What's in a name?

Medical students pose as physicians during clinical training. This article presents three cases where students justify misrepresenting their status for different reasons: self-concern for career, necessity for clinical training, and belief that the truth could cause undue psychological stress in the patient. The author suggests that serious consequences of this practice should be constantly reviewed in a critical light.     

Developmental trends in distractibility: Is absolute or proportional decrement the appropriate measure of interference?

Since baseline performance varies with age, diminished interference effects found with increasing age do not provide evidence for a developmental trend in distractibility unless their relationship to baseline performance is known. In the present study, baseline difficulty was varied in two speeded classification experiments to investigate whether interference effects due to irrelevant information could best be characterized by absolute or proportional decrement models. In Experiment 1, first graders, third graders, and adults sorted cards on the basis of square size, both in the presence and absence of extraneous stimulus information. In Experiment 2, first graders and adults sorted cards on the basis of the density of a regular array of dots and two kinds of irrelevant information were used. Robust interference effects were found which declined with age. Manipulating discriminability of the relevant stimulus dimension resulted in large changes in sorting time, but interference effects did not vary with baseline difficulty. These results were interpreted as strongly supporting both an absolute decrement model and a developmental trend in distractibility.     

Production deficits in aphasia: A voice-onset time analysis

An experimental study was conducted to examine phonetic and phonemic deficits in the speech production of aphasics. Subjects included four Broca's aphasics, four Conduction aphasics, five Wernicke's aphasics, one nonaphasic dysarthric patient, and four normal controls. The subjects read a list of words containing word-initial stop consonants which were subsequently measured acoustically for voice-onset time. The results showed that Broca's aphasics exhibit a more severe production disorder than Conduction aphasics who in turn exhibit a more severe disorder than Wernicke's aphasics, in accord with clinical observations. In addition, although Broca's aphasics produced both phonetic and phonemic errors, the results showed that they have a pervasive phonetic disorder which affects their correct target productions as well as the total number of phonetic errors produced. This deficit however seems to be a speech deficit rather than a low-level motor control problem. In contrast, the Wernicke's aphasics show a deficit characterized by isolated phonemic mistargeting errors. Finally, the pattern of productions for the Conduction aphasics indicates that some patients show a predominantly phonetic disorder similar to the Broca's aphasics and others show predominantly a phonemic disorder similar to the Wernicke's aphasics.     

Incorporating inferences in narrative representations: A study of how and why

Four experiments examined the conceptual organization of narrative passages and the extent to which these representations were explanatory in a variety of experimental tasks. The conceptual representation of a passage consisted of a graph of labeled nodes and labeled, directed arcs which were adopted from the Conceptual Dependency Theory. These representations included both explicitly stated information and inferences which had been empirically extracted by a question-answering procedure. Symbolic procedures for answering how- and why-questions were also delineated. The conceptual representations and the symbolic procedures that operate on these representations together accounted for 91% of the answers generated from question-answering protocols in Experiment 1, and also the rated quality of specific answers to specific questions in Experiment 2. Experiments 3 and 4 supported the hypothesis that structural properties of the representations can predict recall of explicitly stated nodes and verification ratings of inference nodes. The results provide encouraging support for the proposed graphic representations and also for the use of question-answering protocols in uncovering prose inferences.     

A tether system for psychophysiological studies in the dog

A system for monitoring blood pressure or other physiological variables in the unanesthetized and chronically instrumented dog is described. An indwelling catheter attaches to a pressure transducer affixed to the underside of a leather shield, which snaps onto a custom-fitted leather vest worn by the dog. The transducer cable ascends vertically through a hollow, flexible, stainless steel tether, which is attached at the lower end to the leather shield and at the upper end to a fluid and electrical swivel. The swivel is attached to an overhead counterbalanced boom assembly, which moves in concert with the dog, maintaining a constant minimal tension on the tether. The boom assembly is attached to a wall plate via a universal joint approximately 7 ft above floor level. Dogs can be maintained comfortably in this system 24 h/day over periods of months, with freedom of posture and movement, including rotational behavior. The system is economical to construct and provides versatile stimulation and record-ing capability and reliable long-term performance.     

Time-series analysis of long-term cardiovascular response

The purpose of this study was to illustrate the use of time-series analysis with long-term cardiovascular responding. Analyses of two successive 1000-minute mean blood pressure and heart-rate series in five chronically instrumented dogs showed that the autocorrelation function of the original series appeared highly nonstationary and that differencing the data produced a simple autocorrelation pattern which could be successfully modeled with stepwise autoregression. Evidence for reliable individual differences as well as change over sessions is presented and discussed.     

You must leave before you can cleave: A family systems approach to premarital pastoral work

We advocate the use of a family systems approach to premarital pastoral work, involving exploration of the families of origin of the intended spouses. Family systems theory argues that a marriage is like a merger of two corporations, each having its own stockholders; thus, adequate preparation for marriage involves coming to terms with the realities of one's family of origin and that of one's intended spouse. Exploratory techniques include genograms, house tours, family photo albums, and discussions of the rules and rituals in the respective families. Leaving father and mother is the central prerequisite to marriage.Dr. Mitchell is Professor of Pastoral Care and Theology, Eden Theological Seminary, 475 E. Lockwood Ave., Webster Groves, Missouri 63119. Dr. Anderson is Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology, Wartburg Theological Seminary, 333 Wartburg Place, Dubuque, Iowa 52001.