The influence of alcohol on cognitive conflict.

The influence of alcohol on cognitive conflict between individuals was studied by means of an experiment that was designed to be representative of real life negotiating situations, where alcohol is consumed and where two parties are required to find new common solutions to problems that they have previously learned to solve differently by themselves. The subjects were 60 male students of technology divided into experimental and control groups. The amount of alcohol (whisky) consumed by the experimental subjects produced approximately 0.08% blood alcohol concentration. In the experiment, the cognitive conflict situation was created by first training subjects to solve diagnostic medical tasks individually and then bringing two differently trained subjects together to find common solutions to similar diagnostic problems. The results showed that small amounts of alcohol do not influence cognitive behavior in a social situation where an individual has to find new solutions to problems that he has originally learned to solve in a certain way by himself.

Acceptability of a nonsurgical method to terminate very early pregnancy in comparison to vacuum aspiration.

Seventy-seven patients applying for abortion during early pregnancy consented to be treated by prostaglandin vaginal suppositories or vacuum aspiration by Kahrman catheter in a random design. They also consented to participate in an acceptability study of the two procedures. Attitude and preference measures were obtained by interviewing and rating scales on three occasions: before assignment to abortion procedure, immediately after treatment, and two weeks later. The first 30 patients with complete abortion by either procedure participated in the acceptability study. Both treatments were positively evaluated but perceived to have very different characteristics. The preference for the method used for own treatment increased in both groups. Before treatment 1/3 of the patients in each group had a positive attitude to a self-administered method to induce abortion outside clinics. This proportion increased significantly after treatment but only in the group that received prostaglandin by the vaginal route.

PIP: 77 women in the 5th to 8th week of pregnancy who applied for abortion were treated with prostaglandin vaginal suppositories or vacuum aspiration in a randomized design in order to explore this new nonsurgical method in comparison with the vacuum aspiration procedure. The vaginal suppositories were given on 4 occasions at 3-hour intervals. Vacuum aspiration was performed with a Kahrman catheter, size 5 or 6. Observations were obtained for each patient immediately prior to the 1st appointment with the gynecologist, on the day of abortion before the patient returned home after treatment, and 2 weeks after treatment when the patient returned for the gynecological examination. Vacuum aspiration and vaginal administration were equally effective in the group of 77 patients. All patients but 1 woman in the vacuum aspiration group aborted as a result of the treatment. Abortion was complete in 95% of cases for vacuum aspiration and 93% for vaginal administration of prostaglandin. The patients also agreed to participate in an acceptability study of the 2 procedures. Attitude and preference measures were obtained by interviewing and rating scales on the same 3 occasions as other observations were obtained. The first 30 patients with complete abortion by either procedure participated in the acceptability study. Both treatments were positively evaluated but perceived to have different characteristics. The preference for the method used for own treatment increased in both groups. Before treatment 1/3 of the women in each group had positive attitude to a self-administered method to induce abortion outside clinics. This proportion increased significantly following treatment but only in the group that received prostaglandin by the vaginal route.

Integration of information in a clinical judgment task, an empirical comparison of six models.

Six models were compared for their effectiveness in reproducing six clinical psychologists' judgments of 38 patients on intelligence, ability to establish contact, and control of affect and impulses. In two of the models, subjective weights were used in the prediction of a judge's ratings. The judges based their judgments solely on verbal protocols from the Rorschach, a sentence completion test, and the Thematic Apperception test. The stability of the linear aspect of the judgment process was very high but decreased as the depth of interpretation of the rating variable increased. The nonlinear aspect of the judgment process had considerably low stability. In general, a model based on subjective weights was most effective in reproducing the judges' ratings.

PREDICTIVE EFFICIENCY AS A FUNCTION OF AMOUNT OF INFORMATION.

The effect of changing the amount of information on judges' predictive efficiency in a clinical prediction task was studied. Thirty judges predicted 30 students' average achievement scores on the basis of different amount of test data. One group of judges had information about the intercorrelations among the tests and the ecologkal validity of the tests. Another group of judges had only informahion about which tests were used. The predictive efficiency was not a monotonically increasing function of amount of test data. The most marked result was that the relative predictive efficiency decreased from four to six tests in both groups.