Genetic psychology monographs最新文献

This study was an attempt to investigate some of the psychological changes that occur during first pregnancy and the early postpartum months. The major theoretical assumption was that pregnancy and early motherhood may be viewed as a series of developmental tasks, and that the way in which these are coped with will be predictive of adaptation to the maternal role. The aims of the study were (a) to identify the affective changes that occur in women during first pregnancy and to assess the extent to which pregnancy and motherhood are experienced as a period of psychological crisis; (b) to trace the development of maternal feeling; and (c) to assess the extent to which characteristics measured early in pregnancy are predictive of attitudes and adjustment to later stages of pregnancy and the degree to which these factors are themselves predictive of adaptation to parenthood. The sample consisted of 19 white, middle class primigravidas, with an age range of 22-33 years. Only women who had no previous gynecological or psychiatric difficulties and who were currently living with their husbands were accepted as Ss. Each woman was interviewed at each trimester of pregnancy, on the third postpartum day, and at 2 months postpartum. A follow up questionnaire was mailed at 7 months postpartum, The data obtained were derived from ratings of extensive interview schedules and a number of personality measures. Results indicated that although emotional upheaval and rapid change were characteristic of pregnancy, for some women a growing sense of adulthood, of fulfillment, and integration of a new maturational stage clearly co-existed with the emotional disequilibrium. Analysis of the interrelationship among characteristics shown in early pregnancy, adjustment to the pregnancy overall, and adaptation to parenthood indicated that the degree of personality integration achieved by early pregnancy was predictive of the extent to which psychological growth was experienced throughout pregnancy and early parenthood.

The purpose of this study of early social-cognitive development was to assess the very young child's behaviorally expressed knowledge of people's visual-attentional acts and abilities. Boys and girls (N = 60) 1, 1 1/2, 2, 2 1/2, and 3 years of age were tested in their homes with their mother's help. Three sorts of tasks were used: 1. Percept production. The child's task was to produce a visual percept in the other. Examples include pointing to objects ("productive pointing") and a wide variety of object-showing problems. 2. Percept deprivation. The opposite, exemplified by a variety of object-hiding problems. 3. Percept diagnosis. The child's task was to determine what the other was already visually attending to, either by looking where his or her finger was pointed ("receptive pointing") or where his eyes were directed. It was found that the majority of 1-year-olds produced and comprehended pointing, and would sometimes hold out a toy to show it, but did little else. The 3-year-olds were at ceiling on virtually all tasks. At 1 1/2 years, children usually showed a picture by holding it flat so that both they and the other could see it. Jrom 2 on, they usually turned it toward the other in the adult fashion. Very few children of any age showed egocentrically--i.e., orienting the picture so only they could see it. By age 2, the children solved what were presumably novel showing problems for them: e.g., successfully showing to another a picture pasted on the inside bottom of a hollow cube. Hiding ability emerged later than showing ability but seemed well established by age 3. The role of the other's eyes in seeing appeared to be quite well understood at least by age 2-2 1/2. As examples, children of this age took the other's hands away from her or his eyes before trying to show her something, and could usually tell where she was looking from her eye orientation alone. These age trends presumably reflect important developments in the area of social interaction and communication, as well as with respect to cognition about percepts.

This study was performed to test whether or not cognitive structures give rise to linguistic forms. In this research, 12 male and 12 female Ss, ages 2-1/2 to 7-1/2, were assigned to stages of spatial development as a result of performance on a Piaget task of spatial conception. A series of language tasks was then administered to test both comprehension and production of spatial locatives. The results showed that spatial stages, whether topological, projective, or Euclidian, determined the use of locatives, suggesting that cognition precedes and is a prerequisite to certain language forms. A finding of some interest was that objects which have inherent fronts and backs, like cars or dolls, facilitate the comprehension and production of some locatives, presumably because the objects themselves provide additional linguistic cues which aid the child in organizing the structure of his language.

This paper describes five successive interventions in the rearing of infants at an orphanage in Tehran, with their outcomes. The outcomes were assessed longitudinally. The first of the successive groups, here called "waves", numbered 15. These Ss constitute the controls. The only intervention consisted of examining the infants every other week during the first year and every fourth week thereafter with the ordinal, sensorimotor scales of Uzgiris and Hunt. The audio-visual intervention intended for the second wave of 10 infants was tape-recorded mother talk and music under the control of the infants and mobiles that the infants could activate. This plan was never adequately implemented because of inadequate supervision. The third wave of 10 infants got extra untutored human care. The fourth wave of 20 infants got the kind of audio-visual intervention originally intended for the second wave plus access to responsive inanimate materials. For the fifth wave, numbering 11, the infant-caretaker ratio was reduced to two or three to one and the caretakers were taught the Badger program supplemented with procedures to foster vocal imitation and semantic mastery of body parts, clothing, toys, and other objects and events regularly encountered. The results show that each successive wave, excepting the second, achieved the top steps of nearly all seven of the ordinal scales at mean ages younger than the preceding wave, and the fifth wave surpassed even home-reared American children from predominantly professional families in achieving the top steps on five of the seven scales. The findings show that infants need not advance along all branches simultaneously and that the kinds of experience encountered determine the branch along which advancement occurs. A number of theoretical implications are examined. Especially important is the idea that a dependable educational psychology for infancy and early childhood calls for much more knowledge than we now have of the kinds of experience that advance development along each of the various branches.

