Nondermatomal Somatosensory Deficits (NDSDs) and Pain: State-of-the-Art Review

Nondermatomal somatosensory deficits (NDSDs) are large sensory deficits not conforming to dermatomal/root territories, and no structural pathology accounts for them. They can be very mild or very dense, highly variable, or extremely fixed over time and may be very disabling. It is now accepted by mainstream pain science that they are the product of a central neurophysiological phenomenon. We demonstrated in this paper through literature review and through multiple clinical cases that NDSDs (a) have a psychobiological substrate at the level of the central nervous system, (b) are very frequently associated with chronic pain and/or psychotraumatic experiences, (c) occur very frequently in the context of conversion disorder, but (d) can also occur in the absence of conversion disorders, (e) can be superimposed on structural neurological deficits, and (f) respond positively, or at least in part, to sodium amobarbital (commonly referred to as the “truth serum”).     

Snap Judgment: Implicit Perceptions of a (Political) Court

Do people fundamentally perceive the Supreme Court as a political institution? Despite the central importance of this question to theories of public evaluations of the Court and its decisions, it remains largely unanswered. To this end, we develop a new, implicit measure of political perceptions of the Court. This new measure relies on a categorization task wherein respondents quickly associate political or non-political attributes with the Supreme Court relative to institutions that are high or low in politicization. We find that the public implicitly perceives the Court as less political than Congress (high politicization) and more political than traffic court (low politicization) and that this measure is distinct from self-reported (explicit) perceptions of politicization. Finally, we find that implicit perceptions have a distinct effect on predicting diffuse support for the court and specific support for one of two Court decisions.     

SETTING THE SCENE

This article focuses on the Family Law Act of Australia and its subsequent impact on the Australian courts. There is an analysis of the historical and social factors that led to the legislation. The article also discusses the constitutional precedent and framework surrounding the Family Law Act's inception. Finally, the article addresses the future of the Australian courts under the Family Law Act.     

A comparison of instruments for assessing competency to stand trial

The present study compared two instruments for assessing competency to stand trial, The Competency Screening Test and a revised version of The Georgia Court Competency Test. in a sample of 140 defendants admitted to the forensic unit of a state hospital for court-ordered pretrial evaluation. Scores on the tests were used to predict staff decisions about competency. Correlates of scores on the two tests also were examined. The tests were highly correlated with one another and with the decisions of forensic examiners. Although neither of these instruments should provide the sole basis for competency decisions, both may be useful components of a comprehensive program of competency evaluation.Portions of this paper were presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, Washington, D.C., August, 1986.     

The Politics of Beauty: The Effects of Partisan Bias on Physical Attractiveness

Does politics cause people to be perceived as more or less attractive? As a type of social identity, party identifiers often exhibit in-group bias, positively evaluating members of their own party and, especially under conditions of competition, negatively evaluating out-party members. The current experiment tests whether political in-party and out-party status affects perceptions of the physical attractiveness of target persons. In a nationally representative internet sample of U.S. adults during the 2012 presidential election, we presented participants with photos of individuals and varied information about their presidential candidate preference. Results indicate that partisans, regardless of gender, rate target individuals as less attractive if they hold a dissimilar candidate preference. Female partisans, however, were more likely to rate target persons as more physically attractive when they held a similar candidate preference whereas no such effect was found for male partisans.     

Mobilizing Interests: Group Participation and Competition in Direct Democracy Elections

We examine group mobilization in direct democracy elections by assessing the conditions under which interests will actively support or oppose ballot measures. Motivating our analysis is that the decision to mobilize is driven by the costs and benefits of group participation, a calculus shaped by issue characteristics, state political institutions, and the electoral context. Using data from initiative and referendum measures appearing on statewide ballots from 2003 to 2008, we find that ballot measures involving social and tax issues are likely to produce competition among groups and increase the overall number of groups involved. In addition, we find that group competition and levels of mobilization increased in response to how difficult it would be for the legislature to undo the change brought about from passage of a ballot measure. Lastly, group competition and levels of mobilization increased for ballot measures appearing in nonpresidential election years and for ballot measures featuring a close election. Taken together, our results suggest that groups engage strategically in direct democracy elections to pursue a mix of policy and political goals.     

From public action to public administration: where does it lead?

Minnowbrook I and Minnowbrook II differ in one important way. Minnowbrook I involved mostly scholars who came to the field primarily through formal academic training. Several of those who participated in Minnowbrook II are products of comrnunity-based applied revisions of so-called new public administration in the 1960s. Radin served as a union employee and then a staff member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Cooper worked as a minister at several inner-city churches. Both Radin and Cooper took their doctorates later in their careers, after extensive street level experience. From this perspective they focus on the unique political setting of public administration, on the field's publicness, on the salience of theories of change, on a process perspective, and on “soft” research methodologies.

Through much of its history, the field of public administration in the United States has been punctuated by figures who moved from the arena of action to opportunities for reflection, either through writing or teaching or both. A review of the literature of the field up to the 1960s provides strong evidence of this pattern and is particularly illustrated by two important eras of public administration—the municipal reform period and the post-New Deal period.⁽¹⁾ The decade of he 1960s was one of the few periods of the twentieth century in which action was not the predominant pathway to concern about administrative issues. In contrast to this earlier pattern, the generation of public administration academics in the 1960s focused on writing and teaching as a goal unto itself, rather than as a way of searching for the meaning of action in which one was previously engaged.

Indeed, the original group of participants in the Minnowbrook conference came to the field of public administration through formal academic training; their quest for values, relevancy, and meaning developed as they looked out of the windows of the academy to the turbulent society of which they were a part.⁽²⁾

While some were on the inside looking out during the 1960s, others were attempting to define meaning and relevancy within the world of action rather than the world of the academy. This paper is an attempt to explore the influence of that action experience on the public administration field. The authors of this paper spent the 1960s engaged in a part of the social action that spawned the “new” public administration movement.

We believe that our involvements in the 1960s led to the development of perspectives on public administration which are somewhat different from those of individuals who were primarily involved in academe during those turbulent times. This paper begins with a short autobiographical account which provides the personal context for our perspectives. It then contrasts our views with those of the Minnowbrook group and focuses on those elements that make up our perspective on the field.     

Book reviews

William Pelz, THE SPARTAKUSBUND AND THE GERMAN WORKING CLASS MOVEMENT, 1914–1919. (Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1987)

Bogdan Denitch. THE END OF THE COLD WAR: EUROPEAN UNITY, SOCIALISM AND THE SHIFT IN GLOBAL POWER. (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1990.)

Terry Eagleton, ed., RAYMOND WILLIAMS: A CRITICAL READER (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989)

Michel de Certeau, THE PRACTICE OF EVERYDAY LIFE (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988)

Judith Marcus and Zoltan Tarr, eds., GEORG LUKÁCS: THEORY, CULTURE AND POLITICS (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1989).

Ian Shapiro, POLITICAL CRITICISM. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), xii; 338pp.