Developmental screenings in rural settings: a comparison of the child development review and the Denver II Developmental Screening Test.

Screening results for the Child Development Review (CDR) and the Denver II Developmental Screening Test (Denver II) were compared in two locations: the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota and Sioux Falls, S.D. Seventy-three white, Native American and other minority children, half originating from the reservation and half from Sioux Falls, were randomly assigned to take one developmental screening test. A chi-square analysis indicated a significant difference in results across tests. Specifically, more CDR than Denver II subjects passed the screening and more Denver II than CDR subjects failed the screening. This pattern held for subjects living on, but not off, the reservation. Thus, for Native American, white and other minority children living on the Cheyenne River Reservation, the CDR may be undersensitive and/or the Denver II oversensitive to suspect presentations. Medical practitioners are advised to use these instruments with caution in rural settings.

Competence and memory: integrating psychosocial and cognitive correlates of child depression.

Positive and negative peer nominations of multiple competencies and incidental recall of positive and negative self-referential adjectives were measured in relatively depressed and nondepressed fourth-, sixth-, and eighth-grade children (9 to 15 years old). Positive and negative peer evaluations related significantly to children's ability to recall positive and negative self-referential information (respectively), even after controlling for concurrent depressive symptoms. Positive and negative peer evaluations also related strongly to children's self-reported depressive symptoms. Incidental recall of positive and negative information significantly related to self-reported depression. In fact, the relation between recall of negative information and depression significantly increased in the eighth grade. Finally, preliminary support emerged that cognitive processes related to the incidental recall of negative self-descriptive information may mediate the relation between peer evaluations and depression. Implications for further research into the social determinants of cognitive processes and into the social and cognitive determinants of depression are discussed.

Ethics and the professional practice of psychologists: the role of virtues and principles.

We evaluate the potential relevance of virtue ethics to the training and practice of professional psychologists, and we contrast them with principle ethics. Typically, principles are used to facilitate the selection of socially and historically acceptable answers to the question "What shall I do?" when confronted by ethical dilemmas. Virtue ethics, however, generally focus on the question "Who shall I be?" Strengths and weaknesses of each approach are presented. The impact of each is discussed with respect to informed consent and the therapeutic construct "genuineness." We conclude that virtue ethics are an essential component of responsible ethical training and practice.

The unresolved child care dilemma: care for the acutely ill child.

The frequency of childhood illness, the exclusion practices of most licensed child care programs, and the limited sick leave policies of many employers all combine to create a particularly difficult dilemma for the working parent. A comprehensive solution to the problem of caring for the sick child must be tackled on three primary fronts: provision of expanded sick leave benefits and/or greater flexibility in the performance of job duties to enable working parents to care for children's illnesses without jeopardy to employment; development of clear regulatory guidelines and supplemental resources to enable care givers to accommodate a mildly ill child in the child's usual child care setting; replication of successful model programs, partially underwritten by public and/or private support, to assist parents with the costs of backup arrangements for the care of sick children when needed.

Addition of lipid to the photosynthetic membrane: effects on membrane structure and energy transfer.

We have carried out a series of experiments in which the lipid composition of the photosynthetic membrane has been altered by the addition of lipid from a defined source under experimental conditions. Liposomes prepared by sonication are mixed with purified photosynthetic membranes obtained from spinach chloroplasts and are taken through cycles of freezing and thawing. Several lines of evidence, including gel electrophoresis and freeze-fracture electron microscopy, indicate that an actual addition of lipid has taken place. Structural analysis by freeze-fracture shows that intramembrane particles are widely separated after the addition of large amounts of lipid, with one exception: large hexagonal lattices of particles appear in some regions of the membrane. These lattices are identical in appearance with lattices formed from a single purified component of the membrane known as chlorophyll-protein complex II. The suggestion that the presence of such lattices in lipid-enriched membranes reflects a profound rearrangement of photosynthetic structures has been confirmed by analysis of the fluorescence emission spectra of natural and lipid-enriched membranes. Specifically, lipid addition in each of the cases we have studied results in the apparent detachment of chlorophyll-protein complex II from photosynthetic reaction centers. It is concluded that specific arrangements of components in the photosynthetic membrane, necessary for the normal functioning of the membrane in the light reaction of photosynthesis, can be regulated to a large extent by the lipid content of the membrane.