The skill of recognizing musical structures

In three experiments, musicians and nonmusicians were compared in their ability to discriminate musical chords. Pairs of chords sharing all notes in common or having different notes were played in succession. Some pairs of chords differed in timbre independent of their musical structures because they were played on different instruments. Musicians outperformed nonmusicians only in recognizing the same chord played on different instruments. Both groups could discriminate between instrument timbres, although musicians did slightly better than nonmusicians. In contrast, with chord structures not conforming to the rules of tonal harmony, musicians and nonmusicians performed equally poorly in recognizing identical chords played on different instruments. Signal detection analysis showed that musicians and nonmusicians set similar criteria for these judgments. Musicians' superiority reflects greater sensitivity to familiar diatonic chords. These results are taken as evidence that musicians develop perceptual and cognitive skills specific to the lawful musical structures encountered in their culture's music. Nonmusicians who lack this knowledge based their judgments on the acoustical properties of the chords.     

Comparison of Peabody,Leiter, WISC,and academic achievement scores among emotionally disturbed children

The present study examined the utility of employing tests such as the PPVT and the AALIPS as viable alternatives to the WISC in the prediction of academic achievement with emotionally disturbed children. The three IQ instruments and the California Achievement Test were administered to a group of 50 male emotionally disturbed children. Intercorrelations among the three tests were all significant and all three successfully predicted academic achievement. However, both the PPVT and the AALIPS consistently resulted in higher IQ estimates than did the WISC. Results supported the use of the PPVT and the AALIPS as equally viable alternatives to the more comprehensive WISC.     

Lexical contribution to nonword-repetition effects: Evidence from event-related potentials

Two experiments investigated the modulation of event-related potentials (ERPs) by the repetition of orthographically legal and illegal nonwords. In Experiment 1, subjects silently counted occasional words against a background of nonwords, a proportion of which were repetitions of an immediately preceding legal or illegal item. ERPs to repeated legal items showed a sustained, topographically diffuse, positive-going shift. In contrast, repeated illegal nonwords gave rise to ERPs showing a smaller and temporally more restricted positive-going modulation. In an attempt to equalize depth of processing across legal and illegal nonwords, subjects in Experiment 2 were required to count items containing a nonalphabetic character against the same background of nonword items. ERPs to repeated legal items showed a modulation similar to, although smaller than, that found in Experiment I, but no effects of repetition were observed in the ERPs to the illegal nonwords. It was concluded that the effects of repeating nonwords, at least as manifested in concurrently recorded ERPs, differ as a consequence of whether items can access lexical memory, and that this is inconsistent with the attribution of such effects solely to the operation of episodic memory processes.     

The personal and marital adjustment of parents as related to observed child deviance and parenting behaviors

The purpose of this study was to document the relationship of parents' personal and marital adjustment to their own behavior as parents and the behavior of their children. A total of 31 families who had been referred for behavioral counseling regarding their male child's behavior problems were given a diagnostic battery which included home observations as well as administration to parents of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and the LockeWallace Marital Adjustment Test. Results revealed consistent negative relationships between marital satisfaction and the observed level of child deviance. Similarly, there were consistent negative relationships between marital satisfaction and the level of observed “negativeness” to the child. Analyses using the MMPI indicated that a large number of the fathers ' MMPI scales were related to child deviance, but this finding was not replicated for mothers. Several MMPI scales were related to marital satisfaction for both parents. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for the assessment and treatment of families with a problem child.     

Mandel'štam and Dante: TheDivine Comedy in Mandel'štam's poetry of the 1930s

Osip Mandel'?tam (1891–1938?) belongs among the greatest Russian poets of the twentieth century. During the thirties, when he led a tragic existence and felt a premonition of his inevitable violent death, Mandel'?tam saw in Dante not only the greatest poet, but also his own superior teacher, and his poems of that period contain a tormented meditation on the masterpiece of Dante's genius — theDivine Comedy. Epic poetry of Dante, Homer, Virgil and others was possible because the inner world of each poet was essentially at one with the ethos of the society in which he lived. Mandel'?tam's inner world was Judaeo-Christian, European, and rooted in classical and neo-Platonic philosophy, but his outer world, consisting of a new Marxist or pseudo-Marxist system, was totally at odds with it. Thus Mandel'?tam could not embody the epic impulse of the society he opposed. He was left with the tormented lyric impulse. The fundamental conflict between Mandel'?tam as a lyric poet and the society in which he had to live and work accounts for the fact that his vision of Stalinist society in a number of respects remarkably corresponds to Dante's vision of a perverted divine order in theInferno.     

