Task Force on Organizational Renewal report.

Presents a report from the APA's Division 13 (Consulting Psychology) Task Force on Organizational Renewal. The report includes priorities for maintaining progress on goals established during the 1991 midwinter meeting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Final report of the Task Force on Psychology and the Handicapped.

After outlining the activities and achievements of the Task Force on Psychology and the Handicapped from 1979 to 1983, 7 recommendations are made to be carried out by a Committee on Psychology and Handicaps. Recommendations include missions to (1) remove barriers in the field, in education, and in training for the disabled; (2) promote service-delivery models that are responsive to the needs of the handicapped and change environmental hindrances; (3) establish and maintain policies and communication with the governance of the American Psychological Association; and (4) serve as an information resource. (6 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

APA accreditation: A status report.

Outlines the evolution of the procedures and mechanisms of American Psychological Association (APA) accreditation (ACR) between 1966 and 1971. Under the present system, APA accredits professional programs as units rather than singling out individual specialities, programs put on probation are so identified in lists of approved programs, a provisional ACR category has been added, and greater emphasis has been placed on the advisory and consulting functions of the ACR process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Some questions about the results of the Abecedarian Early Intervention Project cited by the APA Task Force on Intelligence.

Comments on the results used by U. Neisser et al (see record 83-26553) in the American Psychological Association (APA) task force study on intelligence, which cited the Carolina Abecedarian Project (C. T. Ramey and F. A. Campbell, 1987) as an example of a successful early intervention program that produced larger and more lasting effects on intelligence scores than did Head Start programs. The author claims that Neisser et al "shortchange" the Carolina project by mentioning results occurring only at or after age 2, although startling test score differences were apparent in Ss by age 18 mo. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A report from the APA Council of Representatives.

Provides a brief overview of some of the work accomplished by the Council of Representatives at the 1994 APA meetings in Los Angeles. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The APA income protection and major medical insurance programs: A progress report.

During the past decade APA has arranged for 3 types of coverage: Income Protection Insurance, Major Medical Insurance, and Professional Liability Insurance. Significant changes in the first 2 programs involve (a) a reduction in certain rates for income protection coverage, (b) inclusion of outpatient psychotherapy under the Major Medical Program, and (c) reimbursement for services rendered by qualified psychologists without requiring prior medical referral or examination. An APA Insurance Trust has been established with responsibility for maintenance and revision of existing insurance programs and for negotiating new insurance agreements on behalf of members of APA. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Draft report of the APA Committee on Ethical Standards in Psychological Research: A critical reaction.

Comments that, if the draft report by the American Psychological Association (APA) Committee on Ethical Standards in Psychological Research (S. W. Cook et al, 1971) becomes policy, it will seriously damage psychological research and set back scientific research in the behavioral sciences. Differences with the Committee on (1) the observation and violation of privacy of human Ss and (2) human experientation and manipulation are examined. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A contemporary philosophical reading of the APA Memories of Childhood Abuse report.

Presents a contemporary philosophical reading of the American Psychological Association (APA) Memories of Childhood Abuse report. First, background on the nature of the report is given and then the philosophical approach taken towards the reading itself is discussed. The "philosophical reading" of the report is not an attempt to resolve the debate and the authors therefore do not take sides. Instead, the authors read the document as a disciplinary cultural artifact—a resource about psychology as a theoretical, epistemological, cultural, and political enterprise—rather than simply a statement of contemporary knowledge on memories of child abuse. In the critical reading of the Report, 4 themes are highlighted that characterize the approach of both the clinical and research subgroup, and thus the Report as a whole. These 4 themes are problematic grounding in positivist science, problematic understanding of memory as monism and mechanism, problematic understanding of truth, and a problematic view of a disciplinary community. In the presentation of each theme, the authors speak to the implications of the theme, both for what psychology has been and for what it could become. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

CMA-sponsored Task Force on the Allocation of Health Care Resources.

Hurray for the Canadian Medical Association! They have just released Health: A Need for Redirection, the report of a Task Force on the Allocation of Health Care Resources. The task force, headed by Joan Watson, the former hostess of CBC's "Marketplace," included the Honourable Pauline McGibbon, former lieutenant-governor of Ontario, Roy Romanow, former NDP attorney general of Saskatchewan, and two physicians, John O'Brien-Bell and Leon Richard. The purpose of the task force was to examine the allocation of health care resources in the face of an increasing elderly population and the explosion of new technology. The report could help shape the future of the health care system. The report makes it clear that the health system is in crisis and the reform of the health system needs us all, as both active professionals and critical consumers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The moral challenge of children at risk: protective policies and pediatrics. A report of the Children's Services, Inc. Task Force of Greater Cleveland

Social workers and pediatricians are among the professionals who share a society-wide concern with current public policies regarding the placement of children at extreme risk. A healthcare professional may successfully treat a child, only to learn later that this same child was the victim of a tragic incident of domestic violence after returning home. Such events are not uncommon, create considerable frustration for pediatricians, and demand an integrated interprofessional and interdisciplinary response. This report emerged from 6 months of task force dialogue with leaders of children's services programs, healthcare professionals, clergy, ethicists, and other community leaders in one major urban environment. It indicates innovative directions in children's protective services with regard to family preservation, foster care, residential care, and adoption. The latter two options could be used much more creatively than is the case currently. The report also asserts that far too few resources are being directed to this problem area.     

