Thomas Wolfe: Study of a Wanderer

Thomas Wolfe was an American novelist who in his short and tragic life (1900-1939) was preoccupied with themes of lost youth, memory, transience and an insatiable wandering. Wolfe was preoccupied with what I have seen, felt and thought. He was a wanderer who in his brief life made seven voyages to Europe and compulsively explored that continent. He would never own a home or a piece of land. He rarely lived in an apartment for more than a year and more commonly for just a few months. The purpose of this paper is to explore the meaning of Wolfe's tormented wandering and his endless searching. It will be my thesis that Wolfe demonstrated an inability to mourn. His writings are an attempt to recapture his past and to restore a lost world. Emphasis will be placed on themes of loss and mourning, insatiable hunger and desire, preoccupation with transience and death, and a search for that which was lost.     

The Ponzo illusion affects grip-force but not grip-aperture scaling during prehension movements

Contextual cues such as linear perspective and relative size can exert a powerful effect on the perception of objects. This fact is demonstrated by the illusory effects that can be induced by such cues (e.g., the Ponzo railway track and Titchener circles illusions). Several recent studies have reported, however, that visual illusions based on such cues have little or no influence on the visuomotor mechanisms used to guide hand action. Furthermore, evidence of this sort has been cited in support of a distinction between visual perception and the visual control of action. In the current study, the authors investigated the effect of the Ponzo visual illusion on the control of hand action, specifically, the scaling of grip force and grip aperture during prehension movements. The results demonstrate that grip force scaling is significantly influenced by the Ponzo visual illusion, whereas the scaling of grip aperture is unaffected by the illusion.     

Using brief experimental assessment of reading interventions for identification and treatment of a vocal habit

An 11-year-old boy presented in an outpatient clinic with a vocal habit that occurred during reading and conversation. A brief reading assessment was conducted to determine an effective intervention to decrease the habit. A modified version of the word error-correction procedure resulted in positive changes and was implemented by his mother during home reading practices. Significant decreases in the rate of vocal habit were observed during home reading probes, generalization probes, and follow-up.     

Contrast effects or loss aversion? Comment on Usher and McClelland (2004)

M. Usher and J. L. McClelland (2004) recently proposed a new connectionist type of model to explain context effects on preferential choice including the similarity, attraction, and compromise effects. They compared their model with an earlier connectionist type model for these same effects proposed by R. Roe, J. R. Busemeyer, and J. T. Townsend (2001) and raised several new issues. The authors address these issues and point out the main theoretical differences between the 2 explanations for context effects.     

Role of the inertial eigenvectors in proprioception near the limits of arm adduction range of motion

Common everyday activities such as reaching for a cup, combing one's hair, or positioning a tool involve the accurate registration of the limb's orientation relative to the body and the environment. Past work has demonstrated that the ability of humans to perceive the spatial orientation of an occluded arm is tied to the arm's inertial eigenvectors, invariant mechanical parameters corresponding to a limb's axes of rotational symmetry. In a recent study participants pointed to visible targets while the arms' inertial eigenvectors were displaced by asymmetrically weighted splints. The lack of an effect of those splints on pointing error led them to conclude that inertial eigenvectors are not the primary invariants used for proprioception. However, their data suggested an effect of the eigenvectors, but only for conditions in which pointing did not require placing the arm near the limits of shoulder adduction range of motion. In the present study we found a significant effect of displacing the eigenvector for all tested arm angles, regardless of degree of shoulder adduction. Overall, the results supported the hypothesis that proprioception is based on sensitivity to the limb's inertial eigenvectors, with no reduction of the eigenvector effect when adducting the arm so as to reach far across the body midline.     

Explicit Instruction With or Without High-<Emphasis Type="Italic">p</Emphasis> Sequences: Which is More Effective to Teach Multiplication Facts?

Basic fact acquisition is an important component for developing higher-order math skills. However, getting students with a history of academic noncompliance to engage in activities related to skills acquisition can be difficult. Prior research demonstrates that engagement increases when nonpreferred activities are preceded by a series of brief activities with a high probability of completion. This technique, called high-p task/request sequences, was not fully explored within the context of skill acquisition. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of adding high-p sequences to explicit instruction on the math fact acquisition of three elementary-age students in a learning support classroom. Results showed no differences in fact acquisition between explicit instruction and explicit instruction with an added high-p component. However, the high-p sessions took nearly twice as long to complete when compared to explicit instruction alone. Implications for instructional efficiency and limitations of the high-p procedures for acquisition tasks are discussed.     

Perceivers' responses to in-group and out-group members who blame a negative outcome on discrimination

The authors extend recent research concerning the social costs of claiming discrimination by examining men's and women's responses to in-group and out-group targets who either blamed a failing grade on discrimination or answer quality. Although participants generally responded more negatively to targets who blamed discrimination, rather than answer quality, dislike was greatest and gender group identification was lowest when participants evaluated an in-group target. Moreover, an in-group target who claimed discrimination was perceived as avoiding personal responsibility for outcomes to a greater extent than was a similar out-group target. Perceptions that the target avoided outcome responsibility by claiming discrimination were shown to mediate the relationship between attribution type and dislike of the in-group target. The authors discuss their results in terms of intragroup processes and suggest that social costs may especially accrue for in-group members when claiming discrimination has implications for the in-group's social identity.     

Eating disorder prevention programs: a meta-analytic review

This meta-analysis of eating disorder prevention programs found that intervention effects ranged from an absence of any effects to reductions in current and future eating pathology. Certain effects persisted as long as 2 years and were superior to minimal-intervention control conditions. Larger effects occurred for selected (vs. universal), interactive (vs. didactic), and multisession (vs. single session) programs; for programs offered solely to females and to participants over age 15; for programs without psychoeducational content; and for trials that used validated measures. The results identify promising prevention programs and delineate sample, format, and design features that are associated with larger effects, but they suggest the need for improved methodological rigor and statistical modeling of trials and enhanced theoretical rationale for interventions.     

Significance of Childhood Conduct Problems to Later Development of Conduct Disorder Among Children With ADHD: A Prospective Follow-Up Study

This study investigates whether low to moderate levels of childhood oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) and conduct disorder (CD) behaviors contribute to the development of clinically diagnosed CD in adolescence, in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Participants were 207 White boys (ages 6-12) with ADHD free of conduct disorder diagnoses. Parent and teacher ratings were obtained. Participants were assessed at mean age 18 by clinicians blind to childhood status. A non-ADHD group (recruited in adolescence) was also studied. ODD behavior ratings did not predict CD in adolescence, whereas CD behavior ratings did. No single ODD or CD behavior predicted adolescent outcome. ADHD probands with very low ratings (Not at all, Just a little) by parents and teachers on all CD behaviors were still at significantly increased risk for CD in adolescence, compared to non-ADHD controls. The same relationships were found between childhood ODD and CD behaviors, and antisocial personality disorder in adulthood (mean age, 25). We conclude that childhood ADHD is a developmental precursor of later antisocial disorder, even in the absence of comorbid ODD or CD in childhood. However, low levels of CD-type problems are not innocuous, because they predict later CD among children with ADHD without comorbid CD.