Poor communication in psycholinguistics: Review of four new textbooks

Four new textbooks on psycholinguistics are reviewed:Psycholinguistics: A Cognitive View of Language by H. S. Cairns and C. E. Cairns;Experimental Psycholinguistics by S. Glucksberg and J. H. Danks;Psycholinguistics: Introductory Perspectives by J. F. Kess, andIntroduction to Psycholinguistics by I. Taylor. Three general issues about psycholinguistics are considered in detail: (1) Psycholinguists should attempt to provide psychological tests of competing linguistic theories. (2) More attention should be given by psycholinguists to the work done in the field of human information processing. (3) There is evidence for the Whorfian hypothesis, even in its strong version, at the phonetic level of language. It is concluded that improvement is needed in the communication between psycholinguistics and related disciplines and among the subdivisions of psycholinguistics.     

Pronoun disambiguation: Accessing potential antecedents

Two general classes of pronoun disambiguation processes are considered. In reading “Jack threw a snowball at Phil, but he missed,” both possible antecedents of “he” (“Jack” and “Phil”) may be accessed initially. Or, the actual antecedent alone may be accessed after sufficient semantic context is encoded. To evaluate these alternatives, a yes-no-probe recognition task was used to measure priming of the potential antecedents in sentence comprehension. Subjects read sentences similar to the example and were presented a test word immediately following each sentence. Response times for the actual antecedent (“Jack”) and nonantecedent (“Phil”) probes were obtained. Results indicated that the nonantecedent as well as the antecedent was activated (accessed) in pronoun disambiguation. This conclusion was not affected by the ordering of the antecedent and nonantecedent in the first clause.     

Emotional Impulsivity in Children with ADHD Associated with Comorbid—Not ADHD—Symptomatology

Children with ADHD often demonstrate sudden and intense shifts in both positive and negative affect. This study examined the role of diagnostic status on emotional impulsivity in children utilizing ecological momentary assessment (EMA). Parents of 64 8–12 year old children (15 ADHD-only; 27 ADHD-comorbid; 22 control) completed a diagnostic structured interview and then an EMA protocol, rating the child’s affect thrice daily for 28 days. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) suggested that children with ADHD and a comorbid disorder demonstrated significantly more EMA-derived emotional impulsivity than children with ADHD only and control children. No difference was found between children with ADHD only and control children. This study suggested that children with ADHD demonstrate significantly higher levels of emotional impulsivity than control children only in the presence of a comorbid disorder.     

Diurnal variation in the Positive Affects

We examined the circadian rhythm of two basic dimensions of mood—Positive Affect (PA) and Negative Affect (NA). Subjects were 196 college students in two studies who completed a mood rating form approximately seven times a day for 1 week. Significant diurnal variation was found to exist in overall Positive Affect, and in four component content areas, but not in Negative Affect. Specifically, all components of PA rose sharply from early morning until noon, remained relatively constant until 9 p.m., and then fell rapidly. The rise and fall of PA were quite robust across subjects, but the apparently static level of PA from noon to 9 p.m. was shown to result from averaging across marked individual differences in the time of peak PA. Various potential sources of these individual differences—“morningness-eveningness,” introversion-extraversion, and neuroticism/dysphoria—were investigated. Neither of the personality variables accounted for the significant variation in diurnal mood patterning, but clearly defined morning and evening types did show different patterns. Possible links between the mood pattern obtained and biologically based circadian rhythms, which have been postulated to be dysregulated in depression and mania, are discussed.     

Understanding Middle School Students’ Physical Activity and Health-Related Quality of Life: An Expectancy-Value Perspective

Assessing and promoting physical activity and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) have become major public health issues, but little is known regarding HRQOL and its relation with physical activity in adolescents. This study attempted to examine relationships among middle school students’ motivation, physical activity, and HRQOL by using the expectancy-value model as a theoretical framework. Participants were 282 middle school students who responded to a previously validated inventory assessing their motivation, physical activity, and HRQOL. Correlation analyses revealed that expectancy-related beliefs and task values were positively related to physical activity and HRQOL. Physical activity was positively associated with physical, emotional, and social functioning of HRQOL. Regression analyses showed a significant relationship between increasing expectancy-related beliefs and increasing degrees of HRQOL. This research line is promising in that it can provide useful information regarding the translation of theory to practice in influencing adolescents’ physical activity and HRQOL.     

