How vagueness can ruin a survey: Comment on Pope, Tabachnick, and Keith-Spiegel.

Suggests that a survey by K. S. Pope et al (see record 1988-11972-001) concerning the frequency of and ethicality of certain behaviors among 1,000 psychologists was marred by vagueness and inappropriate comparisons. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Who can catch a liar?": Comment on Ekman and O'Sullivan.

Comments on the study of lie detection by P. Ekman and M. O'Sullivan (see record 1992-05387-001). The analysis by Ekman and O'Sullivan of individual as well as average accuracy is applauded, but their classification scheme for doing so is shown to be misleading. Thus, their findings are overstated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"How mental systems believe": Reply.

Replies to L. L. Downing's (see record 1992-33857-001) comment on D. T. Gilbert's (see record 1991-17453-001) article on belief and comprehension. When a person accepts or believes a proposition, the person is prepared to behave as though it is true. Belief is the propensity to behave, not the tendency to swear up and down. Downing's notion that people can be prepared to act as if X were true prior to knowing what X stands for is a non sequitur. Downing fails to distinguish between statements of belief and beliefs proper. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"How mental systems believe": Comment.

Comments on D. T. Gilbert's (see record 1991-17453-001) assertion (in accordance with Spinoza) that comprehension and believing are inseparable, and that to comprehend is to believe. People's experiences of religious conversion, it is argued, often occur prior to the specific knowledge of the ideology to which conversion has occurred, and are social rather than cognitive phenomena. What is perceived to be real is a function of what is accepted as valid by individuals and groups with which the individual is closely connected. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comment on "Recall, retention, and Ritalin."

E. D. Rie and H. E. Rie (see record 1978-27952-001) concluded that Ritalin enhances story recall after a 2-hr retention interval but not after 2 days and that the lack of difference in later recall argues against a facilitation of scholastic achievement due to Ritalin. The present author argues that the former conclusion is questionable because of inappropriate statistical analyses and because of the effects of confoundings contained in the experimental design. The latter conclusion, it is stated, appears to arise from the misconception of equating achievement with long-term memory independently of amount learned. Achievement is a function of both learning and memory, and the distinction should be maintained in examining Ritalin's effects. (2 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reply to "A comment on alcoholism, alpha production, and biofeedback."

Replies to A. G. Glaros's (see record 1978-08480-001) critical comments concerning the research of F. W. Jones and D. S. Holmes (1976) in which it was found that alpha biofeedback training was ineffective with alcoholics. It is concluded that the criticisms do not necessitate a rejection of the data but instead highlight the questionable incremental validity of biofeedback training in clinical settings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Was McGraw a maturationist?": Reply.

Replies to T. C. Dalton's (see record 83:33646) commentary concerned with the labeling of M. B. McGraw as a maturationist as raised in Thelen's (see record 1995-20907-001) study on infant/child motor skill development. The issues raised by Thelen did not depend on whether McGraw was labeled a maturationist; what was evident in McGraw's work was a real tension between her manifest maturational theory on the one hand and her writings expressing the richness of the developmental process on the other. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Drugs for treating behavior problems: How safe are they?": Comment.

Responds to J. Rubin's (see record 1990-31492-001) comments on discussions of treatments for behavior problems of children by J. M. Tuma (see record 1989-27149-001) and B. Henker and C. K. Whalen (see record 1989-26516-001). The articles were amiss in not emphasizing the potential side effects of pharmacotherapies for children, but Rubin overemphasized the dangers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comment on "Right-wing authoritarianism."

Canadian scholarship has recently been honoured in that Bob Altemeyer's book, Enemies of Freedom: Understanding Right wing authoritarianism (see record 1988-98419-000) received the 1988 prize for behavioural science research, awarded by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The book has also received a number of favourable reviews. Ray feels that some comments on the limitations of the book are needed to balance the account, and submits that, in fact, the book is a complete failure as far as achieving what it set out to achieve is concerned. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Sun, moon and stars": Comment.

