Impact of managed care on independent practice and professional ethics: A survey of independent practitioners.

Managed care significantly affects the service delivery patterns, business structures, ethics, and professional concerns of independent practitioners. This survey assessed psychologists' perceptions of the effects of managed care on practice and ethics. Most respondents reported significant increases in dependence on managed care services for income. Negative effects included loss of control over ethical decisions and potential harm to patients from erosion of confidentiality. A majority of respondents reported encountering ethical concerns not addressed by the American Psychological Association ethics code. Findings suggest directions for practice development, for public policy addressing confidentiality, and for clarification of ethical responsibilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relationships between women and their parents: Implications for midlife well-being.

The rapid changes in women's roles during the 1970s gave the graduates of the Radcliffe College class of 1964 opportunities for life experiences markedly different from those of either their mothers or their fathers. This longitudinal study of 89 Radcliffe graduates examined the ways in which women in midlife find continuity with their parents and the implications of experiences of continuity for women's relationships with parents and for women's self-esteem and well-being. Support was found for a model linking women's educational and occupational similarity to their parents to later perceptions of parental influence, perceived parental influence to parent–daughter relationship quality, and parent–daughter relationship quality to self-esteem and subsequent well-being. The quality of women's relationships with their fathers did not predict subsequent well-being, perhaps because of fathers' decreased involvement in their adult daughters' lives. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A genetically informed study of the processes underlying the association between parental marital instability and offspring adjustment.

Parental divorce is associated with problematic offspring adjustment, but the relation may be due to shared genetic or environmental factors. One way to test for these confounds is to study offspring of twins discordant for divorce. The current analyses used this design to separate the mechanisms responsible for the association between parental divorce, experienced either before or after the age of 16, and offspring well-being. The results were consistent with a causal role of divorce in earlier initiation of sexual intercourse and emotional difficulties, in addition to a greater probability of educational problems, depressed mood, and suicidal ideation. In contrast, the increased risk for cohabitation and earlier initiation of drug use was explained by selection factors, including genetic confounds. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Numerical modeling of the dynamic tensile behavior of irregular fibers

Most fibers are irregular and are often subjected to rapid straining during mechanical processing and end‐use applications. In this article, the effect of fiber dimensional irregularities on the dynamic tensile behavior of irregular fibers was examined using the finite‐element method (FEM). Fiber dimensional irregularities are simulated with sine waves of different magnitude (10, 30, and 50% level of diameter variation). The tensile behavior of irregular fibers was examined at different strain rates (333, 3333, and 30,000%/s). The breaking load and breaking extension of irregular fibers at different strain rates were then calculated from the finite‐element model. The results indicate that strain rate has a significant effect on the dynamic tensile behavior of an irregular fiber, and that the position of the thinnest segment along the fiber significantly affects the simulation results. Under dynamic conditions, an irregular fiber does not necessarily break at the thinnest segment, which is different from the quasi‐static results. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 91: 2855–2861, 2004     

An A to Z guide to DSM-IV conundrums.

The work on the 4th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) poses many puzzling conundrums that touch on complicated and important theoretical and practical issues. None of these can be resolved in the DSM-IV, but the authors hope that the Task Force's decisions will be informed by thorough reviews of the currently available evidence and extensive input from all sectors of the mental health field. A. J. Frances et al provide an alphabetical guide to DSM-IV conundrums that they hope will stimulate comments, suggestions, and criticisms about the work of the Task Force. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Responding to threat: Hemispheric asymmetries and interhemispheric division of input.

This investigation examined how hemispheric asymmetry and interhemispheric processing contribute to attentional biases toward emotional information. Participants (n?=?88) named the color of lateralized squares presented concurrently with neutral, positive, or threatening words. A left-hemisphere advantage in color naming was reduced when distractors were emotional, suggesting right-hemisphere priming by emotional stimuli. Furthermore, the advantage of dividing the word and color across visual fields was increased for emotion words when they were frequently presented, indicating a strategic use of interhemispheric division of labor to reduce the distracting effect of emotional words. Finally, participants with high levels of anxious apprehension were most likely to make use of this interhemispheric processing strategy, supporting a processing efficiency theory of cognitive function in anxiety. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)