-amygdala infusions of the AMPA receptor antagonist CNQX (0.5 μg) were subsequently administered prior to inhibitory avoidance retention testing 8 days later. The CNQX impaired, but did not block, inhibitory avoidance retention performance as indicated by the initial latencies to enter the shock compartment. The animals were then retained in the alley until they remained in the starting compartment for 100 consecutive s and entries into the shock compartment were recorded as errors. In both the controls and CNQX-treated groups, increases in amount of original training resulted in fewer errors, indicating memory for the escape training. Furthermore, regardless of the amount of original training (i.e., 0, 1, or 10 trials), CNQX-treated groups made more errors. Other experiments examined intra-amygdala CNQX effects on reactivity to footshock, locomotor activity, and anxiety. CNQX decreased reactivity to footshock, blocked shock-induced decreases in locomotor activity, and had an anxiolytic effect in an elevated plus maze comparable to that induced by midazolam (0.5 μg). These findings suggest that intra-amygdala infusions of CNQX prior to retention testing affect inhibitory avoidance retention performance following aversive training by altering locomotor activity, reducing sensitivity to footshock, and reducing anxiety. The implications of these findings for hypotheses concerning amygdala function in aversively motivated learning and memory is discussed.     

The psychologist's role in assessing and facilitating patients' knowledge of advance directives in medical settings: A preliminary investigation

In a time of budgetary shortfalls in the medical industry, an aging population, and an increased emphasis on health care choices, psychologists are being called upon to administer advance medical directive programs to patients. This study reports preliminary findings from a program to assess and facilitate patients' knowledge of advance directives (ADs) by the Psychology Service at the Ann Arbor VA Medical Center. The participant pool included 243 male veteran patients admitted to medical and surgical wards at the hospital. The intervention included the use of a computer-generated prompt for consultation, which was sent to the psychology staff in response to a patient inquiry regarding ADs. It also involved an increased emphasis on the delivery of written material on ADs by the admissions clerks. The intervention appeared to result in a modest increase in patients' knowledge of advance directives. Suggestions are offered for areas that should be emphasized in future attempts to increase patients' knowledge and utilization of advance directives.     

Varieties of positive and negative priming

Numerous recent investigations have focused on a particular relation between the roles a stimulus plays in successive displays: when a stimulus ignored by a subject on one occasion is to be attended on a succeeding occasion, reaction time to that stimulus is slowed relative to a control condition. But this is but one possible case ofnegative priming. There are other ways in which negative priming might occur, and there are several varieties of positive priming as well. All these possibilities were explored in the present experiment.