I Lost It in the Lights: The Effects of Predictable and Variable Intermittent Vision on Unimanual Catching

In this study, 2 competing views of interceptive action were examined by assessing the influence of variability in the interval between visual samples in a unimanual ball-catching task. Subjects were required to catch tennis balls projected over a distance of 14 m, under conditions of intermittent vision in which the between-sample intervals were either predictable or unpredictable. Results indicated that, although performance was best with shorter between-sample intervals, the temporal predictability of samples did not reliably affect catching performance. This suggests that between-sample retinal expansion provides sufficient information for the timing of the interceptive act.     

Synergistic Psychotherapy: Post-Eclectic Forms of Therapy for Axis II

Today, it is economic forces that drive developments in psychotherapy. While most therapists are eclectics, eclecticism is not a theoretical orientation. However, practical eclecticism may be, the goals of science are nevertheless the development of ideas and models which integrate the discipline. Likewise, the personality construct is necessarily integrative, and thus specifically prescribes the form of therapies for the Axis II disorders, called potentiated pairings and catalytic sequences. These may be constructed from any of a number of functional and structural domains (e.g., behavioral acts, interpersonal conduct, self image) which parallel traditional perspectives on personality. Despite the promise of forms of therapy addressed to the whole person, and its failure to specify comparable and comprehensive diagnostic attributes across the domains in which the personality disorders are expressed.     

Gender-Related Knowledge Variations Within Geography

In a survey of students from junior high through the undergraduate college level, males consistently out-performed females on a test covering map skills and physical, human, and regional aspects of geography. The gender gap was consistent across all four subfields. It widened with increased education and was significant even after accounting for numerous personal information items that might have explained the difference. This consistent performance difference involving the broad spectrum of geographic knowledge argues against explaining the gender gap as symptomatic of differences in a single underlying factor such as map skills or spatial abilities. Knowledge-based and nonknowledge-based explanations for the gender difference are discussed.     

The Future of Psychology in Pain Management

Pain treatment facilities have proliferated in recent years and psychology has enjoyed considerable success in the clinical and research arenas of pain management. However, changes in the health care environment present significant challenges to the future of psychology in pain management. This article discusses concerns in three important areas of pain treatment that psychologists must address if they are to maintain a strong presence in this field: (1) evaluating and treating patients in the pain treatment setting, (2) evaluating and enhancing the efficacy of pain treatment, and (3) applying pain treatment services to other patient populations. With appropriate attention to these issues, psychology can continue to thrive in pain treatment settings.     

An experimental test of the influence of selection procedures on fairness perceptions,attitudes about the organization,and job pursuit intentions

College juniors and seniors (N=184) reviewed a 12-page college recruiting brochure containing information about a large, high-technology corporation. Six versions of the brochure created a 2×3 experimental design in which the compensation and selection practices of the company were manipulated. Compensation and benefit packages were described as being either above or comparable to the industry average. The selection procedure was described as either a biodata inventory, an abstract cognitive test, or an in-basket simulation. We hypothesized that selection procedures would have an indirect, rather than direct, effect on attitudes about the organization and job pursuit intentions. LISREL analyses found good fits for the measurement model (RNI=.97) and the structural model (RNI=.95). All hypothesized paths were significant (p<.05) except for the path between compensation and attitudes about the organization. It is suggested that different selection procedures with comparable levels of validity may have different effects on candidates' attitudes about employers.     

Influence of Racial/Ethnic Membership and “Therapist Culture” on Therapists' Worldview

The authors investigated 2 competing hypotheses related to therapists' worldview and therapists' race/ethnicity: (a) whether therapists of different racial/ethnic groups differed on worldview reflecting group membership, and (b) whether therapists were similar to each other on worldview reflecting membership in a “therapist culture.” Results indicated that therapists shared similar worldviews regardless of group membership, and differences found between therapists based on racial/ethnic membership were minimal.     

Placement Stability Following Short-Term Residential Care

Youth discharged from a short-term residential facility and reunified with their parents were contacted at least one year after discharge to determine whether or not they had a disruption in their placement since reunification. Follow-up intervals of 149 youth contacted (82% of the eligible sample) ranged from a minimum of 12 months to a maximum of 30 months post-discharge. Differences in the time to placement disruption were analyzed using survival analysis techniques. After controlling for adjustment differences during the treatment program, youth behavior problems, and family problems, a significant interaction of youth age and treatment intensity was found: Compared to the others, younger youth who received additional treatment components had placement disruptions later and less frequently.     

Determining the power of multiple regression analyses both with and without repeated measures

Power analysis guides researchers in planning how much data to collect. This article describes BWPower, a computer program for the Windows 95 environment that performs power analyses for research designs that may or may not include both between- and within-subjects factors. We discuss how BWPower easily accommodates both between- and within-subjects factors and provide examples of BWPower’s use in performing power analyses on designs with only between-subjects factors, designs with only repeated measures, and with mixed between- and within-subjects designs. We highlight the major features of BWPower’s user interface, such as the ability to iteratively increment or decrement the number of subjects and the automatic recalculation of power when the number of subjects or effect sizes is changed.     

Flashbulb memories

Flashbulb Memories are memories for the circumstances in which one first learned of a very surprising and consequential (or emotionally arousing) event. Hearing the news that President John Kennedy had been shot is the prototype case. Almost everyone can remember, with an almost perceptual clarity, where he was when he heard, what he was doing at the time, who told him, what was the immediate aftermath, how he felt about it, and also one or more totally idiosyncratic and often trivial concomitants. The present paper reports a questionnaire inquiry into the determinants of such memories by asking about other assassinations, highly newsworthy events, and personally significant events. It is shown that while the Kennedy assassination created an extraordinarily powerful and widely shared flashbulb memory, it is not the only event that has created such memories. The principal two determinants appear to be a high level of surprise, a high level of consequentiality, or perhaps emotional arousal (assessed by both rating scales and ethnic group membership). If these two variables do not attain sufficiently high levels, no flashbulb memory occurs. If they do attain high levels, they seem, most directly, to affect the frequency of rehearsal, covert and overt, which, in turn, affects the degree of elaboration in the narrative of the memory that can be elicited experimentally. Parallels are made explicit between the behavioral theory and a less elaborated, speculative neuro-physiological theory of which R. B. Livingston (1967) is the proponent Finally, an argument is made that a permanent memory for incidental concomitants of a surprising and consequential (in the sense of biologically significant) event would have high selection value and so could account for the evolution of an innate base for such a memory mechanism.