Final report of APA working group on investigation of memories of childhood abuse: A critical commentary.

This commentary evaluates the evidence presented by Alpert, Brown, and Courtois in the Final Report of the APA Working Group on Investigation of Memories of Childhood Abuse (1996). The weaknesses in their assessment of evidence and their theoretical arguments go beyond those identified by Ornstein, Ceci, and Loftus. Historical and clinical data are uncritically overvalued, and empirical concepts (like state-dependent memory) are borrowed for explanatory purposes without appreciating the limits and inconsistencies in the underlying empirical research. An argument is advanced that clinical evidence can never be free of the influence of cherished beliefs and that some therapeutically recovered memories may reflect the cherished beliefs of clinicians who recover them. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Some faith helps to see the forest: A final comment on the Horn and Donaldson myth of the Baltes-Schaie position on adult intelligence.

Comments on the ongoing debate between J. L. Horn and G. Donaldson (1977) and P. B. Baltes and K. W. Schaie (see record 1977-07920-001) concerning intellectual decline in adulthood. The empirical rationale and substance of the Baltes-Schaie position is discussed, and the reader is encouraged to go to the original sources to decide whose interpretation is more in tune with the facts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Report of the Task Force on the Status of Women in Psychology.

Reported discriminatory practices in (a) academic areas (admissions, awarding of stipends, hiring, academic ranking, and leave policies), (b) clinical settings (assignment of women to internships consistent with sex role stereotypes, biases against women in textbooks and in therapeutic approaches), (c) the federal government (grade level gaps between men and women psychologists and differential evaluation of research proposals), (d) applied areas (discouragement of women in industrial and engineering psychology), and (e) school psychology (stereotypes for "proper" occupations for boys and girls and the use of stereotyped definitions of masculinity and femininity on personality tests). Recommendations are made to correct these practices. The formation of a Committee on the Status of Women within the American Psychological Association is proposed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A note on the origin of the APA Clinical Section.

Notes the problem of the training of psychological examiners, particularly for the public schools, and his findings, published in 1914, that a majority of psychological examiners in public schools were teachers without formal backgrounds in psychology. He discusses his involvement, with other psychologists, in formulating definite professional standards for psychological practitioners--standards of competency and of status--and perhaps of organizing a new standard setting association. He goes on to outline the early history of the development of the first Section within the American Psychological Association, the Clinical Section. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Race, IQ, and the APA report on The Bell Curve.

Comments on the APA Task Force findings presented by U. Neisser et al (see record 83-26553), about what is known and unknown about intelligence. The author argues that the findings on the issue of race were in error. The origins of racial differences in IQ need to be considered as fairly from the hereditarian perspective as from the environmentalist perspective. Areas of omitted evidence are discussed, which, had they been added, would have bolstered the consistency of the East Asian–European–African IQ gradient. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reconsidering the sauce: A comment on Floyd.

Comments on the article Fundamentalism: Sauce for the goose by K. Floyd (see record 2007-09680-001). Floyd reminds us that the application of a little logic to the propositions we claim are true can sometimes show us that our beliefs are untenable, and that such a finding "could turn out to be very freeing indeed". In particular, he uses one of the arguments some of us struggled with the first time we met logic as a discipline: If P is true then Q is true. Q isn't true. Therefore, P isn't true. Floyd applies this principle to religious belief: If I believe that P is true and Q is true when in fact P implies that 0 is false then I am truly inconsistent! He also shows how easily we are willing to use such logic on the beliefs of others but not on our own beliefs. The current authors' attempt to demonstrate that Floyd makes several questionable steps in his reasoning, thereby calling into question the conclusions he draws. Floyd has sought to point out the lack of thought behind numerous religious beliefs. The current authors accept this general observation, but they believe it unfair to attribute this difficulty only to religious beliefs. The difficulty with religious beliefs is not that they are not concerned with truth vs. non-truth, but rather that for a number of reasons, the difference between these two poles is often not obvious. The question of the validity of religious beliefs is a philosophically spiny one that has been addressed, sometimes adequately and sometimes in very illogical, emotional and violent fashions, for thousands of years. It seems obvious to the authors that "three minutes thought" is not sufficient to untangle such an issue. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Revolution and resistance: A comment on Witkin.

Contends that S. L. Witkin (see record 1989-40707-001) articulates several important epistemological errors that have contaminated the field of marital therapy, rendering it biased against women. Witkin's work points to the radical nature of change required at the level of theory, research, and practice to eradicate the errors of sexism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Report of the Task Force on Psychology, Family Planning, and Population Policy.

Summarizes the activities of the American Psychological Association (APA) Task Force since its inception in 1969. Research trends are identified in various areas, e.g., personal and attitudinal variables related to fertility and variations in fertility. Steps are recommended to aid the development of the relatively new field of population research, including availability of graduate and undergraduate training, dissemination of research findings, participation in legislative and program consultation, and the establishment of an APA Division of Population Psychology. It is concluded that psychologists could make significant contributions to the multidisciplinary field of population. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)