The widening scope of shame.

Review of book: Melvin R. Lansky and Andrew T. Morrison (Eds.) The Widening Scope of Shame. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press, 1997, xviii = 437 pp. Reviewed by Karen J. Maroda. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The scope and effectiveness of sex therapy.

Reviews clinical findings in sex research, noting that, although sex therapy is a relatively new field, there are enough case reports and controlled studies to reach tentative conclusions about its effectiveness. Short- and long-term therapeutic outlooks are examined. Best results are achieved with men with premature ejaculation and women who have never had orgasms. While sex therapy is less successful with erection problems and situational orgasmic complaints, it is still at least as effective as any other method. With all these problems, sex therapy appears to be the psychological treatment of choice in terms of both absolute and cost effectiveness. Client and therapy factors associated with success and failure are outlined. Differences between sex therapy and more traditional treatment approaches and their implications for changing human behavior are discussed. (62 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The expanding scope of alcoholism treatment evaluation.

Researchers are beginning to examine the degree of implementation of alcoholism treatments, treatment processes, and the role of life context or extratreatment factors (such as stressful life events) in the recovery–relapse process. Examples of these trends from alcoholism treatment evaluations are presented within the context of an integrative, process-oriented evaluation framework. Implications for research and practice are discussed with respect to matching patients with treatments and the instrumental and conceptual value of the results of alcoholism treatment evaluations. (61 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relation between radar detection and the observer's concept of a target.

An experiment tested the hypothesis that target detectability on a PPI radar display depends on O's knowledge of the attributes defining a target. Equal numbers of O's were given either a brightness, a form, or a combined brightness-form set during training. A 4th group was given only demonstration training. The criterion test involved detection of 2 target sizes in 2 levels of visual noise for 3 target speeds. Analysis of variance revealed an interaction between set and noise level, confirming the hypothesis for the high noise level only. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The scope of forensic radiology

The use of x-ray in the solution of forensic problems commenced within days of R?ntgen's discovery; indeed, most of the applications of radiology to the forensic sciences were accomplished or anticipated within the next two years. The scope of forensic radiology ranges widely and includes determination of identity, evaluation of injury and death, applications in both criminal and civil litigation and in administrative proceedings, detection of abuse, investigation of gunshot wounds, medical education and research. Newer modalities and techniques afford opportunity for the expansion of forensic radiology if problems of accessibility and cost can be resolved along with improvement in interdisciplinary cooperation and understanding.     

Expanding the scope of clinical practice: The physical examination.

Five clinical health psychologists at a major medical center successfully completed a 36-hr, graduate-level nurse practitioner course in advanced health assessment. The psychologists were trained to conduct thorough physical examinations and evaluate medical histories. All psychologists successfully completed the course and reported high levels of comfort with their ability to (a) conduct physical examinations, (b) describe physical examination findings, (c) provisionally identify medical problems and generally abnormal conditions, and (d) make appropriate referrals to medical specialists, when necessary. The nurse practitioner instructors reported high levels of satisfaction with student mastery of course content. The psychologists and nurses both reported high levels of satisfaction with the student–faculty relationship. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The scope of offspring effects: From caregiver to culture.

A review of the effects of children on the behavior of their caregivers indicates that offspring effects can be found in all facets of adult behavior. In addition to parent-child interaction per se, the young affect parental behavior in those realms in which parents are traditionally thought to acculturate their offspring. Furthermore, the data indicate that the young may be a major force in cultural change. (31/2 p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The scope and standards of preparation in psychology for school counselors.

"This report asserts that psychology is central to the training of school counselors. The recommendations are designed to be guidelines for colleges of education, psychology departments, school systems, state departments of public instruction, the United States Office of Education and professional associations interested in the training and professional development of school counselors." The major sections are: Principles Relevant to Professional Preparation of the School Counselor and to His Effective Functioning, Content Areas in the Field of Psychology, Implications of the Report, and Pertinent Reports and Publications. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The temporal coordination of early infant communication.

