By Barclay on Lauer's Comment.

Replies to a comment by Lauer--in the Comment section of the January American Psychologist, there was a letter from Lauer (1972, 27, 81-82) regarding my quotation of a study reported by Phi Delta Kappan in March 1969. I am certainly in sympathy with Lauer's point of view if indeed such a survey did not occur. I said this in my letter to her, and she quoted my general reaction to this matter. But, I am indeed alarmed at the injudicious caption used regarding this letter. The caption "False Impressions Created by Barclay" is wrong, misleading, and suggests deliberate intentionality. I did not create false impressions, nor should the work of three years of data analysis be dismissed because of a stimulus item quoted from a reliable journal source. I think it is lamentable to make such a statement regarding the letter sent in. I believe that a correction is due. If false impressions are present, they must be ascribed to the primary source, which is Phi Delta Kappan. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sue Doe Replies.

I was saddened to see that Nihm's law is regarded as "meaningless" by a professor of mathematics. I have given a copy of Tomlinson's letter to a mathematics professor on our faculty here who has confirmed my results analytically. He concluded that my work was brilliant and true. He also said that Nihm's law could have been proved without recourse to data (I don't know how he can say this!) if a function relates sensation and physical value. He could not understand why a mathematics professor would regard a priori truth as "vacuous" or "preposterous." I was gratified to read Ryeta's discovery that the polynomial law occasionally exceeds perfection! I have not previously seen this claim and I intend to carry out further research to see if.it can be replicated, once I obtain a calculator of this type. I have received many letters praising my work, encouraging me to publish details of the analyses, or suggesting I extend Nihm's law to other areas of psychology. I have also received numerous criticisms from persons who doubt that the same type of function characterizes the relationship between physical measures and subjective value for all situations, or who doubt the scientific value of finding this function in the absence of a testable theory. I don't know why these criticisms are leveled only at me and not also at the other psychophysical laws. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"How anti-gay bias compromised a treatment: A commentary on Meissner (2006)": Reply.

Responds to the comments made by Michael C. Singer (see record 2008-00996-012) on the current author's original article, "Time on my hands: The dilemma of the chronically late patient" (see record 2006-20697-003). The current author states "I am grateful to Dr. Singer for his interest and stringent criticism. However, in reading his commentary I had the odd feeling that I was being caustically attacked for views expressed in an article I did not write. However, perhaps the deficiency is mine in that my expression failed to achieve an adequate level of clarity and precision." The author regrets that he could not write an article to suit Dr. Singer's tastes, and that in the article he did write there were unavoidable gaps and deficiencies in the material because of the time constraints and distortions in the analysis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reading ability and single-letter orthographic redundancy.

Two experiments investigated the role of one form of intraword orthographic redundancy: the characteristic asymmetric spatial distributions of letters of the alphabet across serial positions within words. In Exp I, 81 college students demonstrated recognition knowledge of these distributions when given only the letter name, word length, and serial position information with no other context. Ss were correct more often for those letters which are least variable across serial positions. In Exp II, 28 5th graders who were skilled readers demonstrated a sensitivity to letter positional distributions similar to that of the adults; 20 poor readers did not. However, performance was equivalent for both good and poor readers on a subset of letters relatively unpredictable with respect to serial position. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the functional relationship between word identification and letter probability.

Investigated whether words made up of probable letters and probable letter combinations are more accurately recognized than words made up of improbable letters and improbable letter combinations. The experimental method corrected shortcomings in previous research which has shown accuracy of word recognition to be affected only by word probability and not by letter probability. The shortcomings were the confounding of different letter probability dimensions within one another. In the present investigation with 40 19-43 yr old adults, 100 words were assessed with respect to the probabilities of their letters and, independently, the conditional probabilities of their letters. Subsequent tests of recognition accuracy in a brief presentation showed accuracy to be greatest for words made up of letters having either high simple probabilities or high conditional probabilities. It is concluded that word recognition is an active, perhaps serial, process which makes liberal use of individual letter statistics to facilitate accurate recognition. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reply to Jon Mills (2006): An open letter to the members of Division 39.