Comments on the article by J.P.J. Pinel, S. Assanand and D. R. Lehman (see record 2000-02781-002) which argued that because of the scarcity and unpredictability of food in nature, humans and other animals have evolved to eat to their physiological limits when food is readily available, so that excess energy can be stored in the body as a buffer against future food shortages. The current authors suspect that Pinel, Assanad and Lehman overstemated what most humans will do, while underestimating what some can do. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Creativity as a decision": Comment.

Responds to the comments by T. B. Kashdan and F. D. Fincham (see record 2002-12932-014), J. C. Kaufman (see record 2002-12932-016 and J. Raven (see record 2002-12932-015) on the articles that discussed creativity in the April 2001 issue of American Psychologist. The current author does not disagree with any of the comments made. He states that although creative people differ in an astonishing number of ways, there is, in fact, one key attribute that they all possess, an attribute consistent with the original articles in American Psychologist's special section on creativity and consistent with these new commentaries as well. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"More mischief": Reply.

Addresses the errors that A. O. Ross (1978) found in W. M. Cox and V. Catt's (see record 1978-21651-001) article on productivity ratings of graduate psychology programs, objecting to Ross's attempt to discredit the authenticity of Cox and Catt's data. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comment on "Articulation of values."

This article clarifies several research issues raised in a recent article by Krieshok, Arnold, Kuperman, and Schmitz concerned with repertory grid methodology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Whatever happened to psychology as a science of behavior?": Comment.

Comments that there are some fundamental misunderstandings in B. F. Skinner (see record 1988-00027-001). According to the author, Skinner seems to think that there is something inherently objective about behavioral data. The author notes that behavior is subject to interpretation, inference, and bias in conceptualization and measurement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Inequity in equity: How "equity" can lead to inequity for high-potential students.

Over the past three decades, the achievement of waves of American students with high intellectual potential has declined as a result of inequity in educational treatment. This inequity is the result of an extreme form of egalitarianism within American society and schools, which involves the pitting of equity against excellence rather than promoting both equity and excellence, anti-intellectualism, the "dumbing down" of the curriculum, equating aptitude and achievement testing with elitism, the attraction to fads by schools, and the insistence of schools to teach all students from the same curriculum at the same level. In this article we provide recommendations for creating positive change--recommendations that emphasize excellence for all, that call for responsiveness to individual differences, and that suggest basing educational policies on well-grounded research findings in psychology and education. Educational policies that fail to take into account the vast range of individual differences among students--as do many that are currently in us--are doomed to be ineffective. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Hunger, semistarvation, and ill health": Comment.

Comments on the article by J.P.J. Pinel, S. Assanand and D.R. Lehman (see record 2000-02781-002) which argued that because of the scarcity and unpredictability of food in nature, humans and other animals have evolved to eat to their physiological limits when food is readily available, so that excess energy can be stored in the body as a buffer against future food shortages. The current authors give both support and criticism to Pinel et al's findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"On the intricacies involved in the study of similarity judgments: Comment on Ritov, Gati, and Tversky": Reply.

G. Keren's (see record 1990-27344-001) alternative interpretation is refuted by the data in Table 14 of I. Ritov et al's (see record 1990-27355-001) article on differential weighting of common and distinctive components. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"People's reactions to nuclear war": Comment.

With respect to S. T. Fiske's (see record 1987-21635-001) review of research into the perceived threat of nuclear war, it is argued that the perceived likelihood of nuclear war is underestimated, while the perceived likelihood of personal survival is overestimated. This was borne out by a survey of 496 Ss. Additional studies have shown that the threat of nuclear war has had an effect on individuals' future plans as well. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Corporal punishment": Comment.

Comments that A. Maurer (see record 1975-00027-001) commits 2 errors in her discussion of the exceedingly complex issues of corporal punishment. One concerns the basic psychological concept of behavior modification. The other error arises from the seemingly simplistic answers she gives to the ethical problems involved. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)