Occupation and asthma. Through a glass, darkly

Analyzes the status of cardiovascular surgery in the Russian Federation in 1993-1994. Emphasizes that exhaustive utilization of its potentialities will have an appreciable impact of the health of the society and offers relevant recommendations.     

Through a glass darkly: Reflections on therapist transformations.

Psychologists are not immune to unfortunate, potentially devastating, life-changing events. The following article explores how a shared event, the loss of a child, impacted 2 different therapists and describes their individual changes in therapeutic perspectives and approaches. Vulnerabilities and lessons of resiliency are presented, with the direct impact on psychological practice discussed. The authors conclude that encountering personal struggles or challenges can have a transforming influence on therapists, including how therapists conceptualize and interact with their clients. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Peromyscus papers: Through a glass, darkly.

Comments on the article by J. M. Joffe (see record 1974-06687-001) and the article by R. J. Smith (see record 1990-57143-001), both of which frame a discussion of behaviorism and reactions to the theories of J. B. Watson (e.g., 1925) as a political insurgency and a trial. The present author remarks that although one has been told how often it is done, it is nevertheless alarming to see how easily history can be rewritten to reflect the dogma of the party in power. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Symbolic interactionist view of self-concept: Through the looking glass darkly.

Reviews research on the relationship between self-perceptions and evaluations from other people. Studies of naturalistic interactions indicate that people's self-perceptions agree substantially with the way they perceive themselves as being viewed by others. However, there is no consistent agreement between people's self-perceptions and how they are actually viewed by others. There is no clear indication that self-evaluations are influenced by the feedback received from others in naturally occurring situations. When feedback from others is manipulated experimentally, self-perceptions are usually changed. However, methodological limitations such as the questionable external validity and strong demand characteristics of the experimental situations employed make the significance of these findings unclear. The available evidence is examined within a framework that considers the transmission, processing, and evaluation of judgments from others. Other means by which interaction may influence self-perceptions aside from direct evaluative feedback are considered. (4? p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Through a bag, darkly.

In a 1967 experiment designed to study the phenomenon of rumors on a university campus, an anonymous student wearing a black bag visited classrooms. The intention was to track the rumor and its symbolic significance. Despite careful design, the experimenters soon lost control of subsequent occurrences, as the university become flooded by rumors and attracted local, national, and international media attention. The experiment highlights how the social scientist can change the impact and interpretation of a social phenomenon by analyzing it and suggests that some phenomena are better left alone. (0 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Infantile amnesia: through a glass darkly

Memory for former preschool classmates was examined in 9- and 10-year-old children using measures of both explicit and implicit memory. Yes-no recognition of faces was at low levels but was significantly above chance. Skin conductance data showed similarly low but above-chance differentiation between classmates and controls. A median split of children based on their recognition memory scores showed that children with little evidence of explicit memory for classmates were as likely to show differential skin conductance responding to faces of former classmates as were children with higher recognition scores. Infantile amnesia, like the clinical syndrome for which it is named, may not always involve complete loss of encoded information.     

Through the looking glass darkly? When self-doubts turn into relationship insecurities.

The authors argue that individuals regulate perceptions of their relationships in a self-protective way, finding virtue in their partners only when they feel confident that their partners also see virtues in them. In 4 experiments, the authors posed an acute threat to low and high self-esteem individuals' feelings of self-worth (e.g., guilt about a transgression, fears of being inconsiderate or intellectually inept). They then collected measures of confidence in the partner's positive regard and acceptance (i.e., reflected appraisals) and perceptions of the partner. The results revealed that low self-esteem individuals reacted to self-doubt with heightened doubts about their partners' regard, which then tarnished impressions of their partners. In contrast, high self-esteem individuals reacted to self-doubts by becoming more convinced of their partners' continued acceptance, using their relationships as a resource for self-affirmation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Peromyscus papers: Through a looking glass.

Discusses behaviorism and reactions to the theories of J. B. Watson (e.g., 1925), using an approach inspired by an article by M. J. Joffe (see record 1974-06687-001). The discussion is framed as a political insurgency and a trial. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adults' knowledge about memory: Awareness and use of memory strategies across tasks.

Two studies investigated college students' knowledge about the effectiveness of alternative memory strategies for different tasks and the relationship of this knowledge to strategy use and performance. In Experiment 1 students made paired-comparison judgments of the relative effectiveness of six strategies for increasing performance on one of three memory tasks. For each task some strategies were judged to be significantly more effective than others, whereas across tasks certain strategies were more likely to be judged effective for one task than for another. Experiment 2 examined the relationship of judgments of strategy effectiveness to actual strategy use and memory performance. Results indicated that different strategies were adopted across tasks and students were more likely to adopt strategies subsequently judged effective for that task. Students in Experiment 2 showed clearer discrimination among the strategies and an increased awareness of the efficacy of task-specific strategies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Research participants telling the truth about their lives: The ethics of asking and not asking about abuse.

Most discussions of the ethics of self-report research on abuse and interpersonal violence focus on the risks of asking participants about their experiences. An important element of the cost-benefit analysis--the costs of not asking about child abuse--has largely been ignored. Furthermore, little research has been conducted on the costs and benefits of child abuse research, leaving researchers to make decisions based on individual beliefs about such issues as the prevalence of abuse, the likelihood of disclosure, the effects of child abuse, and the ability of abuse survivors to give informed consent. The authors suggest that these beliefs tend to overemphasize survivors' vulnerability and ignore the costs of avoiding asking about abuse. In fact, these beliefs may reinforce societal avoidance of abuse and ultimately harm abuse survivors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Blaming the brain: The truth about drugs and mental health.

