Genetic psychology monographs最新文献

The present study examined the impressions of personality formed from written descriptions of behavior by over 200 hospitalized male schizophrenics, tested individually when they seemed in contact with reality. One description was of extrovert (E) behavior by a youth named Jim; another was of his introvert (I) behavior in similar settings. Combined communications gave one description immediately after the other. After 150 patients read one of the communications, they were generally willing and able to respond to a 36-item questionnaire about Jim. This also occurred when 96 patients were asked to answer it before any communication, on the basis of their expectations about Jim; 56 subsequently received a communication, followed by readministration of the questionnaire. Patients' responses, before or after the communications, revealed few pathological signs and, like those of normal Ss, could usually be classified as E or I. Patients had less differential effects, and far fewer I responses than normal Ss. Patients and normals showed preconceptions of Jim as extrovertive. Results were discussed in light of the projective hypothesis and other theories.

This study was designed to examine the paternal determinants of male adolescent marijuana use in the context of the mother-son and parental relationships. In addition, parental factors affecting experimental vs regular use of marijuana were examined. Two hundred forty-six male college students and their fathers were administered written questionnaires. Results indicated that the father's personality attributes and socialization techniques are associated with the son's use of marijuana despite control on the mother-son relationship. Fathers of marijuana users score higher on measures of psychopathology and unconventionality, and are less likely to have established close relationships with their sons. In addition, marijuana users more than nonusers have unaffectionate mothers and parents with less harmonious marital relations. Also of importance were interactions within the family system. The significance of these second-order effects highlights the importance of examining the father-son relation in the context of mother-son and parental interactions.

Piaget and Inhelder, and Lowenfeld proposed theories on the development of spatial representation based on certain features present in children's drawings. The purpose of the present study was to provide an objective evaluation of these theories. Three raters examined drawings from children (N = 107) ages five to 13 for 38 of Lowenfeld's and Piaget's structural features included in the categories of Composition, Dimension, and Meaning. A confusion matrix and an index of rater reliability were used to assess the reliability of each feature. A structured key-word and chi-square analysis of the 23 reliably rated features produced a three-period model of spatial development similar to the theories presented by Piaget and Lowenfeld. Implications for future research were discussed, and children's drawings were suggested as diagnostic screening tools for the evaluation of children's overall development.

Pregnancy resolution decisions of unmarried adolescents were studied with the use of an expected utility decision model that included psychological, background, and economic variables. Discriminant function analysis of the decision to have an abortion or to deliver the child indicated that psychological, background, and economic variables each made significant contributions to the successful classification of teenagers (approximately 87.5% of the women were classified correctly). A four-item Abortion Approval Index, the women's perception of the prospective fathers' abortion opinion, personal knowledge of other unmarried teenagers who delivered, self-reported grade average, and receipt of state financial aid in the form of AFDC or Medicaid payments were the most powerful discriminators. For adolescents who chose to deliver, a second discriminant function indicated that only one economic factor--receipt of state financial aid--successfully discriminated those who married from those who became single mothers (approximately 72% of the women were classified correctly). Results are discussed in terms of possible decision strategies and sequences used by adolescents and the value of using a decision framework that incorporates psychological, background, and economic factors.

According to the modular model, skill development proceeds through the development of stable units of action called subroutines. The development of these programmed units frees the child to attend to those parts of the action not yet mastered. Once consolidated they can be applied to many different contexts. Thus, complex skill sequences can be produced. The theory generates several predictions, most fundamental being an association between increasing proficiency and increasing consistency. Experiment 1 was a longitudinal study in which six 12-month-old children were observed over a period of eight months. Various manipulative tasks were used, notably the placement of rods in corresponding holes. Experiment 2 was a cross-sectional study of performance consistency in rod placement (N = 30). Results showed that consistency decreases as proficiency increases. It is concluded therefore that the programmed components of complex actions are not characterized by the invariance predicted by modular theory.

Third grade children (40 females and 40 males) were first classified with the Matching Familiar Figures Test and then were given an Incomplete Figures Test designed to test Kagan's risk hypothesis for conceptual tempo. In the latter test, the children were shown sets of line drawings in which each successive drawing in a set revealed progressively more of the given object. They were required to guess the identity of the object after seeing each drawing by making either a high risk "outloud" guess (scored with feedback) or a low risk "whisper" guess (scored with no feedback). As predicted, reflective children made significantly fewer incorrect outloud guesses and significantly more correct whisper guesses than the impulsive children. This demonstrated that the reflective children followed a more cautious guessing strategy than the impulsive children, which provided support for Kagan's risk hypothesis.

A review of the conceptual tempo literature indicated that students' conceptual tempos are important influences on a wide variety of learning tasks. While research in the modification of conceptual tempo has been mixed, the results generally indicate that impulsivity can be attenuated and that the more reflective behavior patterns generalize across settings. The implications of conceptual tempo research are examined with a specific emphasis on issues related to health education.

This study compared Cognitive Self-Modeling [CSM(N = 39)]--a new treatment using a highly structured, cognitively oriented approach to increasing interpersonal skills among adolescents--with Conventional Group Counselling [CGC(N = 40)]--a widely accepted nondirective approach. A no-treatment group of which about half were pretested, served as a control [NTC(N = 18)]. Students (N = 97, mean age = 16.5) in a school setting were administered self-report trait and behavior indices at pretest, posttest (six weeks), follow-up-1 (10 weeks) and follow-up-2 (52 weeks). In addition, a measure of participation in clubs and organizations was administered at pre and posttest. Scheffé post hoc analyses revealed significant results for both treatment groups: CSM changes occurred early (posttest) and generally remained stable over time (follow-up-1 and 2), whereas CGC changes emerged slowly with significant findings on all measures at follow-up-2. NTC volunteers made no significant changes. Also, no differences were obtained between students who were pretested and those who were not, indicating that pretesting made no contribution to outcome.

Research with gastric and duodenal ulcers is traced briefly. Psychosocial factors, such as age, culture, and sex, influence the incidence of ulcers. Recent research has discovered two sets of receptors in the stomach for pepsinogen I and II; new drugs which inhibit the secretion of stomach acid now can be used along with older drugs and diets which counteract the stomach acid. Psychologists can make an important contribution by assisting ulcer patients to respond to treatment and to avoid precipitating situations.

A group of 35 reading disable (RD) boys and 35 matched controls were studied over a two-year period in order to evaluate the validity of traditional hypotheses about the cause of serious reading impairment in preadolescent boys for whom the common disadvantages of economic privation, bilingualism, and emotional instability were absent. The popular hypothesis of perceptual deficit was not supported by the data, although the finding that most RD boys have a short-term memory deficit was affirmed. The most important new finding was that about one-fourth of the RD boys had serious difficulty in maintaining an efficient set to process and/or evaluate information, especially when that information was contained in oral speech.