The interpersonal structure of "good" versus "bad" group counseling sessions: A multiple-case study.

Selected "good" and "bad" sessions from 3 short-term personal growth groups with 20 clients on the basis of group members' ratings of session depth and engagement. Multidimensional scaling provided a map of the latent structure of the speaking turns within these sessions. A two-dimensional solution provided the best fit for the data for each of the 6 sessions examined (i.e., a good and a bad session for each of the 3 groups). These 2 dimensions were interpreted as control (dominant vs submissive) and affiliation (friendly vs hostile). As hypothesized, the leader's position in the good sessions was less extreme on the identified dimensions, which suggested greater leader flexibility. Contrary to the hypothesis, the content of the dimensions was similar in the good and bad sessions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Quasi-realtime languages

The quasi-realtime languages are seen to be the languages accepted by nondeterministic multitape Turing machines in real time. The family of quasi-realtime languages forms an abstract family of languages closed under intersection, linear erasing, and reversal. It is identical with the family of languages accepted by nondeterministic multitape Turing machines in linear time. Every quasi-realtime language can be accepted in real time by a nondeterministic one stack, one pushdown store machine, and can be expressed as the length-preserving homomorphic image of the intersection of three context-free languages.The research reported in this paper was announced at the ACM Symposium on the Theory of Computing, Marina del Rey, California, May, 1969. This research has been supported in part by Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories, Office of Aerospace Research, USAF, under Contract F19628-68-C-0029.     

The (mis)measurement of restraint: An analysis of conceptual and psychometric issues.

In this article we examine alleged conceptual and psychometric deficiencies of the Restraint Scale, an instrument intended to identify chronic dieters. These deficiencies include the confounding of restraint with disinhibition, the inapplicability of the scale to obese samples, problems with the factor structure of the scale, and difficulties in completing the scale. We argue that these alleged deficiencies are in most cases chimerical and that the Restraint Scale remains the most useful tool for examining behavioral and other dieter/nondieter differences. Proposed alternatives to the Restraint Scale are examined and found to be inadequate as replacements, although they may be useful for certain purposes. Closer attention to the intended purpose of such instruments may serve to dispel controversy and confusion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Measurement of the effects of purpose and passage difficulty on reading flexibility.

Investigated whether students could change their reading rate when presented with 2 clearly explained purposes for reading. Ss were 170 8th graders and 170 11th graders from schools reflecting geographic and socioeconomic diversity. Ss in grades 8 and 11 read either an 8th-grade reading level passage for detail and an 11th-grade passage for overview, or the 11th-grade passage for detail and the 8th-grade passage for overview. Comprehension questions appropriate for the reading purpose followed both passages. An analysis of results using a Latin-square design with repeated measures indicated that Ss adapted their reading rate to fit different purposes but that passage difficulty affected the degree of flexibility. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reactivity in infants: A cross-national comparison.

433 4-mo-old infants from Boston, Dublin, and Beijing were administered the same battery of visual, auditory, and olfactory stimuli to evaluate differences in levels of reactivity. The Chinese Ss were significantly less active, irritable, and vocal than the Boston and Dublin samples, with Boston Ss showing the highest level of reactivity. Data suggest the possibility of temperamental differences between Caucasian and Asian infants in reactivity to stimulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Affect, cognition, and awareness: Affective priming with optimal and suboptimal stimulus exposures.

The affective primacy hypothesis (R. B. Zajonc, 1980) asserts that positive and negative affective reactions can be evoked with minimal stimulus input and virtually no cognitive processing. This hypothesis was tested by comparing the effects of affective and cognitive priming under extremely brief (suboptimal) and longer (optimal) exposure durations. At suboptimal exposures only affective primes produced significant shifts in Ss' judgments of novel stimuli. Results suggest that when affect is elicited outside of conscious awareness, it is diffuse and nonspecific, and its origin and address are not accessible. Having minimal cognitive participation, such gross and nonspecific affective reactions can therefore be diffused or displaced onto unrelated stimuli. At optimal exposures this pattern of results was reversed such that only cognitive primes produced significant shifts in judgments. Together, these results support the affective primacy hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Care or repair? Home improvement agencies in the UK

Essential reading for those concerned with the provision of housing. The UK experience is well documented by experienced commentators and the development of home-improvement agencies in the UK may provide a valuable example of how to tackle problems which will increasingly come to the fore elsewhere in Europe, especially where governments are pursuing vigorous privatization policies.     

Age differences in judging the frequency of events.

80 Ss in 2 age groups, 18–30 and 60–75 yrs, saw a list of words that varied in number of presentations (1, 3, or 5) and level of background language frequency (high, medium, or low). Immediately or after a 20-min retention interval, Ss judged the presentation frequency of the study list words. Older Ss were less accurate in their frequency judgments than young Ss. The age difference was present on the immediate test and was not due to greater difficulty in discriminating presentation frequency from background frequency in the older group. The results are not consistent with the hypothesis that frequency judgment is unaffected by developmental changes. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Inferential distance and children's memory for pictorial sequences.

Three-item pictorial sequences were shown to a total of 60 5-, 6-, and 7-yr-old children who were told to remember the events. Ss were tested subsequently on their abilities to recognize old pictures and select new pictures that were consistent with previously viewed sequences. New pictures varied in the inferential distance between them and the original sequence. All Ss judged close inferences as consistent with the sequence more often than distant inferences. In general, there was a progressive developmental improvement in accurate recognition of old items and correct discrimination of new items. This pattern of results was found for judgments based on sequential compatibility and on recognition of exact pictures. The probability of inferring new relationships from old sequences increased across the 3 age groups when correct memory for original sequences was controlled. Results indicate a developmental improvement in inferential skills beyond age-related changes in memory for premise information. Furthermore, distance of inferences is an important dimension of the stimuli that can affect memory and comprehension judgments. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reset machines

A reset tape has one read-write head which moves only left-to-right except that the head can be reset once to the left end and the tape rescanned; a multiple-reset machine has reset tapes as auxiliary storage and a one-way input tape. Linear time is no more powerful than real time for nondeterministic multiple-reset machines and so the family MULTI-RESET of languages accepted in real time by nondeterministic multiple-reset machines is closed under linear erasing. MULTI-RESET is closed under Kleene. It can be characterized as the smallest family of languages containing the regular sets and closed under intersection and linear-erasing homomorphic duplication or as the smallest intersection-closed semiAFL containing $\text{COPY}\text{= {ww | w}\text{in}\text{{a, b}1}}$. A circular tape is read full-sweep from left-to-right only and then reset to the left, any number of times; a nonwriting circular tape cannot be altered after the first sweep. For nondeterministic machines operating in real time, multiple reset tapes, circular tapes or nonwriting circular tapes have the same power. Languages in MULTI-RESET can be accepted in real time by nondeterministic machines using only three reset tapes or using only one reset tape and one nonwriting circular tape.