Preventing Substance Abuse Among American-Indian Adolescents: A Bicultural Competence Skills Approach

Tobacco, alcohol, and drug use are problems for American-Indian people. We reviewed these problems and the explanations for them and described a bicultural competence skills approach for preventing substance abuse with American-Indian adolescents. Data from a study of that approach suggest its efficacy with American-Indian youth. At posttest and a 6-month follow-up, American-Indian subjects who received preventive intervention based on bicultural competence skills concepts improved more than did American-Indian subjects in a no-intervention control condition on measures of substance-use knowledge, attitudes, and interactive skills, and on self-reported rates of tobacco, alcohol, and drug use. Our findings have implications for future substance-abuse prevention research with American-Indian people.     

Are words represented by nodes?

Semantic priming in a lexical decision task was investigated with concurrent pretarget and posttarget primes. The posttarget prime also served as a pattern mask of the lexical decision target. Forward priming is defined as the presence of a semantically related pretarget prime and an unrelated posttarget prime. Backward priming is defined as the presence of a semantically related posttarget prime and an unrelated pretarget prime. Forward and backward priming were compared both when the nonword foils were "legal" and when they were "illegal" with respect to English orthography. Predictions were derived for two general approaches to word recognition: spreading-activation and expectancy-set theories. Both approaches assume that word representations occupy distinct, nonoverlapping locations in memory. Backward-prime facilitation was equivalent to forward-prime facilitation when nonword foils were illegal; however, backward-prime facilitation was not significant when nonword foils were legal. These results challenge both approaches. The proposed solution uses semantic-space (distributed) representations that are functionally unitized by a resonant matching (verification) process.     

Clauses and the semantic representation of words

When a sentence with more than one clause is processed, words of the first clause become less available for recall or recognition once the clause boundary has been passed. One common interpretation of this observation is that the representation of a given word shifts from a predominantly surface form (e.g., phonological or lexical) to a semantic form, after the clause boundary. Two experiments that test that interpretation are reported. In the first experiment, two-clause spoken sentences were followed by spoken word or picture probes. Pictures were intended to provide a fast semantic match to probed words, but a slow surface match. Although response times exhibited a robust main effect of the clause position of the probe, no interaction with probe type was found. Similar results were obtained in a second experiment that compared pictures with written word probes. The faster response to picture than to word probes in the second experiment indicates that subjects did not covertly name the picture, but made a semantic match (as intended). These observations suggest the following reinterpretation of earlier sentence memory experiments: Words in the most recent clause of a sentence are more available than words in an earlier clause because their semantic representations are more active, not because their surface representations are more active.     

Decision factors affecting line orientation judgments in the method of single stimuli

Just noticeable differences in orientation are smaller at principal standard orientations than at oblique standard orientations when they are measured with the method of single stimuli. We determined whether this oblique effect is due to an anisotropy in decision factors. A first series of experiments showed that the subjects compare the stimulus with an internal criterion, and that this decision rule is used at all standard orientations. A second series of experiments determined the influence on the oblique effect of nonsensorial variables related to criterion setting. The results strongly suggest that the effect is not due to a criterial noise anisotropy and that criterion-setting processes are similar at principal and oblique standard orientations. The latter conclusion was also supported by an analysis of the sequential stimulus and response dependencies in this task. Hence, it appears that the oblique effect in line orientation discrimination, when it is measured with the method of single stimuli, is due not to decision factors but to a sensorially based anisotropy.     

Retour(s) sur “Mir Rose” ou comment analyser et représenter le texte argumentatif (écrit)?

The main purpose of this paper is to account for the varying analysis and formalisations of a same advertisement text, Mir Rose, by Jean Michel Adam. First, we draw the methodological frame of this psycholinguistic approach of composing and understanding-memorizing texts. We refer to the notions of prototypical textual schema, semantic macrostructure and superstructure. Then we point out the differences between argumentative text and argumentative discourse. Last, we try to explain why it has been possible for Adam to analyse and formalise the same text first as a narrative one and a few years later as an argumentative one. We suggest that his narrative approach is not specific and textual narrative means here temporal-causative sequence or problem solving, i.e., deeper and more general psychological devices than those involved in processing narrative text per se. From Toulmin and van Dijk approaches of argumentation, we propose our own analysis and formalisation of Mir Rose, the psychological validity or plausibility of which should be tested in experimental tasks of reading-memorising.

