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Speech intelligibility and recall were examined in normally hearing and hearing-impaired hospitalized patients. Fifty-two participants completed testing in a sound-attenuated booth. While listening to a recorded male speaker talking at conversational level, participants were asked to identify and remember the last (key) word in each of a series of five sentences presented in hospital noise with or without voices at three decibel levels (59, 64, and 69 dBA). Noise level and sentence context had the largest impact on key word identification (p < .001). Noise level had the largest impact on key word recall (p < .001). Type of hospital noise and hearing loss also significantly influenced performance on both measures. These findings have implications for healthcare providers communicating with hospitalized patients.

This article provides ideas, information, and resources that may be helpful in conducting psychological evaluations of people who have been tortured. The first section discusses essential steps, including achieving competence; clarifying the purpose; selecting methods appropriate to the individual, the purpose, and the situation; addressing issues of culture and language; maintaining awareness of ways in which the presence of third parties and recording can affect the assessment; attending carefully to similarities, echoes, and triggers; and actively searching for ways to transcend our own limited experiences and misleading expectations. The second section discusses avoiding five common errors that undermine these evaluations: mismatched validity; confirmation bias; confusing retrospective and prospective accuracy (switching conditional probabilities); ignoring the effects of low base rates; and misinterpreting dual high base rates. The third section identifies resources on the web (e.g., major centers, legal services, online courses, information about asylum and refuge, networks of torture survivors, human rights organizations providing information and services, guides to assessment) that people working with torture survivors, refugees, and asylum-seekers may find helpful.

The current spotlight on assessment in education raises ethical issues as practices evolve. This study documents ethical conflicts faced by teachers in the United States regarding assessment of students. Critical incidents generated by practising teachers revealed a majority of reported conflicts related to score pollution, and conflicts frequently arose between teachers’ perceptions of institutional demands and the needs of students. The most frequently mentioned assessment topics causing conflict included grading, standardised testing, and special populations. These findings suggest that explicit guidelines for defining and avoiding unethical behaviour would be helpful to teachers in developing their assessment practices.

In the aftermath of 9-11, the American Psychological Association, one of the largest U.S. health professions, changed its ethics code so that it now runs counter to the Nuremberg Ethic. This historic post-9-11 change allows psychologists to set aside their ethical responsibilities whenever they are in irreconcilable conflict with military orders, governmental regulations, national and local laws, and other forms of governing legal authority. This article discusses the history, wording, rationale, and implications of the ethical standard that U.S. psychologists adopted 7 years ago, particularly in light of concerns over health care professionals' involvement in detainee interrogations and the controversy over psychologists' prominent involvement in settings like the Guantánamo Bay Detainment Camp and the Abu Ghraib prison. It discusses possible approaches to the complex dilemmas arising when ethical responsibilities conflict with laws, regulations, or other governing legal authority.

The Student Evaluation Standards call for student evaluations to be ethical, fair, useful, feasible, and accurate. However, little is known about educators' perceptions about the ethics of student evaluation practices. This study was designed to examine the degree of agreement among administrators about ethical student evaluation practices. It describes the results from a Web-based survey of principals and principal candidates in which they read a brief scenario and indicated whether the student evaluation practice in the depiction was ethical or unethical. Results show diversity in educators' perceptions about the ethicality of student evaluation practices and indicate a need for continued dialog and professional training of practitioners in ethical conduct.

Nonsexual boundary crossings can enrich psychotherapy, serve the treatment plan, and strengthen the therapist-client working relationship. They also can undermine the therapy, disrupt the therapist-patient alliance, and cause harm to clients. Building on T. G. Gutheil and G. O. Gabbard's (1993) conceptualization of boundary crossings and boundary violations, this article discusses and illustrates grounding boundary decisions in a sound approach to ethics. We provides nine useful steps in deciding whether to cross a boundary, describe common cognitive errors in boundary decision making, and offer nine helpful steps to take when a boundary crossing has negative effects.

