A device for concurrent bilateral measurement of outer eyelid closures in the rabbit

This paper describes a transducer that allows for the concurrent recording of outer eyelid closure on both the left and the right eyes of a rabbit. The device makes use of voltage induced across a current-carrying conductor when the conductor is exposed to a magnetic field perpendicular to its axis (the Hall effect). The transducer is relatively compact, inexpensive, and allows the animal to be loosely restrained.     

A Comparative Study of Knowledge of Changing Demographic Trends and the Importance of HRM Practices in Three European Countries

Recent changes in the demographic structures of industrialized nations pose a potentially serious threat to work organizations in terms of their ability to attract and retain high calibre personnel. Specifically, the number of young people in their late teens and early-to-mid twenties is on the decline at the present time, coupled with a long-term recession, thus posing a dilemma for organizations concerned to develop and maintain a viable workforce. This article reports the findings of a three-country comparative study, conducted in The Netherlands, France and the United Kingdom, designed to investigate the extent to which graduate employers are aware of current demographic trends in the labour market and what HRM policies they are instituting, given this context. The findings reveal considerable levels of ignorance across all three countries, suggesting that attempts by various Government bodies, employers' organizations, professional associations and academics to draw attention to the potentially serious consquences of inadequate planning and future skill provision have largely failed. The results indicate that many organizations are engaging in human resource strategies which are not well suited to meeting the challenges of the 1990s.     

An investigation of the gate control theory of pain using the experimental pain stimulus of potassium iontophoresis

This study investigated a prediction derived from gate control theory—that there would be a pulse of pain as a pain stimulus was being ramped off due to the rapidly transmitting, inhibitory large fiber activity falling away sooner at the spinal level than the excitatory activity of the slow-transmitting, small nociceptive afferents. A further prediction was that the more distant the peripheral stimulus was from the spine, the greater the pain pulse would be. Fourteen subjects had the pain stimulus of iontophoretically applied potassium ions (K⁺) applied to an upper and a lower site on the dominant arm. In a threshold detection task using the double random staircase method, subjects were asked to indicate whether they could detect a pulse of additional pain during this ramp-off phase. The average rate of stimulus ramp-off in order to detect a pain pulse was statistically greater for the upper-arm site (14.3 μg K⁺/sec) than for the lower-arm site (9.4 μg K⁺/sec). These results were consistent with gate control theory. Alternative explanations, including intrinsic differences in nociceptive responding for different dermatomes and anode break, were considered. It was concluded that the detection of a pain pulse during the ramping off of a peripheral pain stimulus potentially provides a quantitative measure of the spinal modulation of pain.     

Complementarity in relationships of couples affected by HIV

Psychological interventions with patients with HIV infection may affect the stability of the patient's relationship with others. Two clinical cases are described to illustrate this. Both the impact of AIDS on patients and their relationships, and the impact of psychological interventions on the index patient and others, should always be considered when HIV-infected patients are referred to psychiatrists and other mental health care workers.     

Sentential synonymity judgment

Despite the acknowledged theoretical importance of sentential synonymity, there has been little interest in the psychological mechanisms responsible for recognizing it. Here an attempt is made to explore ways in which specific models originally devised for other particular psycholinguistic tasks (e.g., sentence-picture verification, three-term series problems, syllogistic reasoning) can be generalized to synonymity judgment and ways in which recent psychosemantic theories can be made more specific to deal with this same paradigm. Differential predictions from these models are derived for a set of spatiotemporal bidimensional comparative synonym pairs (e.g., High before Low, First above Second), and an experiment to test these predictions is reported. It is argued that, although the results are consonant with predictions from one type of model, they do not favor it definitively. This is because models of this type do not detail how bidimensional comparatives can be parsed into the same propositional representation and because other models can be subjected to further post hoc modifications to account for the data. Finally, general problems arising from attempts to adapt existing models to new tasks are discussed.     

Can the Discretionary Nature of Certain Criteria Lead to Differential Prediction Across Cultural Groups?

We examined the conjecture that relations between constructs across cultures may be susceptible to cultural moderation where the performance of the criterion construct is discretionary. This hypothesis was investigated using the relationship between personality and three performance constructs, with samples from the United States and New Zealand, two ideologically distinct cultures with respect to achievement orientation. All hypotheses were supported by results of hierarchical moderated regression analyses using bias free measures, suggesting that considering whether construct behaviors are discretionary is important when considering the merit of generalizing research findings across cultures.     

An analysis of modifications to the three-step guided compliance procedure necessary to achieve compliance among preschool children

After a 3‐step guided compliance procedure (vocal prompt, vocal plus model prompt, vocal prompt plus physical guidance) did not increase compliance, we evaluated 2 modifications with 4 preschool children who exhibited noncompliance. The first modification consisted of omission of the model prompt, and the second modification consisted of omitting the model prompt and decreasing the interprompt interval from 10 s to 5 s. Each of the modifications effectively increased compliance for 1 participant. For the remaining 2 participants, neither modification was effective; differential reinforcement in the form of contingent access to a preferred edible item was necessary to increase compliance. Problem behavior varied across participants, but was generally higher during guided compliance conditions and lower during differential reinforcement conditions.