     

Psychological effects of sustained shipboard operations on U.S. Navy personnel

This study investigated the psychological and physical health status of 265 crew members on two U.S. Navy ships (a guided missile cruiser and a frigate on convoy escort duty for tankers under U.S. flag) during the Persian Gulf conflict at four time periods during combat-ready operations on a single day. Findings suggest that adaptation occurs to extreme stressors associated with sustained operations. Suggestions are made relative to measures that may minimize psychological and physical conditions that adversely affect performance under conditions of heavy stress. Report No. 89-18, supported by the Naval Medical Research and Development Command, Bethesda MD, Department of the Navy, under research Work Unit No. 63206N.M0096. The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Navy, Department of Defense, nor the U.S. Government.     

Category discrimination by pigeons using five polymorphous features

Eight pigeons were trained to discriminate between sets of color photographs of natural scenes. The scenes differed along five two-valued dimensions (site, weather, camera distance, camera orientation, and camera height), and all combinations of the feature values were used. One value of each dimension was designated as positive, and slides containing three or more positive feature values were members of the positive stimulus set. Thus, each feature had an equal, low, correlation with reinforcement, and all features had zero correlations with each other. Seven of the 8 pigeons learned this discrimination, and their responding came under the control of all five features. Within the positive and negative stimulus sets, response rates were higher to stimuli that contained more positive feature values. Once discrimination had been achieved, reversal training was given using a subset of the slides. In this subset, only a single feature was correlated with reinforcement. All pigeons learned this reversal successfully and generalized it to additional photographs with the same feature content. After reversal, the original reinforcement contingencies were reinstated, and training was continued using all the slides except those that had been used in reversal. Reversal generalized to these slides to some extent. Analysis of the response rates to individual slides showed that, compared with prereversal training, only the feature that had been subjected to reversal contingencies showed a reversed correlation with response rate. The remaining features showed the same correlation with response rate as they had before reversal training. Thus, reversal on some members of a category following category discrimination training led to generalization to stimuli within the category that were not involved in the reversal, but not to features that were not reversed. It is therefore inappropriate to refer to the pigeons as learning a concept.     

Medical expertise asa function of task difficulty

This paper is concerned with factors that disrupt the pattern of forward reasoning characteristic of experts with accurate performance. Two experiments are described. In the first, the performances of cardiologists, psychiatrists, and surgeons in diagnostic explanation of a clinical problem in cardiology were examined. In the second, the performances of cardiologists and endocrinologists in diagnostic explanation of clinical problems within and outside their domains of expertise were examined. The performances of researchers and practicing physicians are also compared. The results of Experiment 1 replicated earlier results regarding the relationship between forward reasoning and accurate diagnosis. There were no differences in recall as a function of expertise. Experts did not show any bias toward using specific knowledge from their own areas of expertise. The results of Experiment 2 showed that the breakdown of forward reasoning was related to the structure of the task. In particular, nonsalient cues induced some backward reasoning even in subjects with accurate diagnoses. Some differences were also found between the types of explanation used by researchers and practitioners. The practitioners referred more to clinical components in their explanations, whereas the researchers focused more on the biomedical components.     

Late Adolescents' Experiences With and Attitudes Toward Videogames1

A total of 229 late adolescents (a large majority 15 to 19 years of age) completed a questionnaire that assesses a broad range of videogame-relevant experiences, preferences, and attitudes. Videogame playing was found to be a more popular, and a more highly regarded, activity among males than females. Gender differences were also found in participants' ratings of their motivations for playing videogames, their evaluations of particular characteristics of videogames, and their selection of their “most favorite” videogame. The differences between frequent and infrequent videogame players appeared to be limited to differences in the extent to which videogame playing is pursued and evaluated as a positive leisure activity, rather than reflecting broad differences in interest or personality. Some relations were found between participants' self-reported personality characteristics (i.e., self-esteem, empathy, conscientiousness, and introversion) and their attitudes toward videogames.