Student evaluations should “be ethical, fair, useful, feasible, and accurate” [JCSEE (2003). The student evaluation standards. Arlen Gullickson, Chair. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin]. This study focuses on defining ethical behavior and examining educators’ ethical judgments in relation to assessment. It describes the results from a web-based survey of educators in which they read a brief scenario and indicated whether the student evaluation practice in the depiction was ethical or unethical. Results showed strong agreement among the educators on fewer than half of the scenarios presented in this study. These findings suggest that assessment is currently an educational realm without professional consensus.

A profession's values—including its ethical values—are reflected in the degree to which its structures are accessible to people with disabilities. The profession expresses its values through the decisions of its members to effectively address barriers to access or to maintain those barriers through action or inaction. What barriers can block access to the field for psychologists and psychology students with disabilities? What barriers can block access for people with disabilities to the services that psychologists provide? This brief editorial notes three major kinds of such barriers.

The recovered memory controversy is a contentious mix of conflicting claims, theories, and research. For example, reports of recovered memories of child sex abuse may be described as the result of implanting, false memory syndrome, repression, dissociation, motivated forgetting, directed forgetting, amnesia, betrayal trauma, retroactive inhibition, suggestion, self-induced hypnotic trance states, personality disorder, thought suppression, retrieval inhibition, cognitive gating, or biological protective processes. These terms may be used without clear definition or scientific basis and may unintentionally foster pseudoscientific beliefs. Drawing on Daubert and other sources, this article suggests using 6 basic sets of crossexamination questions to assess the material in this area and to expose pseudoscience. These 6 questions focus on research basis, unclear terms and deductive fallacies, inferential errors and confirmation bias, links in the chain of reasoning, ad hominem fallacies, and original sources.

The credibility of recovered memories of child sexual abuse following a long period of repression remains controversial in the mental health field. Some have argued that recovered memories are the work of overzealous therapists who implant such material. To learn more about the steps clinicians follow when they encounter such reports, a questionnaire was mailed to 300 female and 300 male licensed psychologists randomly selected from the 1994 American Psychological Association Membership Register. The survey included 1 of 4 versions of a vignette in which a 14-year-old girl suddenly remembers (or always remembered and just decided to disclose) sexual abuse that occurred at age 2 or 8 years. Survey forms were returned by 49% (144 females and 140 males). Only 1 therapist reached a firm conclusion about the validity of the abuse report based on the vignette alone; the rest indicated a need for further information, disputing claims that therapists respond to allegations of abuse with reflexive certainty. Reports were more likely to be believed when the age at abuse was 8 years rather than 2 years, by younger therapists (45 years and under), and by women who were nonpsychoanalytically oriented. Whether the abuse memory had been repressed did not significantly affect beliefs about its likely occurrence. Respondents also were given a list of 12 possible responses to an abuse disclosure and asked to check those they were most likely to follow. The most commonly cited responses were: discuss the allegations further in the next session (80%), consult with other clinicians (52%), file a child abuse report (40%), consult with an attorney about legal responsibilities (36%), schedule a session with all family members (30%), and schedule psychological testing (28%). The finding that less than 50% of therapists would file a mandated report of suspected child abuse indicates a need for states to more clearly define the criteria for filing such reports.

A national survey sent to 450 female and 450 male licensed psychologists (return rate = 42%) found that about 73% of the participants reported encountering at least one patient who claimed to recover previously forgotten memories of childhood sex abuse. About 21% of the therapists concluded that, for at least one patient, the memory was false; about 50% of the therapists reported that at least one patient had found external validation for the abuse; about 12% of the therapists reported at least one client who later decided that the memory was false; and about 15% of the therapists reported that at least one client who recovered memories filed a civil or criminal complaint. About 15% of the therapists reported encountering at least one patient alleged to have sexually abused a child who later recovered previously forgotten memories of the abuse. About 21% of these therapists concluded that, in at least one case, the memory was false; about 6% of the therapists concluded that, in at least one case, there ap...

