The Point Subtraction Aggression Paradigm (PSAP) is a validated behavioral measure of aggression in response to provocation. Canonically, multiple sessions continue until performance asymptotes, requiring significant time. We sought to examine whether use of the PSAP-first-session ("PSAP-FS") had acceptable construct validity for group data, potentially expanding the settings in which the PSAP may be useful. One hundred male and female young adult subjects completed the PSAP-FS and additional behavioral measures of aggression, and provided information related to risk factors. The PSAP-FS correlated significantly with known risk factors of aggression. The PSAP-FS, which measures aggression in the present, correlated well with measures of recent aggression and less strongly with life history of aggression. The PSAP-FS had satisfactory validity properties for use where group-level data are of interest.

There is a large variety of opinion regarding appropriateness of specific operative and nonoperative management procedures and surgical timing among the surgeons polled who manage cervical trauma. This implies that there is no widely accepted standard management procedure for many of these injuries.

College students were trained on problems similar to the water jar problems developed by Luchins (1942). Some students were instructed that a particular rule would solve all the problems, others had the same problems but were not instructed about the rule, and a third set of students had a series of novel problems in which no single rule operated throughout. In two experiments students in the instructed rule group not only performed best in training but also performed best when transferred to a condition in which a single novel rule was appropriate. Although results from the set of conditions most similar to those of Luchins suggested that students sometimes inappropriately persisted in rule usage, the overall results suggest that rigidity is not a necessary outcome of instructed problem solving. Indeed, many of the results were consistent with the notion that instructed problem solving is flexible problem solving.

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