Latent inhibition of the conditioning context: Further evidence of contextual potentiation of retrieval in the absence of appreciable context-US associations

Previous research in our laboratory has found superior performance when classically conditioned responses are observed in the training context as opposed to outside it, even when direct context-US associations have been minimized by either the choice of conditioning parameters or extinction to the context. The present experiment used latent inhibition of the conditioning context as an alternative method of examining contextual cue effects in the absence of appreciable direct context-US associations. Water-deprived rats received tone-footshock pairings in one of two distinctly different apparatuses, but all were tested in a common apparatus. Animals conditioned in the test enclosure displayed more lick suppression than those conditioned outside the test enclosure. Other animals tested without the tone present also exhibited more suppression if conditioning had occurred in the test context rather than outside it, indicating that direct associations between the conditioning context and shock had been formed. However, when formation of direct associations to the conditioning context was attenuated in additional animals through extensive preexposure to the context prior to conditioning, more suppression to the tone was still seen when conditioning had occurred in the test context rather than outside it. These results add support to the position that the training context augments recall even when direct associations between the context and the US are attenuated. The phenomenon is discussed in terms of facilitated retrieval of nominal CS-US associations, configural retrieval cues, and conditional discriminations.     

What Journals are the Most Cited Journals in Criminology and Criminal Justice’s “Big Three” Journals?

Recently, scholars have sought to learn more about scholarly activity within the fields of criminology and criminal justice (CCJ). Research in this area has examined which departments have the most productive faculty, which scholars are the most productive, and which journals are the most prestigious. However, no study of which we are aware has determined what journals criminologists are most likely to cite in their scholarly research. In this study, we rank the most influential journals by the number of times those journals were cited between 2009 and 2013 in Criminology, the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, and Justice Quarterly. Our analyses suggest that Criminology is clearly the most influential CCJ journal in terms of citations, while the American Sociological Review, the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, and the American Journal of Sociology remain influential in CCJ as well.     

Centered but not Caught in the Middle: Stepchildren's Perceptions of Dialectical Contradictions in the Communication of Co-Parents

The researchers adopted a dialectical perspective to study how stepchildren experience and communicatively manage the perception of feeling caught in the middle between their parents who are living in different households. The metaphor of being caught in the middle is powerful for stepchildren and this metaphor animated their discourse. A central contribution of the present study was to understand the alternative to being caught in the middle and what this alternative means to stepchildren. Reflected in the discourse of stepchildren is that to feel not caught in the middle is to feel centered in the family. Stepchildren's desire to be centered in the family was animated by the dialectic of freedom–constraint, which co-existed within the contradictions of openness–closedness and control–restraint. These contradictions are detailed in the analysis, along with advice to parents from the perspective of stepchildren. Implications for the interaction of stepchildren and their parents are discussed.     

The Rules-Based Process of Revealing/Concealing the Family Planning Decisions of Voluntarily Child-Free Couples: A Communication Privacy Management Perspective

Critical literature has largely ignored the element of purpose in Kenneth Burke's dramatistic pentad, along with its attendant philosophy of mysticism. Chiara Lubich's 1977 Templeton Prize Acceptance Speech presents rhetorical critics with a valuable opportunity to observe in practice the features of a rhetoric of purpose, as Burke has disseminated them. In fact, analysis of Lubich's speech according to Burke's criteria of purposive rhetoric suggests the existence of a discrete sub‐class of purposive rhetoric identified here as the mystical narrative.     

A Comparison of Live Classroom Instruction and Internet-Based Lessons for a Preparatory Training Course Delivered to 4th Year Pharmacy Students

To compare the effectiveness of an internet-based training series with a traditional live classroom session in preparing pharmacy students to oversee a diabetes management program in community settings. Two cohorts of students were identified that prepared by utilizing a recorded online training exclusively, and two separate cohorts of students prepared by receiving only live classroom instruction. All students in the four cohorts were given a survey to evaluate the training sessions, and results were analyzed using the analysis of variance statistical test (ANOVA). Preceptors at the sites who interacted with students in all four cohorts were surveyed to evaluate which students appeared more prepared; these data were compared using paired t tests. Final assessment data for students in all four cohorts were analyzed using ANOVA. There were statistical differences between the two live training groups, with the second group finding the training to be more beneficial for preparing them, feeling the training length was appropriate and preferring the live modality for delivery. The two internet training cohorts were similar except for perceptions regarding the length of the online training. Comparing responses from those students who received live training with those receiving internet instruction demonstrated a statistical difference with the live groups rating the trainings as more helpful in preparing them for the clinics, rating the training as necessary, and rating their confidence higher in seeing patients. Preceptors rated the live training statistically higher than online training in preparing students. There was no difference between groups on their final site assessments. Live classroom training appears to be superior to the recorded internet training in preparing pharmacy students to oversee a diabetes management program in community settings.     