Some physique-behavior relations were determined in 75 boys and 51 girls, aged 6 to 14, in a residential treatment center in Holland. Each child's behavior was rated by four group workers on a checklist yielding eight summary scores. Physique was judged from nude photographs for manifest endomorphy, mesomorphy, and ectomorphy. While a number of moderate-sized relations appeared in zero-order and multiple correlations, canonical analysis showed two significant, independent sets of relations between physique and behavior in the boys, one in the girls. Among the boys, one set related mesomorphy and energy level, the other related primarily ectomorphy with unsocialness, excitability, and cooperativeness. Among the girls, these same behaviors were compressed in a single set, primarily relating energy level but also unsocialness, excitability, and cooperativeness positively with mesomorphy and negatively with endomorphy and ectomorphy. Compared with findings on the same instrument in a sample of normal American preschoolers, many individual associations were similar, despite differences in culture and language, age, intelligence, social status, adjustment, and residential setting of the S's.

In a prospective follow-up study comparing the adjustment of hemiplegics in rehabilitation programs in a public institution (N = 100) and a private university facility (N = 105) measures were taken one month after admission and 18-24 months after discharge. Initially, the groups differed in social profiles (social class, ethnicity, marital status), incidence of secondary medical conditions and attitudes, including expectancies and F scale and sick role questionnaire. They did not differ in performance and motivation on the programs. At follow-up treatment. Many more went to nursing homes. Implications for rehabilitation programs are presented.

The mothers of 87 male and female adolescents accepted at a counseling agency described their offspring by completing the Institute of Juvenile Research Behavior Checklist. A factor analysis of the initial data yielded nine symptom factors. These were used in combination with selected demographic variables, to compare the 54 continuers in treatment with the 22 early defectors and the 18 cases improved after a year of a full course of treatment with the 16 unimproved cases. Both discriminant function analyses indicated that the groups could be successfully differentiated; however, variables most predictive of continuance in treatment were not most predictive of a successful outcome.

Because blind chidlren are retarded in the attainment of substance conservation and other Piagetial concepts, it was hypothesized that a learning set training procedure which incorporated both substance conservation and subordinate concepts might accelerate the acquisition of substance conservation itself and promote generalization to weight conservation scores and IQ. To test the hypotheses, 28 blind children aged 8 to 13 (IQ range 62 to 131) were divided into two groups. Their visual capacities ranged from 20/500 in the best eye to total congenital blindness and etiologies were varied, but consisted primarily of cataracts and glaucoma. All children were pretested and posttested on Slosson's Intelligence Test, 40 substance conservation tasks, and 20 weight conservation tasks, which involved both continuous and discontinuous substance and included almost all those found in the literature prior to 1970. A lengthy learning set procedure employing everyday household objects was then used to teach the experimental children conceptual skills that are prerequisites to substance conservation. Finally the learning set procedure was used to teach the concept of substance conservation itself to the children. The trained group exhibited significantly increased substance and weight conservation scores and IQs (all ps less than .005). The control group, which had spent matched periods of time in intellectual enrichment activities failed to improve significantly on any of the dependent variables. The research suggests that acceleration of the development of Piagetian concepts may be profitable enterprise in the case of blind children.

Cumming and Henry's disengagement theory of aging was investigated by instructing 89 sons and daughters of parents in four aged groups to describe their parents in middle and old age. Various personality and social measures were used including bipolar adjective checklists, depression, optimism, and control scales. The results indicated that at least two factors, institutionalization and activity level, exert an effect on the perceived changes in aged parents. Two groups, one institutionalized and the other noninstitutionalized but without formal activities, were described as being disengaged: e.g., withdrawn socially, self-absorbed, as well as powerless, pessimistic, and depressed. The other two groups who were noninstitutionalized and involved in outer-world recreational and vocational activities were not seen as disengaged in any way in old age. The personality variable internal-external control of reinforcement may serve as an antecedent to withdrawal behaviors in the aged.

Developmental psychology, in spite of its dynamic growth, has not, thus far, generated a general theory of human development. Present developmental theories are either cognitive or ontogenetic, or both. All are descriptive. Their powers of explanation are limited. None of them include emotional development. It is argued that a theory of development in order to claim generality must (a) include emotional development, and (b) offer means of explaining, rather than only describing, developmental transformations. A nonontogenetic theory of development, called theory of positive disintegration, appears to fulfill these conditions. It is built on Jacksonian principles of evolution of levels of functioning. The central concept of the theory is that of multilevelness of developmental phenomena. Development is seen to be a function of the level of behavioral organization. The theory defines five levels. Each level constitutes a distinct structure. The dynamic elements of the structure of each level are identified. Positive disintegration is the name for the process by which the structure of a higher level replaces the structure of a lower one. The theory explains different developmental patterns by introducing the concept of developmental potential (DP). Although DP is a purely logical notion, it is given observable dimensions designated as dimensions of mental functioning. There are five of these and they correspond to psychomotor, sensual, imaginational, intellectual, and emotional modes of functioning. The first half of the monograph is devoted to the conceptual structure of the theory. The second half to empirical tests of the theory. Three such tests were made on data generated from an atomistic analysis of autobiographies. The first test consisted of the comparison of developmental cross-sections obtained from different sources of data (subjects) with the overall pattern of five levels of development. The different cross-sections overlap with each other and with different segments of the total theoretical pattern. Superimposed on each other they reconstitute the total pattern. The second test consisted of a comparison between computed and clinically derived values for DP for each subject in the study. The third test was a comparison of DP values obtained from early and late parts of an autobiography. An empirical equation for DP was used in the second and the third test. Parameters represented in the equation appear sufficient to account for individual differences in patterns and levels of development.