Renovation and Innovation: It’s Time for the Great Lakes Regime to Respond

This commentary reports on a project to explore and evaluate options for Great Lakes governance renewal in anticipation of the 2006–2007 review of the Canada–US Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (GLWQA). The research included expert interviews and scholarly analysis of governance regimes in 2006, leading to a Great Lakes St. Lawrence River Governance Expert Workshop held in June 2007 (Krantzberg et al. 2007). The two authors have been participants and at times leaders in the institutions this commentary addresses, Krantzberg with the International Joint Commission and Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Manno with the New York Great Lakes Research Consortium and Great Lakes United. Our familiarity with the topic and many of the people involved was helpful in gaining participation and is in itself a rich source of knowledge and experience. In discussing a topic of contemporary controversy, it also understandably can make readers question the objectivity of our assessment. We are also trained in social science scholarship and have taken precautions against biasing the outcomes. This is not intended to be merely a presentation of data. We believe our experience is a net asset in addressing these questions but we leave it to the interested reader to review the reports referenced herein and judge for themselves whether our findings are fairly presented.     

Effects of verbal and mathematics task performance on task and career self-efficacy and interest.

To test a hypothesis from self-efficacy theory, we randomly assigned 149 subjects to verbal or mathematics and success or failure conditions in which they attempted to solve easy or difficult anagram or number series tasks. Changes in task self-efficacy and task interest as a result of task success or failure were in accordance with predictions from self-efficacy theory. We also examined the generalizability of the effects of task performance. The results indicated that task performance effects generalized to self-efficacy and interest ratings on an irrelevant task and to global ratings of math and verbal ability. Task performance effects did not generalize to career self-efficacy and career interest measures but consistent gender differences in self-efficacy emerged as a result of both math and verbal task performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The return of the repressed: Psychology's problematic relations with psychoanalysis, 1909–1960.

When psychoanalysis first arrived in the US, most psychologists ignored it. By the 1920s, however, psychoanalysis had so captured the public imagination that it threatened to eclipse experimental psychology entirely. This article analyzes the complex nature of this threat and the myriad ways that psychologists responded to it. Because psychoanalysis entailed precisely the sort of radical subjectivity that psychologists had renounced as unscientific, core assumptions about the meaning of science were at stake. Psychologists' initial response was to retreat into positivism, thereby further limiting psychology's relevancy and scope. By the 1950s, a new strategy had emerged: Psychoanalytic concepts would be put to experimental test, and those that qualified as scientific would be retained. This reinstated psychologists as arbiters of the mental world and restored objective criteria as the basis for making claims. A later tactic (co-opting psychoanalytic concepts into mainstream psychology) had the ironic effect of helping make psychology a more flexible and broad-based discipline. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A critical evaluation of the semantic-episodic distinction.

Presents opposing evidence to claims by E. Tulving (1983; also see record 1985-03110-001) that a wide range of evidence supports the distinction between episodic and semantic memory systems. Findings that invalidate and contradict many of the distinguishing features and interpretations of the supporting experiments cited by Tulving are discussed. It is argued that the question of whether there are 2 separate memory systems cannot be answered without a specific theory about the differences between the systems. (73 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Activity restriction mediates the association between pain and depressed affect: A study of younger and older adult cancer patients.

Associations are reported frequently among pain, functional disability, and symptoms of depression. The purpose of this longitudinal study was to further clarify relations among these variables. In 268 younger (ages 30–64) and older (ages 65–90) cancer outpatients, cross-sectional analyses replicated previous findings showing that effects of pain on symptoms of depression are mediated by functional disability. Longitudinal analyses revealed that as pain increased over time, so did activity restriction, which in turn predicted increases in depressed affect. Comparative analyses indicate that restriction of routine activities that are due to illness and pain may be more distressing to individuals less than 65 years of age than to those 65 years of age or older. The results suggest that older persons are less distressed by restricted activities because of lower expectations about functional status and more experience with illness and disability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Coping self-efficacy buffers psychological and physiological disturbances in HIV-infected men following a natural disaster.

The importance of coping self-efficacy (CSE) appraisals on psychological and physiological functioning for HIV seropositive patients facing a severe environmental stressor was tested comparing 37 HIV-infected gay men and 42 healthy male control participants following Hurricane Andrew. Results suggested that greater levels of CSE were related to lower emotional distress and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in both groups. In addition, greater CSE was associated with lower norepinephrine to cortisol ratios in the HIV group but not in the healthy control group. Results are discussed in relation to the coping process for HIV-infected individuals specifically and chronically ill populations in general who face severe environmental stressors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of prenatal PCB exposure on cognitive processing efficiency and sustained attention.

Assesses 4-yr-old children exposed prenatally to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs; an environmental toxin) on 3 tasks: 2 designed to evaluate cognitive processing efficiency and 1 to evaluate sustained attention. When compared with standardized IQ tests, these tasks provided greater specificity in identifying cognitive deficits. Adapted for 4-yr-old children in the present study, these paradigms demonstrated moderate levels of test–retest reliability. Prenatal exposure to PCBs was associated with less efficient visual discrimination processing and more errors in short-term memory scanning but not with sustained attention. Although much larger quantities of these contaminants are transferred postnatally via breastfeeding than prenatally across the placenta, postnatal exposure was unrelated to cognitive performance. The data link intrauterine PCB exposure to 2 dimensions of cognitive functioning fundamental to learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Misattribution of dissonance and behaviour-consistent attitude change.

Examined the prediction that people who have misattributed dissonance arousal to an external source may come to question the appropriateness of this attribution and may then be motivated to alter their attitudes. This was tested by having an experimenter discredit the plausibility of an external source after misattribution had presumably occurred. 80 female undergraduates participated in the study, with 16 of these Ss serving as controls. 64 Ss were given a pill described as having either unpleasant side effects or no side effects and then were committed to write counterattitudinal essays under high-choice conditions. Some Ss were then told that a mistake had been made and that they had actually been given the other form of the pill. As predicted, Ss who had initially been led to believe that the pill had aversive side effects but were later told that it did not manifested behavior-consistent attitude change. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differential effects of women's child sexual abuse and subsequent sexual revictimization.

Examines the differential effects of sexual revictimization in a community sample of 248 African-American and White American women (aged 18–36 yrs). Two classifications of sexual revictimization over the life course were used to assess the effects of later sexual and psychological functioning. The findings suggest that unintended pregnancies and abortions were significantly associated with sexual revictimization. Women who reported more than one incident in both childhood and adulthood were also likely to have multiple partnerships and brief sexual relationships. The findings are discussed within the context of the dynamics of sexual revictimization and its effects. Suggestions are offered for therapeutic strategies with survivors in order to minimize the effects of sexual revictimization. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)