Client Gender and Sex Role: Predictors of Counselors' Impressions and Expectations

Researchers of this study questioned: Are clients (male or female) with self-reported “masculine” versus “feminine” role orientations viewed more favorably by counselors? Which is more predictive of the counselor's impressions: the client's gender or his or her sex role orientation? Results suggested that highly masculine and highly feminine clients (regardless of gender) are perceived as more socially skilled and likely to experience a positive therapeutic outcome. Gender did not uniquely predict counselors' impressions. Highly feminine women clients, however, were viewed as more socially skilled than were highly feminine men. On average, clients were viewed as friendly and submissive.     

Deficits in set-shifting ability in nonclinical compulsive checkers

Recent studies suggest deficits in set-shifting ability in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) as measured by tasks such as the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST; Berg, 1948). The present study examined the extent to which these deficits were demonstrated by nonclinical subjects selected on the basis of their checking scores on the Maudsley Obsessional-Compulsive Inventory. A multivariate analysis revealed that frequent checkers performed significantly worse on the WCST than noncheckers, making more total errors and more perseverative errors and requiring more time to complete the test. A follow-up analysis on a subset of the original sample found similar performance deficits in checkers. While the poorer performance of checkers could be statistically accounted for by anxiety during the first administration of the WCST, anxiety could not explain the relationship between checking status and WCST performance at follow-up. Therefore, there does appear to be some relationship between checking status and WCST performance beyond what can be explained by affective variables.     

Toward a Feminist Conception of Self-Respect

The concept of self-respect is often invoked in feminist theorizing. But both women's too-common experiences of struggling to have self-respect and the results of feminist critiques of related moral concepts suggest the need for feminist critique and reconceptualization of self-respect. I argue that a familiar conception of self-respect is masculinist, thus less accessible to women and less than conducive to liberation. Emancipatory theory and practice require a suitably feminist conception of self-respect; I propose one such conception.     

The effects of slowed speech on auditory comprehension in aphasia

The present study investigates the effects of slowed speech on auditory comprehension in aphasia. Specifically, an attempt was made to isolate the effects of added time on comprehension at the language processing stages of auditory perception, by increasing the duration of the vowel segments in each word; word recognition and semantic analysis, by adding silences between words; and syntactic analysis, by adding silences at constituent phrase boundaries. Sentences were also read at a slow rate to see the effects of naturally slowed speech on sentence comprehension. Test sentences consisted of simple active and passive declarative sentences, and complex sentences with embedded medial and final relative clauses. Sentences were either semantically reversible or nonreversible. Thirty-four aphasic patients who varied in both severity and type of aphasia were tested on a picture verification task. Results indicated that slowing facilitated language comprehension significantly only in the syntactic condition. Neither syntactic complexity nor semantic reversibility interacted with slowed speech to facilitate auditory language comprehension. Further, it was only the Wernicke's aphasics who showed significant improvement with time added at constituent boundaries. These results suggest that time alone does not facilitate language comprehension in aphasia, but that rather it is the interaction of time with syntactic processing which improves comprehension.     

Case-like categories in children: The actor and some related categories

Case categories were investigated using a method in which pictures are presented accompanied by a sentence describing the scene: Preschool children learn to put tokens on the objects in the pictures according to the role each object plays in the scene as described. Generalization trials explore what the children include within the various roles. Children rapidly learn to associate tokens with case-like categories during the training phase, and readily transfer to new stimuli in generalization trials. The experiments demonstrate that children have a broad Actor category. The Actor “does” the action, and Actors are not necessarily animate. However, animacy is a class property of stimuli to which the children were very sensitive. There was evidence that User and Instrument are subcategories of Actor that are differentiated only when a sentence contains both. The data also suggest a Locative category, and Patient as a category of the grammatical object. Finally, the children appeared to treat subjects of predicate adjectives as a separate category, here called the Subject of Attribution, distinct from Actor, and functionally independent of objects of transitive verbs.     

A game-based formal system for Ł∞

A formal system for , based on a game-theoretic analysis of the ukasiewicz prepositional connectives, is defined and proved to be complete. An Herbrand theorem for the predicate calculus (a variant of some work of Mostowski) and some corollaries relating to its axiomatizability are proved. The predicate calculus with equality is also considered.     

A portable micro-based system for the study of associated movements

This paper describes a microcomputer-based system for the on-line study of associated movements. The system is portable, provides hard copy, includes a backup system, is relatively inexpensive, can be used with simple or choice reaction time paradigms, and is simple to operate.     

Recommendations for standardized human pedigree nomenclature

The construction of an accurate family pedigree is a fundamental component of a clinical genetic evaluation and of human genetic research. Previous surveys of genetic counselors and human genetic publications have demonstrated significant inconsistencies in the usage of common pedigree symbols representing situations such as pregnancy, termination of pregnancy, miscarriage, and adoption, as well as less common scenarios such as pregnancies conceived through assisted reproductive technologies. The Pedigree Standardization Task Force (PSTF) was organized through the Professional Issues Committee of the National Society of Genetic Counselors, to establish recommendations for universal standards in human pedigree nomenclature. Nomenclature was chosen based on current usage, consistency among symbols, computer compatibility, and the adaptability of symbols to reflect the rapid technical advances in human genetics. Preliminary recommendations were presented for review at three national meetings of human genetic professionals and sent to >100 human genetic professionals for review. On the basis of this review process, the recommendations of the PSTF for standardized human pedigree nomenclature are presented here. By incorporating these recommendations into medical genetics professional training programs, board examinations, genetic publications, and pedigree software, the adoption of uniform pedigree nomenclature can begin. Usage of standardized pedigree nomenclature will reduce the chances for incorrect interpretation of patient and family medical and genetic information. It may also improve the quality of patient care provided by genetic professionals and facilitate communication between researchers involved with genetic family studies.Reprinted with permission from theAmerican Journal of Human Genetics 56:745–752, 1995, The University of Chicago Press. © 1995 by The American Society of Human Genetics. All rights reserved.