A comprehensive and efficient process for counseling patients desiring sterilization

To optimize the time spent counseling a sterilization patient, this article presents a 10-step process that includes all steps necessary to ensure a comprehensive counseling session: (1) Discuss current contraception use and all available methods; (2) assess the client's interest in/readiness for sterilization; (3) emphasize that the procedure is meant to be permanent, but there is a possibility of failure; (4) explain the surgical procedure using visuals, and include a discussion of benefits and risks; (5) explain privately to the client the need to use condoms if engaging in risky sexual activity; (6) have the client read and sign an informed consent form; (7) schedule an appointment for the procedure and provide the patient with a copy of all necessary paperwork; (8) discuss cost and payment method; (9) provide written preoperative and postoperative instructions; and (10) schedule a postoperation visit, or a postoperation semen analysis.     

The associative interference hypothesis in verbal discrimination transfer: A note on the Eckert and Kanak review.

E. Eckert and N. Kanak (see record 1975-02303-001) suggested that in addition to the frequency theory, the hypothesis of associative interference is necessary to explain the negative transfer observed in the discussed verbal discrimination transfer paradigm. The present note suggests that the associative interference inferred in this paradigm is a correlate of the negative transfer but does not specify the mechanism needed to explain such transfer. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Competition in spoken word recognition: Spotting words in other words.

Although word boundaries are rarely clearly marked, listeners can rapidly recognize the individual words of spoken sentences. Some theories explain this in terms of competition between multiply activated lexical hypotheses; others invoke sensitivity to prosodic structure. A connectionist model, SHORTLIST, is described, in which recognition by activation and competition is successful with a realistically sized lexicon. Three experiments are then reported in which listeners detected real words embedded in nonsense strings, some of which were themselves the onsets of longer words. Effects both of competition between words and of prosodic structure were observed, suggesting that activation and competition alone are not sufficient to explain word recognition in continuous speech. However, the results can be accounted for by a version of SHORTLIST that is sensitive to prosodic structure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

And still the dryads linger.

Ancient ancestors invented dryads, or tree nymphs, to explain what they could not otherwise understand. It is argued that hypothetical constructs serve the same function for some contemporary behavioral scientists. Constructs such as intelligence, motivation, and creativity become modern dryads when used to explain behavior rather than simply to describe it. To be scientifically useful a hypothetical construct must be validated. This means that it must be shown to be functionally related to some behavioral variable(s) other than the one it was invoked to explain. It is concluded that few of the hypothetical constructs in the behavioral sciences have met this test and that those that cannot meet the test should be abandoned. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Depressive symptomatology and coronary heart disease in Type I diabetes mellitus: A study of possible mechanisms.

Recent evidence has suggested that depressive symptomatology is a risk factor for the development of coronary heart disease (CHD) in patients with diabetes mellitus, although little is understood about mechanisms that may explain this association. The Pittsburgh Epidemiology of Diabetes Complications (EDC) Study is a natural history study of 658 men and women with childhood-onset Type I diabetes. Participants from the EDC Study who reported the fewest depressive symptoms on the Beck Depression Inventory at baseline examination were least likely to develop CHD over 10 years. Differences in insulin resistance, autonomic dysregulation, inflammation, smoking, and complications associated with Type I diabetes appear to help explain this relationship. Future research should clarify causal pathways between depressive symptomatology, behavioral and physiological processes, and CHD. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Transitions in learning: Evidence for simultaneously activated strategies.

Children in transition with respect to a concept, when asked to explain that concept, often convey one strategy in speech and a different one in gesture. Are both strategies activated when that child solves problems instantiating the concept? While solving a math task, discordant children (who produced different strategies in gesture and speech on a pretest) and concordant children (who produced a single strategy) were given a word recall task. All of the children solved the math task incorrectly. However, if discordant children are activating 2 strategies to arrive at these incorrect solutions, they should expend more effort on this task than concordant children, and consequently have less capacity left over for word-recall and perform less well on it. This prediction was confirmed, suggesting that the transitional state is characterized by dual representations, both of which are activated when attempting to explain or solve a problem. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Back to the future in the education and training of psychologists.

In this article, I discuss issues concerning the training and education of psychologists at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. I propose a new introductory course on the applications of psychology to oneself and to society. This course would cover many applications of psychology and would also explain what the major psychological specialties do and the specific training needed to pursue a career in a chosen specialty. A common core of graduate courses is recommended for all graduate students regardless of specialty. A broad-based interdisciplinary course is recommended to ensure that all psychologists know the basic scientific principles that are ultimately essential to the understanding of psychology itself. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What Is a TOT? Cognate and Translation Effects on Tip-of-the-Tongue States in Spanish-English and Tagalog-English Bilinguals.

