Patients exposed to a surgical safety checklist experience better postoperative outcomes, but this could simply reflect wider quality of care in hospitals where checklist use is routine.

Samples of Americans of Japanese, Chinese, and European ancestry evidencing clinical levels of depression were administered a depression symptom checklist, and the results were submitted to a factor analysis. Groups differed with respect to the functional dimensions expressed by the patterns. In general, existential symptoms dominated the patterns of the Japanese and Caucasians, while somatic symptoms were more characteristic of the Chinese. In addition, the Japanese evidenced an interpersonal symptom pattern, and both oriental groups manifested a cognitive symptom pattern. A theory was proposed which suggested that symptoms are related to extensions of the self-conditioned via socialization experiences. The role of individual differences, stress, and cultural definitions of disorder in determining the expression of depression was also discussed.

This paper reports a systematic study of a man (T.E.) with astonishing mnemonic skills. After a brief description of his most favoured mnemonic technique, the 'figure alphabet', his performance and the mnemonic techniques used on five classical memory tasks are described. These are: one task involving both short-and long-term memory (the Atkinson-Shiffrin 'keeping track' task), two tasks involving just long-term memory (recall of number matrices and the effects of imagery and deep structure complexity upon recall), and two tasks involving just short-term memory (short-term retention of individual verbal items and digit span). Whenever possible, T.E.'s performance was compared with that of normal subjects, and also with other mnemonists who have been studied in the past.There was no evidence to suggest that T.E. has any unusual basic memory abilities; rather he employs mnemonic techniques to aid memory, and the evidence suggests that previous mnemonists who have been studied by psychologists have used very similar techniques.

No abstract