Child custody cases: A content analysis of evaluations in practice.

Guidelines for custody evaluations recommend multiple ways for assessing the parent-child relationship and outline appropriate means of assessing special issues such as domestic violence, child abuse, and substance use. However, little is known about the implementation of these guidelines in practice. This study examines 60% of custody evaluations in one circuit court over a 2-year period. Custody evaluations were examined for adherence to guidelines and for differences based on evaluator training. This analysis suggests much variety in techniques used and a lack of consistency between guidelines and clinical practice. The findings suggest a need for more standardized approaches to conducting custody evaluations as well as the assessment of domestic violence, child abuse, and substance abuse. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A topic model approach to measuring interdisciplinarity at the National Science Foundation

As the National Science Foundation (NSF) implements new cross-cutting initiatives and programs, interest in assessing the success of these experiments in fostering interdisciplinarity grows. A primary challenge in measuring interdisciplinarity is identifying and bounding the discrete disciplines that comprise interdisciplinary work. Using statistical text-mining techniques to extract topic bins, the NSF recently developed a topic map of all of their awards issued between 2000 and 2011. These new data provide a novel means for measuring interdisciplinarity by assessing the language or content of award proposals. Using the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences as a case study and drawing on the new topic model of the NSF’s awards, this paper explores new methods for quantifying interdisciplinarity in the NSF portfolio.     

A critique of Bem's "Exotic Becomes Erotic" theory of sexual orientation.

Two critiques of D. J. Bem's (see record 1996-01742-006) "Exotic Becomes Erotic" (EBE) theory of sexual orientation are presented. First, the core proposition of EBE theory is considered; that is, the idea that adults are erotically attracted to the gender-based class of peers (males or females) who were dissimilar or unfamiliar to them in childhood. Studies cited by Bem and additional research show that EBE theory is not supported by scientific evidence. Second, Bem's claim that his theory applies equally to both sexes is questioned; instead the argument that it neglects and misrepresents women's experiences is made. Bem's conceptualization of erotic desire and his analysis of gender nonconformity illustrate this problem. It is suggested that different theories may be needed to explain the development of men's and women's sexual orientation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

花曲柳窄吉丁在中国的分布与危害的调查研究

花曲柳窄吉丁是木犀科梣属树木毁灭性的蛀干害虫,2003年已被列入我国林业危险性有害生物名单中.本研究对中国黑龙江、吉林、辽宁、河北和山东省及天津和北京市16个梣属树木分布区进行了花曲柳窄吉丁的调查.结果显示:除在北京市和山东省滨州市以及辽宁省的一个地区未发现花曲柳窄吉丁危害外,在其它省市的13个地区都发现有该害虫,而且在部分地区其危害已较为严重,有虫株率最高达90%以上,虫口密度最高达230头/株,并已出现部分白蜡树死亡.另外,在花曲柳窄吉丁自然种群中发现有幼虫被真菌感染致死和茧蜂科天敌寄生现象,并对害虫的种群发展显示了较好的控制作用.     

AbstFinder, A Prototype Natural Language Text Abstraction Finder for Use in Requirements Elicitation

Abstraction identification is named as a key problem in requirements analysis. Typically, the abstrac-tions must be found among the large mass of natural language text collected from the clients and users. This paper motivates and describes a new approach, based on traditional signal processing methods. for finding abstractions in natural language text and offers a new tool, AbstFinder as an implementation of this approach. The advantages and disadvantages of the approach and the design of the tool are discussed in detail. Various scenarios for use of the tool are offered. Some of these scenarios were used in case study of the effectiveness of rhe tool on an industrial-strength example of finding abstractions in a request for proposals.     

Young and older adults' use of context in spatial memory.

We evaluated the hypothesis that older adults remember spatial information less well than younger adults because they use contextual information less effectively. Young and older adults studied schematic town maps on which structures were presented either simultaneously or successively and on which a network of streets was either present or absent. However, age did not interact with either contextual variable. Thus, we conclude that age differences in spatial memory do not arise from differences in the use of context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Typography manipulations can affect priming of word stem completion in older and younger adults.

The experiments reported here investigated whether changes of typography affected priming of word stem completion performance in older and younger adults. Across all experiments, the typeface in which a word appeared at presentation either did or did not match that of its 3-letter stem at test. In Exp 1, no significant evidence of a typography effect was found when words were presented with a sentence judgment or letter judgment task. However, subsequent experiments revealed that, in both older and younger adults, only words presented with a syllable judgment task gave rise to the typography effect (Exps 2–4). Specifically, perforance was greater when the presentation and test typeface matched than when they did not. Exp 5, which used stem-cued recall, did not reveal a difference between syllable and letter judgment tasks. These findings highlight the complex nature of word stem completion performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychology--A Profession or What?

The author asserts that if psychology is a profession, then: Let us first establish the doctoral level as the minimal requirement for any individual wishing to be classified and recognized as a psychologist. Let the public and other professions know that to be designated psychologist, a doctor's degree from an approved university is required. Let's establish a broad general core of functions for psychologists so that they may serve as general practitioners and let specialization emerge as adequate bodies of knowledge develop out of cumulative experience and research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)