This letter is an objection to the publication of a series of remarks by Jon Mills in the commentary entitled "A response to my critics" (23 [1]: 197-209, 2006; see record 2006-03254-016). The remarks are ad hominem attacks on the behavior of Jody Davies and myself at a panel at the Division 39 meeting in New York on April 17, 2005. The remarks precede his commentary on three written discussions of a version of the paper presented at the panel that was later published in Psychoanalytic Psychology. Mills claims that all I did from the floor was rant and rave about his criticisms of Stephen Mitchell, attacking him in an ad hominem way without having anything to say substantively about his critique. I object that the editor allowed these remarks to be published despite their vitriolic content and the fact that the reader has no way of checking the accuracy of Mills' representation of what I (and Dr. Davies) said and did. In addition, the letter includes an account of the arguments that I presented at that panel, rebutting Mills' claim that I presented nothing substantive at all. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Performance of process schizophrenics on tasks involving visual search.

Compared the response times of 32 process schizophrenics and 16 nonhospitalized matched controls on 3 visual search tasks. Exp I involved the location of a target letter within an array of different background letters. Other experiments required a same–different response. Exp II involved the identification of a single different letter set within the uniform context of a square display formed by up to 40 replicates of another letter. Exp III presented 2 3–6 letter clusters in a single horizontal line. The 2 clusters were identical or had 1 different letter. Word and nonword clusters were used. Paranoid and nonparanoid groups did not differ on any measure. Schizophrenic response times were about 1 sec longer, but measures of rate of increase in response time with number of letters displayed did not generally differ significantly between groups. Schizophrenics tended to make more errors. Experimental manipulations affected the response times and error rates of schizophrenics and controls alike, and to much the same degree. Results suggest that process schizophrenics are not abnormally slow when extracting information from visual displays, and they appear to perform operations and strategies similar to those of normals when doing so. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mild to moderate pulmonary valvular stenosis in infant sometimes improves to the condition unnecessary to do PTPV: Doppler echocardiographic observation

Upper- and lower-case letters of the alphabet were stabilized until loss of vision occurred. Loss of straight-line visibility was the most frequently reported perceptual event. Occasionally, features of letters separated spatially before their loss of visibility. In both instances, loss of visibility often resulted in the perception of a less complex letter. Confidence ratings for each loss of letter visibility indicated that participants were quite certain about perceived fragmentations. In a control experiment, participants were asked to guess how letters would fragment during stabilization. Again, loss of line visibility was the most frequently reported event. However, spatial separation of features was rarely predicted and complex letters were not predicted to fragment into simpler letter forms. Furthermore, the confidence in predicted fragmentation was quite low. These results are consistent with the view that losses of visibility during retinal stabilization constitute a distinct perceptual experience. Fragmentations appear to be determined by the availability of less complex letter forms and by the loss of subletter information, consisting of letter features and information specifying spatial configurations.     

Evidence of discrimination against international medical graduates applying to family practice residency programs

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The purpose of the study was to test the hypothesis that discrimination exists against international medical graduates (IMGs) applying to US family practice residency programs. METHODS: Two sets of letters were sent to 146 family practice residency programs randomly selected from the Directory of Graduate Medical Education Programs. The letters requested information and an application. All letters were identical except that the author of the first set was described as "a foreign medical graduate." The author of the second set was described as "a fourth-year medical student at the University of Nebraska Medical Center." Replies were monitored for 6 weeks after the second mailing. Response rates to each "candidate" were measured. In addition, responses were evaluated for the presence of a brochure describing the residency program, an application, cover letter, invitation for interview, eligibility criteria, and other material. RESULTS: A total of 113 programs (79%) responded. Of these, 102 responded to the fourth-year medical student and 57 responded to the IMG. Of the 46 programs replying to both candidates, only 20 provided identical mailings. Nine of the 46 programs required IMGs to meet standards that exceeded requirements set by the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates for residency training in the United States. CONCLUSIONS: A pattern of dissimilarity exists in the way family practice residency programs respond to requests for application materials, and the differences appear to depend on whether the candidate is a US medical graduate or an IMG. These results raise questions about the fairness of current methods of resident selection.     

Effects of structural and naming factors of letters upon the recognition of tachistoscopic letters (author''s transl)

To determine the nature of effects of a preceding letter stimulus upon the recognition of a following letter stimulus, 20 subjects were sequentially and tachistoscopically presented pairs of letters of pairs of random patterns, which consist of the same number of elements, and asked to judge whether they were "same" or "different" in form. Four variable interstimulus intervals (ISI) between the 1st stimuli and the 2nd stimuli were employed as parameters. Results obtained were as follows: (a) percentages of correct responses for the letters were not significantly different from those for the random patterns, and (b) percentages of correct responses for the "same" matching tasks were significantly higher than those for the "different" matching tasks, but, differences in number of correct responses between the two tasks diminished as ISI increased. These results reveal structural, rather than naming, effects of preceding letters in the information processing of matching single letters.     

