Clarifies intentions and basis of remarks made in Macfarlane (1963) concerning the relationship of early character structure to later character structure and life outcomes. (Author/RH)

States M.L. Mares presents evidence that source confusions play a role in the cultivation effect. Clarifies some of Mares' findings that have implications for the heuristic model of cultivation effects and shows that Mares' findings are compatible with and can be integrated into the heuristic processing model. Discusses implications of Mares'…

Considers the use of instrumental variables to estimate effects of treatments on treated and randomly selected groups. Concludes that instrumental variable methods are extremely sensitive to assumptions about how people process information. (SK)

Notes that psychotherapy process research has produced advances in measure development and substantive findings of process-outcome relations. Describes paradigm shift toward sequentially patterned, significant change episodes, emphasizing segmentation of process by meaningful patterns wherever they occur. Reviews theoretical, psychometric, and…

Discusses problems and issues of psychotherapy process research. Notes complexity of research that attempts to combine process and outcome adequately. Suggests that more than one therapeutic orientation be studied in specific project to include some type of control. Cautions that, although statistically significant correlations between process and…

Describes methodological problems associated with present research examining the use of interpretation in time-limited individual therapy. Offers recommendations on making research on interpretation more methodologically rigorous and relevant. (Author/CM)

Critiques Bohannon and Stanowicz's (1988) conclusion that natural languages can be learned and that there is no need to postulate innate knowledge. Argues that Bohannon and Stanowicz's results disclose nothing about learnability or innateness. (RH)

Questions traditional approach to validating employment interview. Notes that individuals are likely to differ in ability to accurately predict employee behavior and that interviewers often differ in their constant tendency to make favorable or unfavorable ratings. Researchers, by failing to consider these tendencies, may inappropriately collapse…

Examines the benefits of descriptive and predictive models of reading. Argues that the choice of reading model influences the outcome of reading research. (MM)

Conducted three studies to examine what segment of counseling interview best represents entire interview and whether different starting points yield different results. Results suggest that, whereas starting points make little difference, generalizing from any size segment to whole session should not be done when examining interviews individually.…

To examine Fodor's (1992) argument that standard false belief tasks used in developmental research seriously underestimate young children's understanding of false belief, three- and four-year-old children were given three tasks of action prediction and explanation, belief preduction, and knowledge prediction and explanation. The overall pattern of…

Triangulation in educational research may be of two types: (1) between methods, in which mutual validation is sought; and (2) within a method, addressing one issue through input from various perspectives. Neither version appears to do all that is claimed for it. (SK)

Notes that polytomous item response theory (IRT) models are appropriate for Likert scale and other polytomous item types. Presents polytomous IRT models, including graded response, nominal response, partial credit, and rating scale models. (Author/NB)

This commentary on the research reported in this monograph stresses the importance of the analogy between the processes involved in pretense comprehension and the processes required to comprehend written or spoken text. The commentary also raises the concern that children could perform correctly on pretense problems using processes of text…

Evaluated the susceptibility of radioimmunoassays (RIA) for saliva cortisol to interference effects caused by oral stimulants (drink mix crystals) used to facilitate saliva collection in studies with children. Found that oral stimulants artificially inflated estimated cortisol concentrations, with the magnitude of the interference-effect…