Gender stereotyping and decision processes: extending and reversing the gender bias in fame judgments

M. R. Banaji and A. G. Greenwald (1995) demonstrated a gender bias in fame judgments--that is, an increase in judged fame due to prior processing that was larger for male than for female names. They suggested that participants shift criteria between judging men and women, using the more liberal criterion for judging men. This "criterion-shift" account appeared problematic for a number of reasons. In this article, 3 experiments are reported that were designed to evaluate the criterion-shift account of the gender bias in the false-fame effect against a distribution-shift account. The results were consistent with the criterion-shift account, and they helped to define more precisely the situations in which people may be ready to shift their response criterion on an item-by-item basis. In addition, the results were incompatible with an interpretation of the criterion shift as an artifact of the experimental situation in the experiments reported by M. R. Banaji and A. G. Greenwald.     

The Therapeutic Factors Inventory: Development of a Scale

Although Yalom's (1995) framework of the therapeutic factors facilitating outcome in group has been accepted by group specialists, no empirically based instrument assesses all of these factors. The Therapeutic Factors Inventory (TFI), with 11 scales based on the therapeutic factors, has been designed to fill this gap. This article summarizes the development and preliminary reliability testing of the TFI. Each scale of the instrument demonstrated high internal consistency; however, one scale obtained unacceptably low test-retest reliability. Further validity testing is needed. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Diagnosing agoraphobia in the context of panic disorder: examining the effect of DSM-IV criteria on diagnostic decision-making

A diagnostic and statistical manual (DSM)-IV diagnosis of agoraphobia in the context of panic disorder (PD) is based on three nosologically sufficient criteria: (1) avoidance, (2) use of companions, and (3) endurance of situations despite distress. Therefore, an agoraphobia diagnosis can be made across an extremely broad range of cases including when there are no avoidance behaviors (e.g., the patient endures the situation). It was hypothesized that clinicians do not weight these criteria equally and that the DSMs individual, sufficient criteria lead to poor inter-rater reliability. Clinicians (N=48) rated hypothetical patients with symptom profiles emphasizing each of these three criteria. Consistent with expectation, clinicians differentially weighted these criteria. Avoidance was relatively more apt to produce a diagnosis when only one criterion was emphasized in clinical vignettes. Inter-rater reliability was poor in instances when only one sufficient criterion was highlighted. Knowledge concerning DSM criteria resulted in a greater rate of agoraphobia endorsement, but knowledge did not account for the overall pattern of findings.     

The cognitive foundations of reading and arithmetic skills in 7- to 10-year-olds

A range of possible predictors of arithmetic and reading were assessed in a large sample (N=162) of children between ages 7 years 5 months and 10 years 4 months. A confirmatory factor analysis of the predictors revealed a good fit to a model consisting of four latent variables (verbal ability, nonverbal ability, search speed, and phonological memory) and two manifest variables (digit comparison and phoneme deletion). A path analysis showed that digit comparison and verbal ability were unique predictors of variations in arithmetic skills, whereas phoneme deletion and verbal ability were unique predictors of variations in reading skills. These results confirm earlier findings that phoneme deletion ability appears to be a critical foundation for learning to read (decode). In addition, variations in the speed of accessing numerical quantity information appear to be a critical foundation for the development of arithmetic skills.     

The social context of imitation in infancy

Infants increasingly generalize deferred imitation across environmental contexts between 6 and 18 months of age. In three experiments with 126 6-, 9-, 12-, 15-, and 18-month-olds, we examined the role of the social context in deferred imitation. One experimenter demonstrated target actions on a hand puppet, and a second experimenter tested imitation 24h later. When the second experimenter was novel, infants did not exhibit deferred imitation at any age; when infants were preexposed to the second experimenter, all of them did. Imitating immediately after the demonstration also facilitated deferred imitation in a novel social context at all ages but 6 months. Infants' pervasive failure to exhibit deferred imitation in a novel social context may reflect evolutionary selection pressures that favored conservative behavior in social animals.     

Timing variability in circle drawing and tapping: probing the relationship between event and emergent timing

R. Ivry, R. M. Spencer, H. N. Zelaznik, and J. Diedrichsen (2002) have proposed a distinction between timed movements in which a temporal representation is part of the task goal (event timing) and those in which timing properties are emergent. The issue addressed in the present experiment was how timing in conditions conducive to emergent timing becomes established. According to what the authors term the transformation hypothesis, timing initially requires an event-based representation when the temporal goal is defined externally (e.g., by a metronome), but over the first few movement cycles, control processes become established that allow timing to become emergent. Different groups of participants (N = 84) executed either 1 timed interval, 4 timed intervals, or 2 timed intervals separated by a pause. They produced the intervals by either circle drawing, a task associated with emergent timing, or tapping, a task associated with event timing. Analyses of movement variability suggested that similar timing processes were used in the 2 tasks only during the 1st interval. Those results are consistent with the transformation hypothesis and lead to the inference that the transition from event-based control to emergent timing can occur rapidly during continuous movements.     

Reliability and validity of a twelve-minute walking test for coronary heart disease patients

This study examined the reliability and validity of a 12-min. walking test for coronary heart disease patients. CHD patients (28 men, 18 women) were recruited out of 86 CHD patients of the Martini Hospital Groningen, The Netherlands. 46 CHD patients (age M=66.0 yr., SD=6.8) participated in the reliability study and 24 (age M=62.0 yr., SD=9.2) in the validity study. A test-retest analysis showed a satisfactory Bland-Altman plot and an intraclass coefficient of .98. The Pearson correlation between the score on the test and the VO2 peak was .77. This test gives a reliable and valid assessment of cardiorespiratory fitness of CHD patients.     

Perception of visual speed while moving

During self-motion, the world normally appears stationary. In part, this may be due to reductions in visual motion signals during self-motion. In 8 experiments, the authors used magnitude estimation to characterize changes in visual speed perception as a result of biomechanical self-motion alone (treadmill walking), physical translation alone (passive transport), and both biomechanical self-motion and physical translation together (walking). Their results show that each factor alone produces subtractive reductions in visual speed but that subtraction is greatest with both factors together, approximating the sum of the 2 separately. The similarity of results for biomechanical and passive self-motion support H. B. Barlow's (1990) inhibition theory of sensory correlation as a mechanism for implementing H. Wallach's (1987) compensation for self-motion.