Perception of misoriented words and letter strings.

In Exp I, 8 undergraduates were presented with English words transformed in any of 4 combinations of rotation and distortion of spatial relationships between letters, and recognition time was measured. Both misorientation and distortion of relationships slowed down recognition, and their effects were additive. A similar effect of transformation was also found for strings of unrelated letters (Exp II, 10 undergraduates). With the word stimuli, Ss were given different amounts of information about the transformation prior to presentation. Prior information reduced the differences between mean processing times for different transformations but did not change their ordinal relationships. Information about order of letters was more helpful than information about orientation. The time to recognize a transformed word was positively related to the number of letters in the word, and the effect of the number of letters interacted with the type of transformation. Results support the hypothesis that the process of normalizing a misoriented word or nonword operates on it as a single unit rather than on each letter separately. (French summary) (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceptual span in schizophrenia.

Administered a forced-choice letter recognition task to assess the span of apprehension of 30 schizophrenics (good premorbid paranoids, good premorbid nonparanoids, and poor premorbid nonparanoids) and 20 controls (hospitalized nonschizophrenics and penitentiary inmates). When the task required only that 1 target letter be detected, there were no significant differences between groups. When the target was presented in conjunction with varying numbers of irrelevant "noise" letters, however, the span of schizophrenics was significantly less than that of either control group. The span of schizophrenics reached an upper limit at a small display size (4 letters) and showed no further increase. The constructs of premorbid adjustment and paranoid status bore no relationship to the deficit. Measures of the trial-to-trial variability in number of elements processed and consistency of scanning path did not differentiate schizophrenics and controls. The number of irrelevant noise letters surrounding a target was found to have no influence on detection in either group. (23 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

''Nursing should become a research-based profession''--has it?

I decided to write this article to promote discussion among my colleagues after my experience of doing clinical research of my own. I did a small clinical trial on the use of Sea-Bands (wrist sweat bands) to put pressure on an acupuncture site to relieve postoperative nausea. This has been published in the Nursing Times. I am a theatre sister and have a reasonably academic background having obtained both an Open University BA and a teaching certificate plus a number of nursing courses. Therefore, I had good access to staff and patients and enough confidence to embark on the project. However, I had no experience in research work, and perhaps it is not surprising to find that there is no back-up within 'the system' to sustain this type of work. I went to everyone that I could think of for help and advice to formulate my data collection protocol. I gleaned small nuggets of advice from the local college of nursing, from the community research liaison doctor, and from the ethical committee chairman but it was a long hard slog which would have deterred me from starting had I realised at the outset how many hours of my own time it would take me.     

Tailored written invitations for second round breast cancer screening: a randomised controlled trial

OBJECTIVES: Firstly, to determine if attendance for second round mammography screening in those sent a tailored letter (that is, making reference to their screening history) is increased compared with those sent a standard letter; secondly, to investigate the acceptability of tailored letters. SETTING: North West Glasgow Breast Screening Centre. METHODS: A randomised controlled trial. RESULTS: Overall attendance was unrelated to whether the women were sent a tailored or standard letter; 60% of those sent the standard letter attended (922/1531) compared with 62% of those sent the tailored letter (956/1552) (chi 2 = 0.61, P = 0.4) (difference 2%; 95% confidence interval -2% to 5%). There were no significant differences in percentage attendance within each of the study subgroups: women who attended previously and received an all clear result, women who attended previously and received a false positive result, women who were invited previously and failed to attend, and women who were previously too young to be invited for screening. However, there was a statistically significant difference in percentage attendance between these four groups, independent of letter type (chi 2 = 510, P < 0.00001). Although women found the letters acceptable and understandable, they did not seem to pay close attention to the content. CONCLUSIONS: Tailoring invitation letters does not have a significant effect on uptake rates for breast screening and does not justify the additional workload required.     

Regarding Lynn's Observations "On Being 'Clinical' With Colleagues."

In this column I comment on the letter by David Lynn (American Psychologist, May, 1956). On first reading Lynn's observations, I was humorously reminded of many incidents in my own experience wherein I would agree with his feelings that harm resulted from analyzing colleagues. However, on further reflection I disagree with his statement that this practice "seems destructive wherever it is found." It seems that he postulates a group of antagonistic analyzers and naive recipients of his "clinical approach." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A theory of order relations in perceptual matching.