The ability to coordinate expressive behaviors is crucial to the development of social and emotional communication. Coordination involves systematic sequencing of behaviors from two different modalities that have some temporal overlap. A bootstrapping procedure was used to determine whether preverbal 3- and 6-month-old infants sequence vocalizations, gazes at their mothers' faces, and facial expressions into pairs of coordinated patterns nonrandomly. Smiles and frowns were highly coordinated with vocalizations. Smiles were also coordinated with gazes at mothers' faces, which became stronger with age. Vocalizations were not coordinated with gazes at mothers' faces. These findings illustrate the manner in which infants temporally coordinate communicative actions and provide new evidence that facial expressions (particularly smiles) are central to early infant communications. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reflections on the scope of therapeutic jurisprudence.

This article in therapeutic jurisprudence (the study of the role of the law as a therapeutic agent) looks at the appropriate scope of the terms therapeutic and jurisprudence. The questions considered are What is meant by therapeutic? Therapeutic for whom? What is meant by law? What substantive areas of law should be involved? Should the unit of legal analysis be micro (e.g., a particular rule of law) or macro (e.g., a body of law)? (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Planning scope in spoken sentence production: The role of grammatical units.

Four experiments investigate the scope of grammatical planning during spoken sentence production in Japanese and English. Experiment 1 shows that sentence latencies vary with length of sentence-initial subject phrase. Exploiting the head-final property of Japanese, Experiments 2 and 3 extend this result by showing that in a 2-phrase subject phrase, sentence latency varies with the length of the sentence-initial phrase rather than that of the whole subject phrase or its head phrase. Experiment 4 confirms this finding in English. The authors' interpretation suggests that these effects derive from grammatical encoding processes. Planning scope varies according to the relation between the 2 phrases composing the subject phrase. A thematically defined functional phrase is suggested as defining this scope. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The temporal pattern to the experience of regret.

Through telephone surveys, written questionnaires, and face-to-face interviews, it was found that people's biggest regrets tend to involve things they have failed to do in their lives. These divergent findings were reconciled by demonstrating that people's regrets follow a systematic time course: actions cause more pain in the short-term, but inactions are regretted more in the long run. Support for this contention was obtained in 2 scenario experiments that assessed people's beliefs about the short- and long-term regrets of others and in an experiment that asked Ss about their own regrets of action and inaction from 2 time periods. A total of 275 Ss participated in the experiments. Several mechanisms that can account for this temporal pattern are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The application of temporal correlation techniques in psychology.

"Definitions and computation procedures for various temporal correlation techniques are presented. These techniques include serial correlations for discrete data and correlation functions for continuous data. Specifically described are autocorrelations for temporal relatedness within one series of data, and crosscorrelations for such relatedness between two series. These techniques are appropriate for discovery of both cyclical and noncyclical temporal phenomena. Various applications of temporal correlation techniques within psychology are described." 29 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The scope of professional practice in specialist practice

The Scope of Professional Practice (UKCC, 1994a) now offers nurses, midwives and health visitors new opportunities to develop their clinical role. Role expansion is at the centre of debate in the health service. In the spirit of Scope, trusts and regional health authorities have been experimenting with new roles that combine medical and nursing practice in order to promote a holistic approach to health care. Education, experience and the appropriate clinical competency are the foundations for role expansion and the development of professional practice. However, some of the new roles and innovative practices have also been targeted at reducing junior doctors' hours (Read and Graves, 1994). New roles must be evaluated before they are allowed to develop and there is an urgent need for national evaluation of the initiatives underpinning Scope. This article examines the changing role of practitioners in specialist practice. The ethical, professional and legal issues surrounding these changes will also be considered.     

Pseudotaxonicity in MAMBAC and MAXCOV analyses of rating-scale data: Turning continua into classes by manipulating observer's expectations.

Taxometric procedures such as mean above minus below a cut and maximum covariance can determine whether a trait is distributed as a discrete latent class. These methods have been used to infer taxonic structure in several personality and psychopathology constructs, often from analyses of rating scale data. This is problematic given (a) well established biases in ratings, (b) the human tendency to think categorically, and (c) implicit typological models of personality and psychopathology among expert raters. Using an experimental method in which the cognitive sets of raters were manipulated as dimensional versus categorical, it is demonstrated that pseudotaxonicity can be created readily with rating scale measures. This suggests that researchers avoid an exclusive reliance on rating scales when conducting taxometrics investigations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)