Review of book: Elliot S. Valenstein (Au.) Blaming the brain: The truth about drugs and mental health. New York: Free Press, 1998, 292 pp.. Reviewed by Louis S. Berger. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Remembering makes evidence compelling: Retrieval from memory can give rise to the illusion of truth.

The illusion of truth is traditionally described as the increase in perceived validity of statements when they are repeated (Hasher, Goldstein, & Toppino, 1977). However, subsequent work has demonstrated that the effect can arise due to the increased familiarity or fluency afforded by repetition and not necessarily to repetition per se. We examine the case of information retrieved from memory. Recently experienced information is expected to be subsequently reexperienced as more fluent and familiar than novel information (Jacoby, 1983; Jacoby & Dallas, 1981). Therefore, the possibility exists that information retrieved from memory, because it is subjectively reexperienced at retrieval, would be more fluent or familiar than when it was first learned and would thus lead to an increase in perceived validity. Using a method to indirectly poll the perceived truth of factual statements, our experiment demonstrated that information retrieved from memory does indeed give rise to an illusion of truth. The effect was larger than when statements were explicitly repeated twice and was of comparable size to when statements were repeated 4 times. We conclude that memory retrieval is a powerful method for increasing the perceived validity of statements (and subsequent illusion of truth) and that the illusion of truth is a robust effect that can be observed even without directly polling the factual statements in question. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Through the looking glass clearly: Accuracy and assumed similarity in well-adjusted individuals' first impressions.

Do well-adjusted individuals have particularly accurate insight into what others are like or are they biased, primarily seeing their own characteristics in others? In the current studies, the authors examined how psychologically adjusted individuals tend to see new acquaintances, directly comparing their levels of distinctive accuracy (accurately perceiving others' unique characteristics), normative accuracy (perceiving others as similar to the average person), and assumed similarity (perceiving others as similar to the self). Across two interactive, round-robin studies, well-adjusted individuals, compared with less adjusted individuals, did not perceive new acquaintances' unique characteristics more accurately but did perceive new acquaintances, on average, as similar to the average person, reflecting an accurate understanding of what people generally tend to be like. Furthermore, well-adjusted individuals had a biased tendency to perceive their own unique characteristics in others. Of note, both pre-existing perceiver adjustment and target-specific liking independently predicted greater accuracy and assumed similarity in first impressions. In sum, well-adjusted individuals see through the looking glass clearly: although they erroneously see others as possessing their own unique characteristics, they accurately understand what others generally tend to be like. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

浅析签订商务合同应注意的问题

在签订商务合同时,为实现合同的有效性和合法性,预防和减少合同纠纷的发生,必须注意合同主体要合格,合同的内容、形式和程序要合法,合同格式及文字要规范,签订合同要取得合法代理权等问题.     

The elusive search for the truth: A review of Pezdek, K. and Banks, W. P. (1996). The recovered memory/false memory debate.

Reviews the book, The recovered memory/false memory debate by K. Pezdek and W. P. Banks (see record 1996-98519-000). This book presents a series of articles, some of which are sympathetic to the "recovered" memory approach and others to the "false" memory approach. In the preface, the authors write: "We tried to hew a middle course, looking for value in all sides." Many of the articles in the book originally appeared in a special issue of Consciousness & Cognition, Volume 3, 1994, the journal which is edited by William Banks, one of the editors of this volume. A major strength of the book is that all the included articles argue their respective positions based on actual experimental data rather than on philosophical biases. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Determinants of selective memory about the self.

Investigated the influence of success and failure experiences and expectancies (on an ability task) on selective memory for positive vs negative personality information about oneself. Success-failure experiences and expectancies were manipulated independently in all combinations. Ss were 90 undergraduates. Thereafter, each S was exposed to an equal extent to positive and negative information about his personality and then tested for memory of that information. As predicted, Ss correctly remembered their personality liabilities relatively less than their assets when they expected to succeed than when they expected to fail on an ability test or when they had no relevant expectancy (control). Also, as predicted from cognitive social learning theory, the effects of expectancy overshadowed those of experience. Correlations with data from Byrne's Repression-Sensitization Scale and Rotter's Internal-External Control Scale are discussed. (31 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cattell on science and truth.

Suggests that J. M. Cattell's bitterness, documented by M. M. Sokal (see record 1972-09942-001), should be viewed in political and social context. An anecdote tells how a committee compromised on President Wilson's request to expel Cattell because he approved of a fellow professor's sentiment that seemed to cast aspersions on lawyers, merchants, and soldiers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anticipatory dementia: a link between memory appraisals and concerns about developing Alzheimer's disease

This exploratory study examines the link between memory appraisals and personal concerns about developing Alzheimer's disease. The sample of persons ages 40-60 includes adult children with a living parent who has Alzheimer's disease (N = 25) and a matched group with no family history of dementia (N = 25). Using two composite measures of memory appraisals, the results show significant bivariate and multivariate relationships between self-assessments of memory functioning and concerns about developing the disease. The findings also suggest that negative memory appraisals evoke concerns about developing Alzheimer's disease within both of the subsamples.