Developing Positive Attitudes Toward Interprofessional Collaboration Among Students in the Health Care Professions

This study examined whether attitudes toward interprofessional collaboration (Physician-Nurse, Physician-Social Worker, Nurse-Social Worker) held by medical, social work, and nursing students changed after completing an interprofessional curriculum consisting of (a) Interprofessional Education Development Session and (b) the Senior Aging and Geriatrics Educator mentoring program. The 15-item original and two modified versions of the Jefferson School of Attitudes Toward Physician-Nurse Collaboration (JSAPNC) were administered as pretest/posttest. Of the 186 participants who completed the pretest, 156 (84%) completed the posttest. Results showed that the medical students (n = 52) reported the most positive change in attitude toward all three pairs of interprofessional collaboration. Social work students (n = 55) reported the least positive attitudes toward Physician-Social Worker collaboration and nursing students (n = 49) reported the least positive attitudes toward Physician-Nurse collaboration. It is recommended to evaluate the interprofessional curriculum and other factors, such as the possible influence of the facilitator in group discussions, and that future studies include a rigorous design that monitors content of each educational session to ensure integrity across groups. Postgraduate follow-up measures could be used to enhance positive attitudes toward interprofessional collaboration.     

Academic entitlement: relations to perceptions of parental warmth and psychological control

Academic entitlement characterises students who expect positive academic outcomes without personal effort. The current study examined the relations of perceived parental warmth and parental psychological control with two dimensions of academic entitlement (i.e. entitled expectations and externalised responsibility) among college students. Psychology students participated by completing measures of perceived parenting and academic entitlement through an online survey system. Results demonstrated that perceived parental warmth was a negative predictor of externalised responsibility and parental psychological control was a positive predictor of externalised responsibility. Additionally, there was a warmth by control interaction such that parental psychological control was related to greater externalised responsibility only when combined with moderate to high parental warmth. For entitled expectations, both perceived parental warmth and psychological control were positive predictors. The findings suggest that parenting practices may play an important role in academic entitlement and highlight the need for further research to elucidate potential developmental pathways of academic entitlement.     

The simple view of reading

A simple view of reading was outlined that consisted of two components, decoding and linguistic comprehension, both held to be necessary for skilled reading. Three predictions drawn from the simple view were assessed in a longitudinal sample of English-Spanish bilingual children in first through fourth grade. The results supported each prediction: (a) The linear combination of decoding and listening comprehension made substantial contributions toward explaining variation in reading comprehension, but the estimates were significantly improved by inclusion of the product of the two components; (b) the correlations between decoding and listening comprehension tended to become negative as samples were successively restricted to less skilled readers; and (c) the pattern of linear relationships between listening and reading comprehension for increasing levels of decoding skill revealed constant intercept values of zero and positive slope values increasing in magnitude. These results support the view that skill in reading can be simply characterized as the product of skill in decoding and linguistic comprehension. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the simple view for the practice of reading instruction, the definition of reading disability, and the notion of literacy.     

Reminder treatments do not alleviate cue-to-consequence deficits

Using rats in a conditioned lick suppression preparation, six experiments were conducted in which the subjects were exposed to a single tone-LiCl pairing. Despite evidence from tone-shock conditioning that the tone was an adequate conditioned stimulus and evidence from taste-LiCl conditioning that the LiCl was an adequate unconditioned stimulus, no suppression to the tone was observed following the tone-LiCl pairing, a finding consistent with prior cue-to-consequence research. In each experiment, subjects receiving a tone-LiCl pairing were subsequently exposed to either the tone or LiCl outside the conditioning context in an attempt to reactivate a potentially latent tone-LiCl association. The parameters of these reminder treatments were chosen on the basis of their previously proven effectiveness in reversing such performance deficits as blocking, overshadowing, latent inhibition, and experimental amnesia. Although a variety of stimulus parameters were used in an effort to reverse the cue-to-consequence deficit, none of the experiments detected any tendency towards suppression by reminded subjects exposed to a tone-LiCl pairing. This uniform lack of reminder-induced recovery suggests that cue-to-consequence deficits reflect true acquisition failure rather than poor retrievability.