Needed: Radical surgery.

Reviews the impact of ethical regulations of research practice. Although G. Adair et al (see record 1985-29656-001) recommended empirical research to solve the ethical and methodological problems created by the use of deception, it is argued that ethical questions cannot be settled by empirical means. A constructive alternative is proposed that involves a revival of certain features of the classical experiment, including a cooperative, equal-status relationship between the investigator and the participants whose experimental roles may be interchangeable. (6 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rebuttals Needed.

Comments on the S. C. Ericksen article (see record 1964-01620-001), which summarizes the "rationale which both justifies and demands that psychologists address themselves to the broad matter of social control". The present author argues that Ericksen did not see fit to address himself to the very serious problems which legislation affecting psychology has raised in the eyes of academic psychologists, but chose, instead, to write a baseless attack upon the motives of those who have questioned the wisdom of these laws. It is noted that a desire for legislation is by no means a necessary indication of social responsibility. Bad laws have been passed before, and may be again if care is not taken. All psychologists have the right, indeed the obligation, to take a good hard look at laws proposed to regulate their field, and to object to them if they seem undesirable. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Needed: Publication of negative results.

It is suggested that the value of negative results has been underestimated. The authors feel that negative findings can add to our knowledge by indicating unfruitful aspects of a given problem, thereby eliminating wasted research time and energy. In building up the empirical foundation of a science, it is important to know not only what does exist, but what does not exist as well. A way of coping with this problem would be to have a place to publish these findings. They further suggest that this could be done by establishing a Journal of Negative Results. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Positions of Truthfully Answered Controls on Control Question Tests With the Polygraph.

Students (N = 120) guilty of a mock crime, innocent and informed, or innocent and uninformed of crime details were examined by polygraph with an altered form of Control Question Test (CQT). Ambiguous, lie-engendering control questions were altered to form clear direct questions answered truthfully. When these control questions were positioned before crime-relevant questions, most guilty and innocent participants were correctly classified. Most participants were classed as guilty when crime-relevant questions were positioned before control questions. Lying to crime-relevant questions in the second position resulted in skin resistance, F(2,108) = 8.2, and blood volume, F(2, 108) = 6.1, responses larger than Orienting Responses to initial control questions. Accurate detection depends on the position of control questions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Needed: A publication of negative results: Comment.

Comments that in the March 1959 issue of the Journal of the American Statistical Association (Vol. 54, No, 285) an article appeared by Theodore D. Sterling, a psychologist, entitled "Publication Decisions and Their Possible Effects on Inferences Drawn from Tests of Significance -or Vice Versa." As the title suggests the author feels that negative experimental results are seldom published. He also feels that experiments are seldom replicated. The present author recounts the suggestion by Sterling that journals devoted to reporting experimental results include a section reserved for articles which present no evidence for rejecting the null hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of question production and answering on prose recall.

Studied the recall consequences of generating questions about prose in 2 experiments. In Exp I, 48 high school students cooperated in a tutorial situation. At different times, an S asked questions, answered questions, or merely studied. In Exp II, 64 college students worked alone constructing 5 or 10 questions which were free to vary in difficulty or which all were to be difficult. In both studies, questioning activities produced higher overall recall than just studying. Recall effects were confined to content that was directly related to Ss' questions, and recall level was the same whether questioning or answering. Directions about the number and type of questions to be constructed altered characteristics of questions, but recall was not strongly affected. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social influences on metacognition: Effects of colearner questioning on comprehension monitoring.

Four experiments examined social influences on metacognition, testing whether learners' knowledge that colearners have questions about material they are simultaneously viewing affects learners' own judged levels of comprehension. In Experiment 1 (n?=?88), the frequency with which learners indicated they were confused increased with the number of questions they believed colearners had about the material. Experiment 2 (n?=?38) determined that the effect of colearner questioning on self-judged comprehension was not due to distraction or social facilitation. Experiment 3 (n?=?100) replicated the results of Experiment 1 and found that the social impact on learners' judgments of comprehension was less when questions were believed to have come from 3 colearners rather than 1. Experiment 4 (n?=?60) suggested that the number of questions per colearner determines their impact on others' comprehension judgments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Needed: Metaphors for the prevention model of mental health.

Comments on the article by J. D. Coie et al (see record 1994-09654-001) regarding prevention science. It is argued that the reason that prevention science has not taken its rightful place in national research programs is that metaphors from the medical model still pervade the prevention model of mental health. Metaphors from architecture may be more helpful in generating ideas within the prevention model, because they deal with planning, working with large populations, the interaction of people and the environment, and building healthy and aesthetic surroundings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A reappraisal of Wundt's influence on social psychology.

Discusses the social psychology of Wundt and its link to current developments in the constructionist movement in modern psychology. The historical lines of descent from Wundt's experimental psychology to American behaviorist social psychology are traced, and the relationship between Wundt's (1911) Volkerpsychologie to the social scientists who kept alive Wundt's social psychological orientation and who figure as antecedents of postmodern constructionism is delineated. With historical hindsight, the behaviorist program for social psychology may now be seen as an aberrant detour around the fundamental questions of social psychology. The questions asked by Wundt appear to be perennial questions. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Asking questions in first-grade mathematics classes: Potential influences on mathematical thought.

