Professional ethics of psychologists and physicians: morality, confidentiality, and sexuality in Israel

Clinical psychologists' and nonpsychiatric physicians' attitudes and behaviors in sexual and confidentiality boundary violations were examined. The 171 participants' responses were analyzed by profession, sex, and status (student, resident, professional) on semantic differential, boundary violation vignettes, and a version of Pope, Tabachnick, and Keith-Spiegel's (1987) ethical scale. Psychologists rated sexual boundary violation as more unethical than did physicians (p less than .001). Rationale (p less than .01) and timing (p less than .0001) influenced ratings. Psychologists reported fewer sexualized behaviors than physicians (p less than .05). Professional experience (p less than .01) and sex (p less than .05) were associated with confidence-violating behavior. Overall, 78% of the sample reported attitudes or behaviors associated with boundary violations. The behavior violations were correlated (r = .49). Actual violators rated vignette violators more leniently than did nonviolators (p less than .01).     

Introduction and overview: Global information ethics

This is an introduction to a set of papers on Computer Ethics from the conference ETHICOMP95. Taken as a whole, the collection of papers provides arguments and concepts to launch a new development in computer ethics: ‘Global Information Ethics’. A rationale for globalization is provided, as well as some early efforts which move in that direction. ETHICOMP95, an international conference on Computer Ethics, was held 28–30 March 1995 at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. Co-directors were Terrell Ward Bynum and Simon Rogerson.     

Recall of rapidly presented random chess positions is a function of skill

A widely cited result asserts that experts’ superiority over novices in recalling meaningful material from their domain of expertise vanishes when they are confronted with random material. A review of recent chess experiments in which random positions served as control material (presentation time between 3 and 10 sec) shows, however, that strong players generally maintain some superiority over weak players even with random positions, although the relative difference between skill levels is much smaller than with game positions. The implications of this finding for expertise in chess are discussed and the question of the recall of random material in other domains is raised.     

Early selective-attention effect on evoked potential reinterpreted

In a dichotic listening situation stimuli were presented one at a time and at random to either ear of the subject at constant inter-stimulus intervals of 800 msec. The subject's task was to detect and count occasional slightly different stimuli in one ear. In Experiment 1, these ‘signal’ stimuli were slightly louder, and in Experiment 2 they had a slightly higher pitch, than the much more frequent, ‘standard’, stimuli. In both experiments signals occured randomly at either ear. Separate evoked potentials from three different locations were recorded for each of the four kinds of stimuli (attended signals, unattended signals, attended standards, unattended standards). Contrary to Hillyard et al. (1973), no early (N₁ component) evoked-potential enhancement was observed to stimuli to the attended ear as compared with those to the unattended ear, but there was a later negative shift superimposed on potentials elicited by the former stimuli. This negative shift was considered identical to the N₁ enhancement of Hillyard and his colleagues which in the present study was forced, by the longer inter-stimulus interval used, to demonstrate temporal dissociation with the N₁ component. The ‘Hillyard effect’ was, consequently, explained as being caused by a superimposition of a CNV kind of negative shift on the evoked potential to the attended stimuli rather than by a growth of the ‘real’ N₁ component of the evoked potential.     

REM motivation induced by brief REM deprivation: the influence of cognition, gender, and personality.

Prominence of the brain's right-hemisphere information processing and intensity of dream experience are two theoretically related constructs that have been proposed as important psychological aspects of REM sleep. Either view is consistent with the prediction that the effect of REM deprivation will depend in part on the nature of cognitive activity that is initiated at the onset of each REM period and that "substitutes" for the interrupted REM process. In the present study, the effect of REM deprivation was more striking for female subjects given a digits task than for female subjects given a fantasy-reporting task during awakening used to induce REM deprivation for the first 6 hours of the night. High neuroticism appeared to exaggerate the effect. No corresponding pattern was observed for the male subjects. These preliminary finding may be exaggerated by cognitive activity that is functionally incongruent with those processes. The results also raise interesting questions about individual differences.     

The effect of punishment and reinforcement procedures on a stutterer's factor II avoidance response

The purpose of this clinical experiment was to investigate the manipulability of a Factor II avoidance response (arm movement). The substantive hypothesis under test was that its suppression would be enhanced by repeated punishment sessions. During the first of nine therapy sessions response-contingent negative stimulation was not delivered. In the next five, after a base-rate period, “wrong” was made consequent upon the target response. In each of these sessions the suppression of arm movement was apparent. However, the magnitude of the suppression decreased from session to session. Evidently, the continued use of punishment did not enhance suppression. Because of this finding procedural changes were introduced in the next three therapy sessions. Verbal praise was added as a consequence of increasingly stringent omission criteria and three consecutive units of praise led to time-out from the reportedly fatiguing task of continuous speech. A marked reduction and then complete extinction resulted. Moreover, learning was evidenced since the frequency of arm movement lessened in the base-rate period of each session.     

Effect of compatibility of S-R mapping on reactions toward the stimulus source

This research was concerned with separating the effects of three varieties of S-R compatibility: reactions toward the stimulus source, compatibility of S-R mapping, and display-control arrangement correspondence. In experiments 1 and 2, subjects pressed a green or red key located on the left and right in response to the onset of a green or red stimulus presented in a left or right window. Half of the subjects pressed the key which corresponded to the color of the stimulus (compatible S-R mapping) while the other half pressed the alternate colored key (incompatible S-R mapping). In the compatible mapping task, reactions were faster when location of stimulus and response corresponded than when they did not while, in the incompatible task, reactions were faster when location of stimulus and response did not correspond. This apparent reversal in the tendency to react toward the stimulus source was attributed to display- control arrangement correspondence rather than to logical recoding of the directional cue. Experiment 3 established that faster reactions toward the stimulus source occured only under compatible mapping instructions.