Relates order relations to research on retrieval processes and the representation of order information in memory. In 2 experimental tests, presentation of a study string of letters was followed by a test string to which the 6 undergraduate Ss responded "same" or "different." When adjacent letters were switched, RT was long and accuracy low, suggesting that a test letter is not simply compared to the letter in the same position in the study string; rather, the comparison is distributed across positions. The memory model assumes that the representation of a letter is distributed over position and that the comparison process assesses the amount of overlap between the test string and the memory representation. The diffusion retrieval model and overlap memory model are fitted to the data and goodness-of-fit is assessed. Shortcomings of alternative models are considered and applications of the model to related matching tasks, such as D. Taylor's (1976) converse of the perceptual matching task, and Angiolillo-Bent and L. Rips's (1981) multiple-element comparison task, are described. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Letters of reference: A naturalistic study of the effects of confidentiality.

12 undergraduate seniors posing as prospective applicants to graduate school requested their faculty advisors to complete 3 standard letter of recommendation forms, purportedly sent to the students by 3 universities. Two of the 3 letter of recommendation forms were marked the same (either confidential or nonconfidential), and the 3rd form was marked oppositely. Analyses revealed significant differences between the confidential and nonconfidential letters, with students rated lower in most areas in the confidential letters. (6 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Commentary about the product from a departed advocate.

Comments on the original article, Clinical psychology training in Canada: Its development, current status, and the prospects for accreditation by John B. Conway (see record 1985-10567-001). I was active in Canadian professional psychological affairs from 1949 until 1959 (PAPQ, CPA, OPA) when I left to pursue opportunities unavailable then (perhaps still) in Canada. In recent years I have been back to address OPA, PAM, PAA, and BCPA, but otherwise there has been a nearly 25-year hiatus in my contact with Canadian psychology. Some of the debates and discussion I heard in Canada on professional issues brought me back to yesteryear such that I often wondered if anything had fundamentally changed. In two respects it really had. The numbers of graduate programmes and the numbers of psychologists have increased rather dramatically. The training resources are largely far better organized today and the products more numerous. But is their standing as professionals improved? Not that much. Are they regularly in positions to impact on programmes and policy outside the university? Quite seldom, it seems. Have they been successful in gaining broad public acceptance, acquiring statutory recognition, or creating a market demand for their services? Apart from some individual exceptions, generally, no. I do not mean to belittle this "benchmark" paper. Conway has assembled a lot of useful sequential information on both training and professional dilemmas. But I find it hard to measure the quality and purpose of the training without at the same time giving equal scrutiny to the product. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An experimental study of the double bind hypothesis.

The primary aim of the study was to assess whether persons highly conversant with the double bind concept could reliably identify such communication in letters, and, if so, whether its presence or absence was related to the fact of the letter having been written by the parent of a schizophrenic or nonschizophrenic person. The interjudge correlations of the double bind judges were very low, indicating that their judgments regarding presence or absence of double bind communication were not reliable. Other judges achieved statistically significant interjudge reliability and were able to differentiate between letters written by parents of patients and a comparison group. It was concluded from these results that a more critical appraisal of the double bind concept is indicated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social Work Courses for Psychologists.

Andriola has stated (American Psychologist, December, 1951) that he was desirous of seeing an increase in the interchange of information between social workers and psychologists. He was critical of psychology in that he felt that psychologists had little or no knowledge of the field of social work. Singer replied (American Psychologist, December, 1952) that psychologists are hindered from gaining a knowledge of social work by virtue of the admission policies of certain schools of social work. Furthermore, he contended that the schools of social work had raised a barrier to cross communication with psychology. Singer poses some questions that he would like to have answered regarding psychologists and social work schools and it is the purpose of this communication to offer partial answers. It is my feeling that clinical and educational psychologists could profit immeasurably from courses offered in a social work curriculum. I found that such courses as Community Organization, Public Welfare, Case Work Techniques, Administration and Supervision and particularly Legal Aspects added much to my professional competence and academic stature. Psychology as it manifests itself in an applied sense could well take cognizance of the thorough and effective techniques developed by the social work profession in the area of supervision and on-the-job training. I am in complete agreement with Singer's contention that "An important outcome of a graduate training program which would require students in psychology and social work to take courses in each department would probably be a more effective team approach to the common problems to be solved by both groups, viz., to enable the client to live a happy and satisfactory life." My experience may not be representative of the general attitude of schools of social work. Nevertheless, my own enrollment has added to my feelings of respect and admiration for the social work profession. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)