Investigated the types of questions that are asked in 1st-grade addition and subtraction lessons in Japan, Taiwan, and the US. Some researchers have argued that knowledge is, in part, constructed through questions and that these may be used differently in US than in Asian classrooms. Thus, each question about addition or subtraction in 311 observed lessons was coded as 1 of 6 types of questions. Analyses revealed that the Asian teachers asked significantly more questions about conceptual knowledge and about problem-solving strategies than did US teachers. In addition, Chinese teachers asked significantly more questions that were embedded in a concrete context than did US teachers. These findings allow speculation that the kinds of questions typically asked in Japanese and Chinese classrooms may contribute to the construction of more sophisticated mathematical knowledge for the children in those classrooms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Answering clients' questions.

Presents therapist guidelines for answering client questions in psychotherapy. Response recommendations are based on question type and whether the client's motives are overt or covert. Questions are categorized as: (1) genuine requests for information , (2) indirect requests for some type of gratification from the therapist, (3) questions that are really statements, (4) questions that are tests, and (5) questions that push the therapist's boundaries. The underlying dynamics of client questions are identified, including shame, anger, determining if the therapist cares, projective identification, and testing the therapist's limits and boundaries. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Influence of questions on the allocation of attention during reading.

77 undergraduate readers were asked a question after every 4 pages of a 48-page oceanography text. Text information relevant to questions was learned better than text information irrelevant to questions. Reading times and probe RTs on a secondary task were longer when Ss were processing text segments containing information of the type addressed by questions. Results are discussed in the light of a theory that readers selectively allocate a greater volume of attention to question-relevant information and that a process supported by the additional attention causes more of the information to be learned. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect on learning of postinstructional responses to questions of differing degrees of complexity.

Investigated the effect on the learning of science subject content of having students respond to questions of different degrees of complexity following segments of instruction. The study involved 193 7th-grade students in 5 groups. Questions of differing degrees of complexity were interspersed every 20th frame of the programmed instruction material for 3 treatment groups. The 4th treatment group read a paragraph related to the questions. The 5th group acted as a control. The groups that completed the instructional materials and responded to the interspersed questions scored significantly higher than the group that completed the instructional materials and did not respond to questions. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of prior testlike events and meaningfulness of information on numeric and comparative reasoning.

160 college students read 4 passages that each described quantitative relations among elements in a 4-term linear ordering and answered either only 12 numeric or only 12 comparative questions after each passage. On the 5th (target) passage, on which all Ss received both numeric and comparative questions, Ss performed relatively better on the type of questions they had received previously. There was no difference between the groups in ability to make inferences. However, information stated as meaningful stories resulted in better performance on comparative questions and on inference, while information stated as nonsense equations resulted in the reverse trend. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Scientific rigor, scientific integrity: A comment on Sommer and Sommer.

Examines ethical issues raised in an article by R. Sommer and B. A. Sommer (see record 1984-10654-001) that questioned the validity of results reported by H. Barber and R. Heber (1973). Among these issues are criteria for establishing whether a particular study is sufficiently rigorous to be the basis of valid conclusions, the determination of whether or not reported data are truthful, and appropriate means of making such a determination. It is argued that optimum assessments of these questions involve the separation of questions of rigor from questions of integrity. (3 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Modeling effects on the questioning strategies of the elderly.

Conducted an experiment with 42 70-90 yr old Ss which showed that modeling procedures rapidly increased the use of constraint-seeking questions in a guessing task and reduced the number of questions required to reach a correct answer. The changes took place easily, indicating that an intact and efficient questioning strategy is readily available as part of the problem-solving equipment of the elderly. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of level, review, and sequence of inserted questions on text processing.

129 college students read a text containing one verbatim, paraphrase, or inference postquestion inserted after each paragraph. 81 controls read the text without the inserted questions. Results indicate that inference questions were superior to paraphrase questions, which were, in turn, superior to verbatim questions on test performance. Paraphrase and inference question groups exhibited superior recall of questioned material when compared with the control groups. However, only a group that received the correct answers to the inference postquestions during a review session demonstrated superior performance on criterion test items pertaining to nonquestioned material. The findings are discussed in terms of a "levels of processing" analysis. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of experience and training on diagnostic accuracy.

In this reexamination of a previously published report (R. Brammer, 1997), psychologists and psychology students (N = 138) were provided an artificial intelligence program that simulated a clinical interview. The "client" provided paragraph-length answers to the questions participants chose to ask. At the end of their interview, the participants provided a brief diagnosis for the client. A path analysis revealed that clinical experience is a strong predictor of the ability to form an accurate diagnosis and that an individual's level of training, mediated by the number of diagnostic questions asked, also helps to derive accurate diagnoses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)