The authors induced tip-of-the-tongue states (TOTs) for English words in monolinguals and bilinguals using picture stimuli with cognate (e.g., vampire, which is vampiro in Spanish) and noncognate (e.g., funnel, which is embudo in Spanish) names. Bilinguals had more TOTs than did monolinguals unless the target pictures had translatable cognate names, and bilinguals had fewer TOTs for noncognates they were later able to translate. TOT rates for the same targets in monolinguals indicated that these effects could not be attributed to target difficulty. Two popular TOT accounts must be modified to explain cognate and translatability facilitation effects, and cross-language interference cannot explain bilinguals' increased TOTs rates. Instead the authors propose that, relative to monolinguals, bilinguals are less able to activate representations specific to each language. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A model for stimulus generalization in Pavlovian conditioning.

Presents a review of experiments that demonstrate the effects of generalization decrement in Pavlovian conditioning and argues that an adequate theoretical explanation for them is currently not available. A theoretical account for the processes of generalization and generalization decrement in Pavlovian conditioning is developed. This model assumes that animals represent their environment by a stimulus array in a buffer and that this array in its entirety constitutes the conditioned stimulus/stimuli (CS). Generalization occurs when some stimuli represented in the array on a test trial are the same as some of those represented in the array during training; the magnitude of generalization is determined by the proportion of the array occupied by these common stimuli during training compared with the proportion of the array they occupy during testing. It is proposed that this model can explain all the results that were difficult for its predecessors to account for. (52 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interviewing older adults: Validity of self-reports of satisfaction.

Respondents in a personal interview study were asked to evaluate several domains of their lives using several different response scales that included both verbal and pictorial response alternatives. Structural equation models were specified to permit estimation of the validity of these survey measures. Across all of the items, the concept factors explain an average of about one half of the total variance, method factors explain about one tenth of the variance, and the remaining one third or so of the variance is unique to each item. Comparisons of the validity of the reports by respondents of different ages indicate that method factors explain almost twice as much of the variance in the responses of older respondents as in those of younger respondents. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Which behaviors do people explain? A basic actor–observer asymmetry.

Attribution research has focused on how people explain behavior; the present paper examines which behaviors they explain. The authors introduce a framework that specifies when people wonder about and explain an event. Applied to behavior, the framework predicts which behavioral events (intentional vs unintentional and observable vs unobservable) actors and observers tend to explain: (a) Actors wonder more often about unintentional and unobservable behaviors, whereas observers wonder more often about intentional and observable behaviors. (b) In private explanations (directed to oneself), actors explain more unintentional and unobservable behaviors, whereas observers explain more intentional and observable behaviors. (c) In communicative explanations (directed to others), both actors and observers explain more intentional and observable behaviors. These hypotheses are supported in 5 studies using thought protocols, memory protocols, diaries, conversations, and novels. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Econometric analysis of variation in cesarean section rates. A cross-sectional study of 59 obstetrical departments in Sweden

The objective of this study was to explain the variation in cesarean section rates among hospitals (obstetrical departments) in Sweden, and to discuss its potential economic consequences. Using data from The Swedish Medical Birth Registry 1991, we made a cross-sectional study of the cesarean section rate at the departmental level. We identified some 20 determinants, demand-related as well as supply-related. A general model including all these regressors was specified. After reducing this model, we were able to explain about one-quarter of the variation. We conclude that the large variation in cesarean section rates indicates inefficiency, due mainly to overutilization, but perhaps also underutilization. It is difficult to calculate the economic consequences or the welfare loss to society. We estimated an additional cost for unnecessary cesarean sections of 13-16 million Swedish crowns (SEK) per year.     

Klinefelter's syndrome as a model for skin changes in venous insufficiency

Chronic venous insufficiency is a common disease with skin changes, varicosity and leg ulceration. Several theories have been proposed to explain all the changes that occur. We recently saw several patients with Klinefelter's syndrome complicated by leg ulceration and all the typical skin changes of venous insufficiency. The underlying disease was however lacking. They all showed disturbances in their fibrinolytic parameters. In this article we discuss (local) fibrinolytic disturbances as a possible factor in the pathogenesis of the skin changes in chronic venous insufficiency.     

A note on the alleged nonexistence of individual differences in reminiscence.

Reviews the evidence regarding E. N. Peters's (see record 1973-05884-001) suggestion that there are no individual differences in reminiscence. His attempt to explain the observed differences as due to statistical artifacts is shown to be incorrect. It is concluded that such differences are real, that they correlate with extraversion, and that the data support a consolidation theory rather than an inhibition theory of reminiscence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age differences in the psychological consequences of Hurricane Hugo.

