Further validation of social impairment as a predictor of substance use disorders: findings from a sample of siblings of boys with and without ADHD.

Examined predictors of substance use disorders in nonreferred siblings of boys with and without attention deficit hyperactivity disorder to further investigate whether previous findings documenting the role of social impairment in predicting substance use disorders would be replicated. Participants were comprehensively assessed at Time 1 and at 4-year follow-up. We found that social impairment was the sole significant predictor of alcohol and substance abuse and smoking after controlling for other variables previously shown to be predictors of substance use disorders. These results confirmed prior findings documenting the critical role of social impairment in predicting later substance use disorders.     

Racism as a stressor for African Americans. A biopsychosocial model.

Various authors have noted that interethnic group and intraethnic group racism are significant stressors for many African Americans. As such, intergroup and intragroup racism may play a role in the high rates of morbidity and mortality in this population. Yet, although scientific examinations of the effects of stress have proliferated, few researchers have explored the psychological, social, and physiological effects of perceived racism among African Americans. The purpose of this article was to outline a biopsychosocial model for perceived racism as a guide for future research. The first section of this article provides a brief overview of how racism has been conceptualized in the scientific literature. The second section reviews research exploring the existence of intergroup and intragroup racism. A contextual model for systematic studies of the biopsychosocial effects of perceived racism is then presented, along with recommendations for future research.     

The role of memory in the Tower of London task

The Tower of London (TOL) task is widely used as a neuropsychological test of planning. Relatively little is known of the cognitive components of the task, and in particular the role of memory in performance. The current studies on normal adults looked at the role of verbal and spatial working memory in the TOL. The effects of verbal and visuospatial dual-task manipulations on TOL performance were examined in an experiment with 36 participants. Both verbal and visuospatial executive secondary tasks caused poorer performance on the TOL; however, concurrent articulatory suppression enhanced performance. The results suggest that executive and spatial components are important in the task, and raise questions about the role of preplanning in the TOL.     

Age-of-acquisition and cumulative frequency have independent effects

Lewis (1999) argued that effects of age of acquisition (AoA) are entirely attributable to cumulative frequency. He reported an instance-based model in which the number of instances of the stimulus stored in memory predicts reaction time. We note four aspects of the literature on AoA that cannot be explained by this instance-based approach. Firstly, an effect of AoA has been observed in the absence of an effect of frequency. Secondly, an effect of AoA has been observed when cumulative frequency has been controlled. Thirdly, the effect of AoA is dependent on task. Fourthly, the effect of word frequency is dependent on stimulus modality. Lewis reported an experiment in which participants make a decision based on identity-specific semantic information to celebrity faces to demonstrate an effect of the number of instances in memory, which he interpreted as an effect of AoA. We note that effects of AoA have been found in lexical and perceptual tasks, but to date all attempts to demonstrate an advantage for early-acquired items in semantic classification tasks have failed. We conclude that the effects of AoA cannot be attributed solely to the effects of cumulative frequency.     

Orientation discrimination and cortical function in the human newborn

There is some controversy concerning whether or not the visual abilities of the newborn are mediated entirely through subcortical pathways or whether the visual cortex is functioning at birth. A critical test of cortical functioning is discrimination of orientation: orientation-selective neurons are found in the visual cortex but not in subcortical parts of the visual system. An experiment is described in which newborn infants were habituated to a square-wave grating oriented 45 degrees from vertical. After habituation, significant preferences for the novel, mirror-image, grating were found, a result which argues for some degree of visual cortical functioning at birth.     

PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL AND TERMINATIONS: A REVIEW OF COURT DECISIONS SINCE BRITO V. ZIA WITH IMPLICATIONS FOR PERSONNEL PRACTICES

Court cases since the classic Brito v. Zia (1973) decision dealing with terminations based on subjective performance appraisals are reviewed. Professional interpretations of Brito v. Zia are also examined and criticized in light of professional practice and subsequent court decisions. Major themes and issues are distilled from the review of cases, and implications and recommendations for personnel practices were discussed.     

Children do show negative priming: further evidence for early development of an intact selective control mechanism

Reactions to stimuli that were shortly before presented as distractors are usually slowed down; this phenomenon is known as negative priming. Negative priming is an accepted index for tapping into selective control mechanisms. Although this effect is well established for adults, it has been claimed that children do not show negative priming. Recently, however, V. E. Pritchard and E. Neumann challenged this view and concluded that selective control mechanisms are already fully developed in young children. The authors of the present study analyzed differences between older studies, in which no negative priming had been observed, and the Pritchard and Neumann (2004) study. In sum, the present study yielded further evidence for an intact selective control mechanism in young children. The authors also linked this empirical finding to the broader literature on negative priming by a direct comparison with an adult sample.     

Strategy use in the reading span test: an analysis of eye movements and reported encoding strategies

Strategy use in the traditional reading span test was examined by recording participants' eye movements during the task (Experiment 1) and by interviewing participants about their strategy use (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, no differences between individuals with a low, medium, and high span were observed in how they distributed processing time between task elements. In all three groups, fixation times on words up to the to-be-remembered (TBR) word became shorter and the time spent on the TBR longer as memory load in the task increased. The results of Experiment 2, however, show that span groups differ in the use of memory encoding strategies: individuals with a low span use mainly rehearsal, whereas individuals with a high span use almost exclusively semantic elaboration. The results indicate that the use of elaborative strategies may enhance span performance but that not all individuals are necessarily able to use such strategies efficiently.