The empirical literature exploring lawyers and their moral decision making is limited despite the “crisis” of unethical and unprofessional behavior in the bar that has been well documented for over a decade. In particular we are unaware of any empirical studies that investigate the moral landscape of the health lawyer’s practice. In an effort to address this gap in the literature, an interdisciplinary team of researchers at Vanderbilt University designed an empirical study to gather preliminary evidence regarding the moral reasoning of health care attorneys. The primary research question was how health lawyers respond when they encounter ethical or moral dilemmas in their practice for which the law fails to offer a bright-line solution. In exploring this question, we sought to understand better what motivations or influences guide action when health lawyers confront ethical quandaries, and whether there are specific differences, e.g., gender, experience, or religiosity, that are associated with specific responses to situations testing ethical or moral boundaries.

A survey of the sandy beach at Port Erin, Isle of Man, was made in. September, 1931. Observations were made, at a number of stations, involving simultaneous records of the macro-fauna and its density, and certain physical and chemical factors of the sand and interstitial water, as well as tidal level on the beach. The results enable certain general conclusions to be drawn as to the causes of the observed distribution of species, and of the differences between the faunas of this and some Scottish beaches. Plans are given, indicating tidal contours, salinity, and grade composition, in situ on the beach, together with frequency diagrams for five dominant species.

Twenty-three chronic nonfluent aphasia patients with moderate or severe word-finding impairments and 11 with profound word-finding impairments received two novel picture-naming treatments. The intention treatment initiated picture-naming trials with a complex left-hand movement and was designed to enhance right frontal participation during word retrieval. The attention treatment required patients to view visual stimuli for picture-naming trials in their left hemispace and was designed to enhance right posterior perisylvian participation during word retrieval. Because the intention treatment addressed action mechanisms and nonfluent aphasia reflects difficulty initiating or maintaining action (i.e., language output), it was hypothesized that intention component of the treatment would enhance re-acquisition of picture naming more than the attention component. Patients with moderate and severe word-finding impairment showed gains with both treatments but greater incremental improvement from one treatment phase to the next with the intention than the attention treatment. Thus, the hypothesis that intention component would be a more active constituent than the attention component was confirmed for these patients. Patients with profound word-finding impairment showed some improvement with both treatments but no differential effects for the intention treatment. Almost all patients who showed treatment gains on either treatment also demonstrated generalization from trained to untrained items. (JINS, 2007, 13, 582–594.)

Background. There is an ongoing debate about the best way to classify eating disorders. This study examined potential subtypes of bulimia nervosa.

Method. Latent class analysis (LCA) was used to identify subtypes of bulimic symptomatology, utilizing data from 234 respondents in a cohort of black and white young women (n=2054). Participants were administered gated screening questions from the Eating Disorders Examination to determine DSM-IV diagnoses of eating disorders.

Results. A 3-class solution was judged best. Class 1, the ‘purger subtype’ (n=116), was characterized by vomiting, the use of fasting/diet pills, and relatively little bingeing. Class 2, the ‘binger subtype’ (n=97) comprised women who engaged in bingeing but minimal compensatory behaviors. Class 3, the ‘binge-purger subtype’ (n=21) had relatively high rates of all symptoms. Findings of differences between the three subtypes on validator variables and differences between the three subtypes compared to non-eating disorder groups suggest validity of the three bulimic subtypes identified in our analyses. Ethnicity and class membership were associated [χ2(3)=21·89, p<0·0001], reflecting a greater percentage of white women than black women in Class 1 and a greater percentage of black women than white women in Class 2.

Conclusions. LCA revealed one subtype that was similar to bulimia nervosa and two subtypes of bulimic symptomatology that did not meet criteria for bulimia nervosa yet appear to be clinically significant. Further study of the psychological correlates, course, and treatment response of these classes would be of clinical interest.

Background. Little is known about the extent to which negative life events predict depressive symptoms in ethnically diverse groups or whether this relationship is proximal or enduring.

Method. The relationship between negative life events in adolescence and depressive symptoms in young adulthood was studied in a sample of over 1300 black and white female adolescents. Five domains of life events were assessed at age 16 years and depressive symptoms were measured at age 18 and again at age 21 years. Questions of interest included whether the association continued over time and whether there were specific domains of life events that predicted symptoms better than others.

Results. The total number of negative life events at time 1 predicted depressive symptoms at both time 2 and time 3. Interpersonal loss events and other adversities, however, predicted depressive symptoms only at time 2, whereas at time 3, only interpersonal trauma was a significant predictor. No ethnic differences were found, indicating that the relationship between life events and depressive symptoms appears to be similar for black and white adolescent girls.

Conclusions. The results suggest that negative life events and some specific type of stressors increase the likelihood of the onset of depression symptoms in future years, for both black and white girls. Early preventive efforts should be directed at adolescents who experience loss due to death of a significant other, traumatic events, and psychosocial adversities to forestall the development of depressive symptoms.

Most processes or forms of learning have been treated almost as special creations, each as an independent process unrelated to others. This review offers an evolutionary cladogram linking nearly one hundred forms of learning and showing the paths through which they evolved.

Many processes have multiple forms. There are at least five imprinting processes, eleven varieties of Pavlovian conditioning, ten of instrumental conditioning, and eight forms of mimicry and imitation.

Song learning evolved independently in at least six groups of animals, and movement imitation in three (great apes, cetaceans and psittacine birds). The cladogram also involves at least eight new processes: abstract concept formation, percussive mimicry, cross-modal imitation, apo-conditioning, hybrid conditioning, proto-pantomime, prosodic mimicry, and image-mediated learning.

At least eight of the processes evolved from more than one source. Multiple sources are of course consistent with modern evolutionary theory, as seen in some obligate symbionts, and gene-swapping organisms. Song learning is believed to have evolved from two processes: auditory imprinting and skill learning. Many single words evolved from three sources: vocal mimicry, discrimination learning, and abstract concept formation.

fMRI was used to determine the frontal, basal ganglia, and thalamic structures engaged by three facets of language generation: lexical status of generated items, the use of semantic vs. phonological information during language generation, and rate of generation. During fMRI, 21 neurologically normal subjects performed four tasks: generation of nonsense syllables given beginning and ending consonant blends, generation of words given a rhyming word, generation of words given a semantic category at a fast rate (matched to the rate of nonsense syllable generation), and generation of words given a semantic category at a slow rate (matched to the rate of generating of rhyming words). Components of a left pre-SMA–dorsal caudate nucleus–ventral anterior thalamic loop were active during word generation from rhyming or category cues but not during nonsense syllable generation. Findings indicate that this loop is involved in retrieving words from pre-existing lexical stores. Relatively diffuse activity in the right basal ganglia (caudate nucleus and putamen) also was found during word-generation tasks but not during nonsense syllable generation. Given the relative absence of right frontal activity during the word generation tasks, we suggest that the right basal ganglia activity serves to suppress right frontal activity, preventing right frontal structures from interfering with language production. Current findings establish roles for the left and the right basal ganglia in word generation. Hypotheses are discussed for future research to help refine our understanding of basal ganglia functions in language generation. (JINS, 2003, 9, 1061–1077.)