The diagnostic accuracy of questions about past experiences of being mechanically restrained in a population of psychiatric patients

Information about stressful life experiences obtained from patients during diagnostic interviews is an important foundation for clinical decision making. In this study self-reports from 115 committed psychiatric patients of experiences of mechanical restraint were compared with medical records. The sensitivity of patient self-reports was 73% (11/15) and the specificity was 92% (92/100). No clear relationship between psychiatric symptoms and reliability of self-reports was identified. The results highlight the subjective qualities of narratives about past experiences.     

Change in religious beliefs, parental pressure, and attitudes of college students toward higher education as related to religious fundamentalism

Men (n = 55) and women (n = 99) college students (M age = 22.3 yr., SD = 6.1, range 18 to 58 years), from a moderate-sized midwestern university reported attitudes toward the goals and purposes of higher education, perceptions of parental pressure and support, and change in religious beliefs. The Religious Fundamentalist Scale, the Quest Scale, Faith-keeping, and Obedience to Parents Scales were also administered. Students classified as religious fundamentalists had more negative attitudes toward the goals and purposes of higher education goals and toward faculty. An interaction of Sex x Fundamentalist Classification indicated that nonfundamentalist college men reported greater change in their religious beliefs, relative to other groups. Perceptions of parental pressure or support were unrelated to scores on fundamentalism. The implications of students' religious backgrounds in relation to academic success were discussed.     

��What I wanted to do was���� Discrepancies Between College Women��s Desired and Reported Responses to Gender Prejudice

When experiencing gender prejudice, college women engage in a dynamic decision making process about whether and how to respond. We examined the discrepancy between how college women wanted to respond and how they actually responded to gender prejudice events and explored their reasons for not using a desired response. In this study, 81 college women from the Western United States responded to a qualitative online daily diary about gender prejudice. In 34% (N?=?265) of the events, the women reported there was a discrepancy between what they wanted to do and how they actually reacted, with the most common discrepancy being a desire to utilize a confrontational response (91%, N?=?242). Over the two week period, women reported significantly more events during which they considered the use of a confrontational response (N?=?242) than they actually used one (N?=?199). Women??s reported reasons for not using their desired response included: not being cost effective (25%), concern about social norms (37%), setting limitations (19%), personality characteristics (9%) and not being bothered enough by the event (10%). We also found that when women considered using a confrontational response but decided not to, they reported using all other response types instead. In these cases, women who did nothing during the event reported lower levels of distress during the event than women who used a psychological response or a different confrontational response. Implications and future research directions are discussed.     

Does working memory load lead to greater impulsivity? Commentary on Hinson, Jameson, and Whitney (2003)

Previous research by J. M. Hinson, T. L. Jameson, and P. Whitney (2003) demonstrated that a secondary task in a delayed discounting paradigm increased subjects' preference for the immediate reward. J. M. Hinson et al. interpreted their findings as evidence that working memory load results in greater impulsivity. The present authors conducted a reanalysis of the data from J. M. Hinson et al.'s Experiment 1 at the individual-subject level. Difference scores were calculated by subtracting the digit memory load condition from the control condition for k (discounting parameter) and a measure of "erroneous" responses. The results indicated that the secondary task increased random responding, which in turn can account for the increased mean estimates of k. Thus, the data do not support the claim that cognitive load affects impulsivity per se.     

In search of cross-talk facilitation in a dual-cued recall task

Despite earlier evidence that the presence of 2 redundant cues can facilitate activation of a common response, T. C. Rickard and D. Bajic (2004) found no dual-cue facilitation in the case of cued recall, provided that each cue-response association was learned independently. In this study the authors investigated the generality of their results using a dual-task cross-talk design. There was no evidence of dual-cue facilitation for compatible cue trials in the case of associative independence. Race models as well as at least some limited capacity parallel retrieval accounts can be eliminated by these and related results. It appears instead that a preretrieval stage performance bottleneck precludes cued recall through more than 1 independently represented cue-response association at a time.     

Verification of multiplication facts: an investigation using retrospective protocols

Retrospective verbal protocols collected throughout participants' performance of a multiplication verification task (e.g., "7 x 3 = 28, true or false?") documented a number of different strategies and changes in strategy use across different problem categories used for this common experimental task. Correct answer retrieval and comparison to the candidate answer was the modal but not the only strategy reported. Experiment 1 results supported the use of a calculation algorithm on some trials and the use of the difference between the candidate and correct answers (i.e., split) on others. Experiment 2 clearly demonstrated that participants sometimes bypassed retrieval by relying on the split information. Implications for mental arithmetic theories and the general efficacy of retrospective protocols are discussed.