The author reacts to the three core articles in the Scientific Forum of the May 2005 issue of "The Counseling Psychologist" about institutional research productivity, the use of theory-driven research, and the application of structural equation modeling to research in counseling psychology. To have a research base that maximizes divergent…

For the past several years it has been thought that cues, such as eye direction, can trigger reflexive shifts in attention because of their biological relevance and their specialized neural architecture. However, very recently, Ristic, Friesen, and Kingstone (2002) reported that other stimuli, such as arrows, trigger reflexive shifts in attention…

The author comments on the original article "The Cinderella of psychology: The neglect of motor control in the science of mental life and behavior," by D. A. Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum draws attention to the study of motor control and evaluates seven possible explanations for why the topic has been relatively neglected. The point of this comment is that…

This article proposes and describes factor-analytic procedures for assessing and controlling socially desirable responding in binary personality items. The basic procedures are applications of the restricted (confirmatory) item factor analysis model for ordered-categorical variables. Orthogonal and oblique solutions based on marker variables are…

A. Lleras and J. T. Enns (see record 2004-21166-001) demonstrated a negative influence of a masked arrow that is attributable to the perceptual interaction between the arrow and the mask when these have properties in common (in this case diagonal lines). Although the present analysis is in agreement that this type of perceptual interaction can…

This article reports an error in the article "Retrieval of Incidental Stimulus-Response Associations as a Source of Negative Priming" by Rothermund et al. ("Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition," Vol 31(3) May 2005, 482-495). Table 1 (p. 484) was incorrectly typeset. The correct layout is provided. (The following…

Variables that have been coarsely categorized into a small number of ordered categories are often modeled as outcome variables in psychological research. The authors employ a Monte Carlo study to investigate the effects of this coarse categorization of dependent variables on power to detect true effects using three classes of regression models:…

A. M. Franco-Watkins, H. Pashler, and T. C. Rickard (2006) discussed some interesting issues about the interpretation of working memory load effects and decision making in their reanalysis of our previously published data (J. M. Hinson, T. L. Jameson, & P. Whitney, 2003). Nonetheless, there is sufficiently strong evidence to sustain our original…

Most discussions of the ethics of self-report research on abuse and interpersonal violence focus on the risks of asking participants about their experiences. An important element of the cost-benefit analysis--the costs of not asking about child abuse--has largely been ignored. Furthermore, little research has been conducted on the costs and…

This article discusses the rationale of an item response theory (IRT) model, based on Thurstone scaling, for personality measurement and suggests procedures for (a) estimating the location and slope parameters of the person response curve (PRC), (b) assessing the precision of the estimates, and (c) assessing the model-data fit. The relations…

Objective: To review research on depictions of mental illness in mass media directed to children and to identify requirements for further research in this important field. Methods: The authors identified published research on depictions of mental illness in children's media and the important strengths and weaknesses of such research. Results: Only…

Social anxiety is inconsistently associated with alcohol use variables. To elucidate factors that contribute to the relationship between social anxiety and problematic alcohol use, the present study investigated drinking motives and drinking situations in an undergraduate sample (N = 293). Social anxiety was significantly correlated with…

This paper reviews research based on the psychological autopsy (PA) method applied to the study of suicide. It evidences the presence of a number of methodological problems. Shortcomings concern sampling biases in the selection of control subjects, confounding influences of extraneous variables, and reliability of the assessment instruments. The…

Building on 2 previous studies (B. R. Ekstrand, 1967; B. R. Ekstrand, M. J. Sullivan, D. F. Parker, & J. N. West, 1971), the authors present 2 experiments that were aimed at characterizing the role of retroactive interference in sleep-associated declarative memory consolidation. Using an A-B, A-C paradigm with lists of word pairs in Experiment 1,…

We look at three common research scenarios, one in the behavioral domain (i.e., disruptive behaviors) one in the cognitive domain (i.e., academic achievement), and one in the affective domain (i.e., anxiety and stress) for which school psychologists are asked to address important questions related to change. We list measurement and statistical…