Providing information to clients about psychological tests: A survey of attorneys' and law students' attitudes.

Surveyed 70 practicing attorneys and 150 law students to determine the extent to which they felt it was their responsibility to inform clients they referred for psychological testing about the testing process and about the validity scales on tests. Results showed that almost 50% of the attorneys and over 33% of the students believe that clients referred for testing always or usually should be informed of validity scales on tests. These results suggest that many test takers, particularly in forensic settings, may have information about validity scales that facilitates their giving biased responses without detection. Psychologists doing forensic evaluations should be alert to this possibility and should consider using more than one approach to detect response distortions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mapping nonnative plants using hyperspectral imagery

Nonnative plant species are causing enormous ecological and environmental impacts from local to global scale. Remote sensing images have had mixed success in providing spatial information on land cover characteristics to land managers that increase effective management of invasions into native habitats. However, there has been limited evaluation of the use of hyperspectral data and processing techniques for mapping specific invasive species based on their spectral characteristics. This research evaluated three different methods of processing hyperspectral imagery: minimum noise fraction (MNF), continuum removal, and band ratio indices for mapping iceplant (Carpobrotus edulis) and jubata grass (Cortaderia jubata) in California's coastal habitat. Validation with field sampling data showed high mapping accuracies for all methods for identifying presence or absence of iceplant (97%), with the MNF procedure producing the highest accuracy (55%) when the classes were divided into four different densities of iceplant.     

Eye movements of young and older adults during reading.

The eye movements of young and older adults were tracked as they read sentences varying in syntactic complexity. In Experiment 1, cleft object and object relative clause sentences were more difficult to process than cleft subject and subject relative clause sentences; however, older adults made many more regressions, resulting in increased regression path fixation times and total fixation times, than young adults while processing cleft object and object relative clause sentences. In Experiment 2, older adults experienced more difficulty than young adults while reading cleft and relative clause sentences with temporary syntactic ambiguities created by deleting the that complementizers. Regression analyses indicated that readers with smaller working memories need more regressions and longer fixation times to process cleft object and object relative clause sentences. These results suggest that age-associated declines in working memory do affect syntactic processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

HiSQL: A Front-end Query System for Historical Relational Databases

The paper describes a prototype system called HiSQL (Historical SQL) which extends the functionality of SQL in manipulating historical data, by providing functions for spatial and temporal processing. Conceptually the paper is divided into three parts: the first part deals with the design and architecture of the system; the second part introduces a case study (the defters); and the third part describes specific functions for spatial and temporal processing of serial documents. The paper concludes with a comparison between HiSQL and SQL and suggestions for further work. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Laboratory studies in cross-species lung transplantation

The lack of sufficient suitable human donor lungs for the many patients requiring pulmonary transplantation as life-saving therapy for end-stage lung diseases has generated extensive interest in cross-species lung transplantation. Ethical concerns and those of animal rights advocates have prompted studies of nonprimate species as potential solid organ donors for humans. This paper provides an overview of some of the laboratory studies of cross-species pulmonary transplantation performed over the past 20 years and focuses, in particular, on more recent work (from our laboratory and others) in the area of porcine-to-primate pulmonary xenotransplantation.     

A behavioral analysis of effective teaching.

Characterizes classroom instruction (CRI) from a behavior analytic perspective. It is argued that effective teaching strategies also serve managerial functions through the development of stimulus control and the management of behavioral choice. The stimulus control properties of CRI are discussed, and research concerning the effects of antecedent events on children's academic performance is reviewed. A theory for predicting choices in behavior, known as matching theory, is presented that evolved out of experimental operant research. The characteristics of CRI that make it particularly suited to matching theory analysis are identified, and research applying matching theory to children's classroom behavior is reviewed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Examination of coping resources and family adaptation in mothers and daughters of incestuous versus nonclinical families.

Mother–daughter dyads from incestuous vs nonclinical families were compared in terms of (1) family life stress, (2) problem-solving appraisal, (3) direct coping behaviors, (4) mother–daughter communication, and (5) family adaptation and cohesion. 15 mother–daughter pairs from an incestuous family involving an adult male caretaker were matched on several variables to 16 mother–daughter pairs from a nonclinical family. The results revealed that mothers from the incest group (compared with the nonclinical group) reported greater amounts of family life stress, had more negative perceptions of their problem-solving appraisal, and reported more communication difficulties. The daughters from the incest group appeared to be quite similar to the nonclinical group daughters, although they did acknowledge more family stress. Implications of the results for therapeutic interventions as well as future research were discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Are IQ scores valid for children who are poor readers?

Remedial services for children with reading problems are often allocated according to discrepancies between reading and IQ scores. Results of some recent research suggest, however, that IQ scores of poor readers do not covary with their levels of functioning in other cognitive domains. This study evaluated whether the external validity of IQ scores (from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—Revised [WAIS—R]) was moderated by reading levels within 2 separate samples of a total of 382 referred children (aged 7–16 yrs). It was found that IQ scores had expected correlations with external measures of verbal, visual-spatial, short-term memory, and arithmetic ability, and that these relations were invariant across levels of reading skill. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Illness attributions and hopelessness depression: The role of hopelessness expectancy.

According to hopelessness theory, hopelessness expectancy is the proximal, sufficient cause of hopelessness depression. Consequently, hopelessness expectancy is viewed as mediating the influence of all other factors on hopelessness depression. Using a longitudinal research design, hopelessness expectancy was examined as a mediator of the relation between illness attributions and hopelessness depression in a sample of 57 adults with rheumatoid arthritis. Although hopelessness expectancy was a strong predictor of hopelessness depression, it moderated rather than mediated the relation between attributions and depression. Finding support for a moderating rather than a mediating model is inconsistent with theory but is consistent with the findings of J. H. Riskind et al (1987). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)