American Indian Secondary School Students' Preferences for Counselors

Researchers examined the importance of similar ethnicity and the preference for a counselor of the same sex among American Indian secondary school students.     

Confidence in expectations: A test of the triangle hypothesis

Kelley and Stahelski's (1970) triangle hypothesis states that competitors hold homogeneous views of others by assuming that most others are competitive, whereas cooperators or pro-social people hold more heterogeneous views by assuming that others are either cooperative or competitive. To evaluate the triangle hypothesis, this study examines differences between pro-socials, individualists, and competitors not only in their expectations about others' choice behaviour, but also in the confidence with which such expectations are held. It was found that pro-social subjects expected more cooperation than individualists and competitors. More importantly, as predicted on the basis of the triangle hypothesis, pro-socials were less confident about their expectations than competitors, with individualists holding intermediate levels of confidence.     

‘Healthy eating’ clinics in primary care: Programme intensity and patients' health beliefs

The primary care setting is seen by many to be at the forefront of the attempt to encourage people to follow healthier diets. Conducted in a single practice, the present study firstly considered the effectiveness of three ‘healthy eating’ clinics for patients found to have elevated cholesterol levels at screening. Through the use of a randomised trial, these patients received either basic dietay information or were invited back more frequently and requested to complete food diaries, half of which were then analysed through a computer program. At one year follow up the three programmes were found to have produced a 6.7% reduction in cholesterol levels. However, no differences were found between the three programmes. The study secondly examined a range of health belieji, based on the health belief model, as predictors of reductions in cholesterol levels. These were generally found to be poor predictors, with only the belief that one's diet is related to the chances of developing a number of major conditions and the perception of bam'ers dealing with confidence predicting these reductions. Finally, the case for incorporating self-efficacy beliefs into the healh belief model is outlined and the need for health counsellors to tailor their messages to the pre-existing beliefi and behaviours of patients is highlighted.     

Parallel distributed processing and neuropsychology: A neural network model of Wisconsin card sorting and verbal fluency

Neural networks can be used as a tool in the explanation of neuropsychological data. Using the Hebbian Learning Rule and other such principles as competition and modifiable interlevel feedback, researchers have successfully modeled a widely used neuropsychological test, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. One of these models is reviewed here and extended to a qualitative analysis of how verbal fluency might be modeled, which demonstrates the importance of accounting for the attentional components of both tests. Difficulties remain in programming sequential cognitive processes within a parallel distributed processing (PDP) framework and integrating exceedingly complex neuropsychological tests such as Proverbs. PDP neural network methodology offers neuropsychologists co-validation procedures within narrowly defined areas of reliability and validity.     

A note on russell's paradox in locally cartesian closed categories

Working in the fragment of Martin-Löfs extensional type theory [12] which has products (but not sums) of dependent types, we consider two additional assumptions: firstly, that there are (strong) equality types; and secondly, that there is a type which is universal in the sense that terms of that type name all types, up to isomorphism. For such a type theory, we give a version of Russell's paradox showing that each type possesses a closed term and (hence) that all terms of each type are provably equal. We consider the kind of category theoretic structure which corresponds to this kind of type theory and obtain a categorical version of the paradox. A special case of this result is the degeneracy of a locally cartesian closed category with a morphism which is generic in the sense that every other morphism in the category can be obtained from it via pullback.The financial support of the Royal Society in London is gratefully acknowledged.     

Effects of attentional focusing on pain perception

Two experiments were conducted to examine the hypothesized differential effectiveness of two attentional focusing strategies in pain perception. In the first experiment, subjects (72 male college students) rated their levels of pain after being exposed to either low- or high-intensity pressure stimulation for 75 s. Subjects were instructed to use either an external or internal focus of attention during the pain induction. Results revealed that external focusing was more effective for coping than internal focusing across both levels of stimulus intensity. The second experiment was a replication of the first, and featured bolstered internal focusing and stimulus intensity manipulations. Results showed that high-intensity stimulation produced higher pain ratings than did low-intensity stimulation for subjects in the internal focusing conditions, but not for those in the external focusing conditions. The findings support the power of distraction strategies for dealing with short-term pain with a rapid onset. Theoretical implications are discussed.The authors thank Darwyn E. Linder and Daniel M. Landers for their help in development of this research. The authors are also indebted to Sarah Colley, Jona Davis, Nanci Neuberger, and Rebecca Roberts for their assistance in data collection.     

Sensible reasoning in two tasks: Rule discovery and hypothesis evaluation

The hypothesis testing skills of undergraduates were measured in two tasks: the 2-4-6 rule discovery task in which students generate and assess hypotheses, and a hypothesis evaluation task, which requires only the assessment of hypotheses. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 show that the students consistently employed a disconfirmation strategy when assessing hypotheses, but employed a counterfactual inference strategy when they also were required to generate the hypotheses. The results of Experiment 3 suggest that the selection of the hypothesis testing strategy reflected a balance between the logical requirements of the task and the desirability of possible outcomes. Taken together, the findings support a more consistent picture of human rationality across tasks, and suggest alternatives to accounts of confirmation bias.     

Altering memory through recall: The effects of cue-guided retrieval processing

Three experiments were designed to investigate the influence of initial recall on memory by assessing delayed recall after different immediate cued-recall tests. In all experiments, subjects performed semantic and phonemic encoding tasks on a word list. The subjects then received a cued-recall test that cued the target using the same word as the context word in the encoding task, a test that cued the target with a word from the same level at which the target was encoded, a test that cued the target with a cue from a different level at which the target was encoded, or no immediate-recall test. One day later, the subjects performed a final cued-recall test in which the type of cue (semantic or phonemic) was varied. Consistently, delayed recall was facilitated primarily when the cue on the immediate test was from the same level as the cue on the delayed test. This pattern of facilitation suggests that immediate cued-recall produces an elaboration of an existing memory representation that is closely tied to the type of cue used on the immediate test.     

Type A behaviour and psychological androgyny among Greek college students

Research conducted primarily in the United States suggests that the combination of Type A behaviour, high instrumentality, and low expressiveness may place individuals at relatively high risk for coronary-artery and heart disease. The present research investigates the trans-societal generalizability of the structure, reliability, relationships among, and distributional characteristics of these measures for 117 college students in Athens, Greece. As hypothesized, the Greek students were significantly less instrumental and less expressive than the American students, and scored significantly higher on the measure of Type A. Although there were significant mean differences between these samples, the results suggest that many of the interscale relationships are comparable, supporting an etic (universal) interpretation of the findings. Nevertheless, the results suggested several emic (unique) characteristics of these measures and their interrelationships.