At 12, 18, and 34 mo after Hurricane Hugo, 831 adults were interviewed regarding their disaster-related stressors and present psychological state. The study's purposes were to assess whether age influenced one's vulnerability to postdisaster stress and to evaluate 4 different perspectives on disaster recovery that have been previously used to explain age differences. Regression analyses demonstrated that disaster exposure had substantial and pervasive psychological effects. The analyses also revealed a curvilinear interaction between disaster exposure and age. Younger Ss exhibited the most distress in the absence of disaster, but middle-aged people did so in its presence. Differential exposure, resources, and inoculation all failed to explain these differences; however, the burden perspective had considerable explanatory power. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stimulus competition between a discrete cue and a training context: Cue competition does not result from the division of a limited resource.

Several associative learning theories explain cue competition as resulting from the division of a limited resource among competing cues. This leads to an assumption that behavioral control by 2 cues competing with each other should always reflect a tradeoff, resulting in apparent conservation of total reinforcer value across all competing cues. This assumption was tested in 3 conditioned lick suppression experiments with rats, investigating the effects of changing the conditioned stimulus (CS) duration (Experiment 1), administering pretraining exposures to the CS (Experiment 2), and presenting nonreinforced CSs during the intertrial interval (Experiment 3) on Pavlovian conditioned responding to both the CS and the conditioning context. Fear conditioned to the context and to the CS decreased when the CS was of longer duration, massively preexposed before being paired with the reinforcer, or presented alone during the intertrial interval. These observations are problematic for the theories that explain cue competition as the division of a limited resource and suggest that the total reinforcer value across competing cues is not always fixed for a given reinforcer. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An interpretation of autoshaping and related phenomena in terms of stimulus-incentive contingencies alone.

Attempts to explain the emergence and maintenance of instrumental responses, as well as the topography of the responses, wholly in terms of stimulus-incentive (S:IS) contingencies. A detailed examination of the behavior displayed in 4 training procedures (autoshaping, omission-training, superstition, and shaping) points to the following tentative conclusions: (a) The emergence, maintenance, and topographies of the instrumental responses displayed in all the above training paradigms can be explained by the relative incentive-motivational values of situational stimuli. (b) It is not necessary to invoke any contribution of response-incentive (R:IS) contingencies in order to explain the behavior in these training procedures. (c) Certain features of the observed instrumental responding that are usually attributed to adventitious R:IS contingencies are not controlled by R:IS contingencies, but by S:IS contingencies. The generalizability of these conclusions to instrumental responses displayed in other types of learning paradigms remains to be investigated. (French summary) (60 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A set-intersection model of letter recognition in the spatial probe task.

Proposes a dual-process model involving 2 interacting identification processes. The set-intersection model can explain the predominance of mislocations, but, contrary to independent dual-process models, predicts that mislocations and intrusions can be affected by the same variable. Results of 2 experiments conducted with 24 undergraduates support the set-intersection model but are difficult to explain using independent dual-process models. Computer simulations comparing a single-process identification model to the set-intersection model isolated the advantages of a new identification process in the set-intersection model. Only the set-intersection model successfully reproduced the results of the 2 experiments. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Le phénomène de la transformation verbale et la théorie de l'ensemble-cellules de D. O. Hebb: Un modèle de fonctionnement.

Examined whether the cell-assembly theory proposed by D. O. Hebb is a suitable model to explain the existence of the verbal transformation effect. Four experiments were conducted in which 240 undergraduates listened to recordings of 4 repeated words chosen on the basis of their frequency of occurrence in the French language. Results validate all 6 proposed hypotheses and demonstrate that the cell-assembly theory can be a good model for explaining the verbal transformation effect. (English abstract) (60 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Polyadenylation of stable RNA precursors in vivo

Polyadenylation at the 3' terminus has long been considered a specific feature of mRNA and a few other unstable RNA species. Here we show that stable RNAs in Escherichia coli can be polyadenylated as well. RNA molecules with poly(A) tails are the major products that accumulate for essentially all stable RNA precursors when RNA maturation is slowed because of the absence of processing exoribonucleases; poly(A) tails vary from one to seven residues in length. The polyadenylation process depends on the presence of poly(A) polymerase I. A stochastic competition between the exoribonucleases and poly(A) polymerase is proposed to explain the accumulation of polyadenylated RNAs. These data indicate that polyadenylation is not unique to mRNA, and its widespread occurrence suggests that it serves a more general function in RNA metabolism.