Women in a Man's World: Gender Differences in Leadership at the Military Academy

This study responds to a deficiency of research on military leadership gender differences in spite of widespread interest in women in the military in policymaking and academic circles of various fields. Although scholarship in the field of women's leadership in recent years has asserted that there are stylistic differences between male and female leaders, there were few major differences in this study of 12 specific areas of leadership rated by 3 types of raters. Of the 36 possible occurrences of a statistically significant gender difference, only 6 manifested themselves in the cadet leader ratings. As a whole, evidence supports minimal gender differences in leadership performance or style in the West Point Class of 1998.     

An MMPI-2 scale to detect malingered depression (Md scale)

A specialized Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) validity scale was constructed to detect individuals who are knowledgeable about either depression or MMPI-2 detection strategies and who subsequently attempt to malinger depressive symptoms on the MMPI-2. The Malingered Depression (Md) scale consists of 32 items that discriminated college students who feigned depression from those who were genuinely depressed. Further information about the incremental validity and the utility of the Md scale was obtained in a cross-validation study with additional college students who feigned depression and a sample of students with clinically significant depressive symptoms. The results indicate that the Md scale possesses promising value in detecting malingered symptoms of depression.     

CAN YOU THINK MY 'I'-THOUGHTS?

If tokens of 'I' have a sense as well as a reference the question immediately arises of what account to give of their sense. One influential kind of account, of which Gareth Evans provides the best developed instance, attempts to elucidate the sense of 'I' partly in terms of the distinctive functional role possessed by thoughts containing this sense ('I'-thoughts). Accounts of this kind seem to entail that my 'I'-thoughts cannot be entertained by anyone other than me, a consequence generally thought unacceptable. I defend it. I also justify a functional role account of the sense of 'I'. The result should be to make plausible an account of the sense of 'I' in terms of the functional role of 'I'-thoughts.     

Adolescent Place Attachment, Social Capital, and Perceived Safety: A Comparison of 13 Countries

In adolescence, children become increasingly independent and autonomous, and spend more time in neighborhood settings away from home. During mid-to-late adolescence, youth often become more critical about the place they live. Their attachment to home and even community may decrease as they explore and develop new attachments to other specific places. The aim of this study is to understand how 15-year-old students from 13 countries perceive their local neighborhood area (place attachment, social capital and safety), and how these different community cognitions are interrelated. We hypothesize that their place attachment predicts safety, and that the relationship is mediated in part by social capital. Result show that, despite cross-cultural differences in neighborhood perceptions, the proposed theoretical model fits robustly across all 13 countries.     

Coherent plaids are preattentively more than the sum of their parts

We investigated whether plaids activate preattentive mechanisms that are distinct from those activated by their component gratings. Observers searched for a target plaid, the sum of two perpendicular components in a circular window (radius = 0.65°). The target was present on half the trials. On all trials, half of the distractors had the same frequency and orientation as one component of the plaid, and the rest were the same as the other component. The target and the distractors were arrayed evenly on a circle (radius = 2.36°) around fixation. Target and distractor contrasts were randomly perturbed up to ±30%. The following results held for each of the 6 participants tested. (1) When F1 = 2 c/deg and F2 = 5.25 c/deg, response times (RTs) increased significantly when set size (number of distractors plus target, if present) was increased from four to eight. (2) When the spatial frequencies of both plaid components were the same (i.e., both 2 c/deg or both 5.25 c/deg), RTs increased very slightly, if at all, when set size was increased from four to eight. These results suggest the existence of a preattentive, plaid-sensitive mechanism with band-limited input that does not respond to individual grating components.     

Comparison of the Explicit Timing and Interspersal Interventions: Analysis of Problem Completion Rates,Student Preference,and Teacher Acceptability

Explicit timing and interspersal interventions were investigated using a within-subjects design with 45 third-grade students. A control assignment consisted of subtraction of a two digit number from a two digit number (i.e., target problem) and served as a baseline. An explicit timing assignment consisted of similar problems as those for the control assignment. The interspersal assignment consisted of similar problems as those for the control and explicit timing assignments with the addition of subtraction of a one digit number from a one digit number interspersed following every third target problem. Total problem completion rates, target problem completion rates, accuracy on target problems and students' rating regarding difficulty, time, effort, and preference between assignments for class work were collected. Student preference choices were analyzed for fit with the discrete task completion hypothesis. Three trials were administered. Results indicated that: (a) students completed more total problems during interspersal, (b) target problem completion rates were higher during explicit timing, (c) accuracy rates remained constant, (d) students rated the explicit timing assignment as requiring more time and being more difficult for all trials and as requiring more effort for trial 2 and 3, (e) students selected the interspersal assignment to do in class as compared to the explicit timing assignment for all trials, and (f) the data fit the discrete task completion hypothesis relatively well for all trials. Discussion focuses on comparing academic interventions based on problem completion rates, student preference, and acceptability data.     

Cerebral lateralization of visual stimulus recognition in stutterers and fluent speakers

Cerebral lateralization of stutterers and nonstutterers was assessed in terms of choice reaction times to stimuli presented to either the left or right visual hemifield on letter recognition and figure recognition tasks. Reaction times on both tasks were determined before and after a behavioral speech therapy program. Stutterers demonstrated a significant reduction in mean reaction times in the letter recognition task over the course of the therapy program. This change differed significantly from that obtained from stutterers in the figure recognition task. The stutterers' responses were in contrast to the responses of the nonstutterers, who showed no reduction in mean reaction times for the letter or figure recognition tasks. The results were discussed in terms of alterations in aspects of central nervous system processing as a result of participation in the behavioral speech therapy.