Are Volunteers More Committed Than Nonvolunteers?

Volunteers and nonvolunteers have generally been compared on demographic and personality data. Little research is available on attitudinal differences between these groups. As part of a large study on commitment to the police department, 215 officers were asked to participate in a two-stage study. The first stage asked subjects to complete a large questionnaire that included a moral commitment scale and a calculative commitment scale. In order to analyze future behavior, participants were asked to supply their ID number. Results showed that volunteers were more committed than nonvolunteers, particularly on an identification with the organization factor. Some implications of the findings, as well as supportive data, are discussed.     

Family therapy alone is not enough or the dirty story of Dorian

When serious malfunctioning of an individual occurs in a secondary system (school, hospital, rehabilitation center, dormitory setting), the tendency often is to focus on the family as both the cause of the malfunctioning and the arena of intervention. Many times, family therapy alone is not enough because a parallel destructive constellation has formed around the Identified Patient in the secondary system as well and the symptoms catalyze that system's own maladaptive patterns. Often the IP is caught in the web of rigid pathological patterns of interactions between the two systems. A unique model of conjoined intersystemic intervention for dealing with such resistance to change is presented.     

Fluid and crystallized intelligence and primacy/recency components of short-term memory

Primacy and recency recall measures, obtained from both free and probed-recall tasks, were included in a battery of tests which also contained markers for fluid intelligence, crystallized intelligence, and cognitive speed factors. Our results confirmed previous findings that for subjects within the normal range of abilities, recency recall from probed-recall tasks is more closely linked to intelligence than is primacy recall. A new finding was also obtained: that primacy recall is correlated more with measures of cognitive speed than is recency recall. These results are discussed in terms of the concept of working memory and its relation to intelligence.     

The association between maternal smoking and secondhand exposure and autonomic functioning at 2-4 weeks of age

This study examined the association between maternal smoking and exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) during pregnancy and infant heart rate. Participants were 62 mother-infant dyads where mother smoked during pregnancy, 47 dyads where mother did not smoke during pregnancy but was exposed to ETS and 47 dyads where mother did not smoke and was not exposed to ETS. Average heart rate (HR) and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) were assessed at 2-4 weeks of age during sleep. Infants in both exposure groups had higher HR and lower RSA than nonexposed infants. Furthermore, boys in both exposure groups had higher HR and lower RSA than girls. These results highlight the importance of considering prenatal ETS exposure and infant gender when assessing infant outcomes.     

Online Gatekeepers of History: Yahoo! Answers Community Discussing Holocaust Denial

Scholarly attention has been directed to the spread and scope of online Q&A services, including the level of activity, types and messages and the social roles the members of these sites occupy. A content analysis was conducted of the answers supplied in response to questions aimed at identifying the reasons for Holocaust denial in Yahoo! Answers. The replies denoted the existence of two main opposing online socio-cultural roles adopted by these participants: online gatekeepers of history and online gatekeepers of pseudo-history. The activity levels of those filling these roles and the community’s approval of their answers were also assessed. Future avenues of research regarding these two roles are suggested.     

EFFECTS OF CONTEXTUAL RICHNESS ON WORD RECOGNITION IN POINTED AND UNPOINTED HEBREW

Forty Israeli adults, fluent readers of Hebrew, and 40 Israeli children, age 11‐12, participated in two studies which investigated the contextual facilitation and word frequency effects upon word recognition accuracy and reading rate while reading two types of Hebrew texts (pointed and unpointed). In the first experiment pointed Hebrew text was read more accurately and rapidly than unpointed text by both groups, but only the children's performances were significantly different on the two text types.

In the second experiment both groups displayed significant effects for context richness, word frequency and type of Hebrew text based upon an analysis of errors made when reading experimental sentences. These results challenge Levy's (1943) contention that unpointed Hebrew text is superior to pointed text and add support to the universality of contextual facilitation effects upon word recognition.     

Sensual Enjoyment,Sexual Excitement,and Femininity: Appreciating the Female Sexual Response

We discuss the female sexual response with a recognition of the distinction between sensuality and sexuality and an account of the development of femininity; present an account of the sexual response of women as a varied but describable experience; and consider the successes and problems female and male therapists have in empathic perception of a woman's account of her sexual experiences.     

Children's interpretation of adult nonreaction: A trial-by-trial self-report assessment and evidence for contrast effects in an observational context

The study investigated children's interpretation of blank reaction (nonreaction) from one adult to another as a function of its pairing with positive or negative overt feedback. Each child watched through a one-way mirror as an evaluating adult provided feedback to a second adult who was performing on a two-choice discrimination task. After six initial blank reaction trials, children observed one of four types of feedback combinations over 60 experimental trials: (a) right feedback on some trials and blank reactions on others, (b) wrong feedback on some trials and blank reactions on others, (c) right, wrong, and nonreaction on different trials, or (d) nonreaction on all trials. There was little evidence that children consistently interpreted blank reaction as meaning right independent of feedback combination. In contrast, in the Right-Blank and Wrong-Blank feedback combinations, children interpreted blank as meaning the opposite of the overt feedback it was paired with on over two-thirds of the trials, with no sex differences or test anxiety effects.