Intrauterine monitor telephone system

A low-cost custom-designed data system using a standard switched telephone line is used to transmit intrauterine physiologic data obtained during human labor.     

Goal Effectiveness and Family Functioning

Differentiation of self in Bowen theory includes the effective pursuit of long-term, intrinsic goals while responsibly engaging with one's family and important others. This kind of goal direction is hypothesized to contribute to higher functioning families. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, this longitudinal study tested this hypothesis and found that participants with more goal effectiveness tended to have less symptomatic families of procreation, less increase in family symptomology over the fifteen years of the study, more strength of goal direction over time, and goal direction that was the same as or greater than their parents and siblings.     

Psychology and the politics of same-sex desire in the United States: an analysis of three cases

Psychological science has assumed an increasingly explicit role in public policies related to same-sex desire in the United States. In this article, we present a historical analysis of the relationship between policy discourse and scientific discourse on homosexuality produced within U.S. psychology over the 20th and early 21st centuries through the lens of three cases: Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), Lawrence v. Texas (2003), and Perry v. Schwarzenegger (2010). Our analysis suggests that, for the majority of its disciplinary history, psychology produced knowledge that supported a status quo of legal and cultural subordination for same-sex-attracted individuals. The discipline's shift in understanding of homosexuality, reflected in a 1975 policy statement of the American Psychological Association, reversed this relationship and opened up space for advocacy for social and political change regarding homosexuality. Our analysis of policy decisions rendered by the courts reveals the increasingly important role psychological science has assumed in challenging the legal subordination of same-sex-attracted individuals, though the basis upon which psychological science has sought to inform policy remains limited. We conclude with a critical discussion of the type of knowledge claims psychologists have traditionally used to advocate for gay and lesbian rights, suggesting the vitality of a narrative approach which can reveal the meaning individuals make of legal subordination and political exclusion.     

Developmental models for children's temperament: alternatives to chronometric polynomial curves

Partridge and Lerner (2007), in a secondary analysis of the New York Longitudinal Study, employed a chronometric polynomial growth curve model to argue that the developmental course of difficult temperament follows a non‐linear trajectory over the first 5 years of life. The free curve slope intercept (FCSI) growth curve model of Meredith and Tisak (1990) is presented as a preferable conceptual alternative because it contains a number of currently popular statistical models, including repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance, factor mean, linear growth, linear factor analysis, and hierarchical linear models as special cases. As such, researchers can compare the fit of each of these models relative to the FCSI model, and, at times, to each other. The present paper conducts a re‐analysis of the data, and establishes that fit of the FCSI model is arguably better than other statistical alternatives. The FCSI model is also used as the basis for identifying subgroups of individuals with their qualitatively distinct growth patterns within a growth mixture modeling framework. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Directed forgetting of faces: the role of response criterion

In two experiments, we examined recognition for faces following item method directed forgetting. During testing, participants reported whether the face was a new face or, if they thought it was a studied face, they identified the instruction paired with the face during study. In both experiments, the proportion of new faces falsely recognized and classified as forget faces exceeded those falsely recognized and classified as remember faces. Despite the use of different response criteria during testing, participants showed greater discrimination accuracy when identifying remember faces than when identifying forget faces. Taken together, these data patterns indicate that participants employed a strength-based criterion when responding. Specifically, participants responding to new faces were more likely to classify those faces as forget faces from study rather than as remember faces from study.     

The time course of orthographic and phonological code activation

The present study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine the time course of orthographic and phonological priming in the masked priming paradigm. Participants monitored visual target words for occasional animal names, and ERPs to nonanimal critical items were recorded. These critical items were preceded by different types of primes: Orthographic priming was examined using transposed-letter (TL) primes (e.g., barin-BRAIN) and their controls (e.g., bosin-BRAIN); phonological priming was examined using pseudohomophone primes (e.g., brane-BRAIN) and their controls (e.g., brant-BRAIN). Both manipulations modulated the N250 ERP component, which is hypothesized to reflect sublexical processing during visual word recognition. Orthographic (TL) priming and phonological (pseudohomophone) priming were found to have distinct topographical distributions and different timing, with orthographic effects arising earlier than phonological effects.     

The relationship between perceived length and egocentric location in Müller-Lyer figures with one versus two chevrons

We examined the apparent dissociation of perceived length and perceived position with respect to the Müller-Lyer (M-L) illusion. With the traditional (two-chevron) figure, participants made accurate open-loop pointing responses at the endpoints of the shaft, despite the presence of a strong length illusion. This apparently non-Euclidean outcome replicated that of Mack, Heuer, Villardi, and Chambers (1985) and Gillam and Chambers (1985) and contradicts any theory of the M-L illusion in which mislocalization of shaft endpoints plays a role. However, when one of the chevrons was removed, a constant pointing error occurred in the predicted direction, as well as a strong length illusion. Thus, with one-chevron stimuli, perceived length and location were no longer completely dissociated. We speculated that the presence of two opposing chevrons suppresses the mislocalizing effects of a single chevron, especially for figures with relatively short shafts.     

Attachment, caregiving, and altruism: boosting attachment security increases compassion and helping

Recent studies based on J. Bowlby's (1969/1982) attachment theory reveal that both dispositional and experimentally enhanced attachment security facilitate cognitive openness and empathy, strengthen self-transcendent values, and foster tolerance of out-group members. Moreover, dispositional attachment security is associated with volunteering to help others in everyday life and to unselfish motives for volunteering. The present article reports 5 experiments, replicated in 2 countries (Israel and the United States), testing the hypothesis that increases in security (accomplished through both implicit and explicit priming techniques) foster compassion and altruistic behavior. The hypothesized effects were consistently obtained, and various alternative explanations were explored and ruled out. Dispositional attachment-related anxiety and avoidance adversely influenced compassion, personal distress, and altruistic behavior in theoretically predictable ways. As expected, attachment security provides a foundation for care-oriented feelings and caregiving behaviors, whereas various forms of insecurity suppress or interfere with compassionate caregiving.     

An electrophysiological investigation of the effects of coreference on word repetition and synonymy

In two experiments the effects of word repetition, synonymy, and coreference on event-related brain potentials during text processing were studied. Participants read one (Experiment 1) or two sentence (Experiment 2) texts in which critical nouns were preceded by the definite (the) or indefinite (a) articles. Experiment 1 was run as a control to verify that differences in article processing in the second sentences of Experiment 2 would not contaminate the ERPs to critical noun items. They did not. In Experiment 2, an initial sentence was used to set up a context and contained either a first presentation or synonym of the critical word from the second sentence. N400 (but not Late Positive Component; LPC) priming effects were found for repetitions and synonyms (larger for repetitions) in second sentences. This extends observations of priming in word lists and single sentences to two-sentence texts. There was also a greater left anterior negativity or "LAN" for coreferential critical nouns (those following the article "The") compared to non-coreferential critical nouns (those following the article "A") suggesting that ERPs are sensitive to working memory processes engaged during referential assignment. In response to the articles themselves, there was a greater N400-700 elicited by the article "A" vs. "The." Finally, there was a greater N400-like negativity to the final words of non-coreferential sentences implying that the meanings of these sentences were difficult to integrate with the discourse level representation established by the prior sentence.