A survey form sent to psychologists (Pope, Keith-Spiegel, & Tabachnick, 1986) was adapted and sent to 1,000 clinical social workers (return rate = 45%). Most participants reported sexual attraction to a client, causing (for most) guilt, anxiety, or confusion. Some reported having sexual fantasies about a client while engaging in sex with someone other than a client. Relatively few (3.6% men; 0.5% women) reported sex with a client; training was related to likelihood of offending, though the effect is small and complex. An analysis of eight national studies (data from 5,148 therapists) found significant effects for gender (more male offenders) and year of study (about 10% annual decrease in reported offenses since 1977) but not profession (i.e., no difference among psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers). Most social workers reported no graduate training whatsoever about sexual attraction; only 10% reported adequate training.

After 9–11, the United States began interrogating detainees at settings such as Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and Guantanamo. The American Psychological Association (APA) supported psychologists’ involvement in interrogations, adopted formal policies, and made an array of public assurances. This article’s purpose is to highlight key APA decisions, policies, procedures, documents, and public statements in urgent need of rethinking and to suggest questions that may be useful in a serious assessment, such as, “However well intended, were APA’s interrogation policies ethically sound?”; “Were they valid, realistic, and able to achieve their purpose?”; “Were other approaches available that would address interrogation issues more directly, comprehensively, and actively, that were more ethically and scientifically based, and that would have had a greater likelihood of success?”; and “Should APA continue to endorse its post-9–11 detainee interrogation policies?”

One of the most innovative and ambitious attempts to describe the human personality in ways that are both quantifiable and empirically testable is the theoretical approach of Raymond B. Cattell. Expert witnesses who offer testimony based on the Cattell tests (e.g., 16PF, CAQ, 8SQ, HSPQ, CPQ, MAT, SMAT) face special challenges and pitfalls during direct and cross-examination. This article provides sample deposition and cross-examination questions that expert witnesses may use to assess their own knowledge of the theory and tests and to prepare to offer testimony about assessments based on Cattell's tests.

This introduction to a series of articles on test feedback highlights 10 fundamental aspects of the feedback process: (a) feedback as process; (b) clarification of tasks and roles; (c) responding effectively to a crisis; (d) informed consent and informed refusal; (e) framing the feedback; (f) acknowledging fallibility; (g) countertransference and the misuse of feedback; (h) records, documentation, and follow-up; (i) looking toward the future; and (j) assessing and understanding important reactions

L'auteur s'interroge sur les rapports sexuels pouvant exister entre un therapeute et son patient. Une reflexion generale sur le probleme et des solutions pour supprimer ces abus sont proposees

During the last quarter century, research has begun to provide an empirical basis for testing and refining our conceptions about the occurrence and effects of therapist-patient sexual intimacies. Published reports of research in this area have not only presented intriguing findings but also emphasized the importance of considering the methodological limitations (e.g., selective memory in retrospective studies, reporting biases, unrepresentative samples, and distortions in data obtained from secondary sources) that qualify those findings. Research findings are reviewed suggesting that therapist-patient sexual involvement may be systematically associated with a variety of factors (e.g., gender, age, the use of nonsexual touch in therapy) and may have significantly decreased during the last 12 years.

How to Survive and Thrive as a Therapist: Information, Ideas, and Resources for Psychologists in Practice “presents in a concise format information, ideas, and resources for the practicalities of practice” (p. xi). Kenneth S. Pope and Melba J. T. Vasquez, the authors, have recognized that the greatest difficulty in starting any task is to know how to begin. Whether starting a practice or changing an established practice requires knowing one's self and accepting circumstances and the therapist, as they exist today. Pope and Vasquez gently and successfully lead the readers through a series of questions to help therapists find a comfortable fit for their goals in the changing market for psychological services.