Sensory Extinction: A procedure for eliminating self-stimulatory behavior in developmentally disabled children

This study was designed to investigate the role of sensory reinforcement in the motivation of self-stimulation. If self-stimulatory behavior is maintained by its sensory consequences, such as the proprioceptive, auditory, or visual stimulation it produces, then such behavior should extinguish when those sensory consequences are not permitted. The present study introduces a new procedure, Sensory Extinction, in which certain sensory consequences are masked or removed, to examine whether self-stimulation is operant behavior maintained by sensory reinforcement. The effectiveness of Sensory Extinction was assessed by a reversal design for each of three autistic children, and the results showed the following. First, self-stimulation reliably extinguished when a certain sensory consequence was removed, then increased when that consequence was permitted. This was replicable within and across children. Second, different Sensory Extinction procedures were required for different self-stimulatory behaviors, since the sensory reinforcers supporting them were idiosyncratic across children. Finally, regarding clinical gains, the data suggest that Sensory Extinction may be a relatively convenient and rapid alternative for the treatment of self-stimulation. The present findings extend the efficacy of extinction as a behavior-modification technique to instances in which the reinforcer is purely sensory. The implications of these results for the treatment of other forms of deviant behavior are discussed.     

An evaluation of Unix in the psychology computer laboratory

Psychology users of the Unix operating system responded to questionnaire items concerning the use of Unix, the ease of learning and using Unix, and the value and quality of the system for their research needs. The data suggest that Unix is poor according to human-factors criteria, but good according to programming and systems criteria.     

Androgyny,depression, and self-esteem in irish homosexual and heterosexual males and females

An examination was made of the following research questions: (a) Do Irish homosexuals and heterosexuals differ in the frequency of their classification in sex-role categories? (b) Is sexual orientation related to psychological adjustment? (c) Is androgyny related to psychological adjustment? Subjects were 112 Irish men and women who were administered Bem's Sex-Role Inventory, Rosenberg's Self-Esteem Scale, Zung's Self-Rating Depression Scale, and a questionnaire. Results indicated that Irish homosexuals were classified more frequently than Irish heterosexuals as androgynous. Homosexuals did not differ from heterosexuals in self-esteem or depression scores. Among these Irish subjects, psychological sex-role category is a more powerful influence on psychological health than actual sexual orientation. It is not whether you are homosexual or heterosexual that affects your psychological health, but how you perceive your own psychological masculinity and femininity.     

Against Hypothetical Syllogism

The debate over Hypothetical Syllogism is locked in stalemate. Although putative natural language counterexamples to Hypothetical Syllogism abound, many philosophers defend Hypothetical Syllogism, arguing that the alleged counterexamples involve an illicit shift in context. The proper lesson to draw from the putative counterexamples, they argue, is that natural language conditionals are context-sensitive conditionals which obey Hypothetical Syllogism. In order to make progress on the issue, I consider and improve upon Morreau’s proof of the invalidity of Hypothetical Syllogism. The improved proof relies upon the semantic claim that conditionals with antecedents irrelevant to the obtaining of an already true consequent are themselves true. Moreover, this semantic insight allows us to provide compelling counterexamples to Hypothetical Syllogism that are resistant to the usual contextualist response.     

Harmonic structure as a determinant of melodic organization

Musicians and nonmusicians indicated whether a two-note probe following a tonally structured melody occurred in the melody. The critical probes were taken from one of three locations in the melody: the two notes (1) ending the first phrase, (2) straddling the phrase boundary, and (3) beginning the second phrase. As predicted, the probe that straddled the phrase boundary was more difficult to recognize than either of the within-phrase probes. These findings suggest that knowledge of harmonic structure influences perceptual organization of melodies in ways analogous to the influence of clause relations on the perceptual organization of sentences. They also provide evidence that training plays an important role in refining listeners’ sensitivity to harmonic variables.     

Improving Outcomes for Youth with ADHD: A Conceptual Framework for Combined Neurocognitive and Skill-Based Treatment Approaches

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a prevalent and chronic mental health condition that often results in substantial impairments throughout life. Although evidence-based pharmacological and psychosocial treatments exist for ADHD, effects of these treatments are acute, do not typically generalize into non-treated settings, rarely sustain over time, and insufficiently affect key areas of functional impairment (i.e., family, social, and academic functioning) and executive functioning. The limitations of current evidence-based treatments may be due to the inability of these treatments to address underlying neurocognitive deficits that are related to the symptoms of ADHD and associated areas of functional impairment. Although efforts have been made to directly target the underlying neurocognitive deficits of ADHD, extant neurocognitive interventions have shown limited efficacy, possibly due to misspecification of training targets and inadequate potency. We argue herein that despite these limitations, next-generation neurocognitive training programs that more precisely and potently target neurocognitive deficits may lead to optimal outcomes when used in combination with specific skill-based psychosocial treatments for ADHD. We discuss the rationale for such a combined treatment approach, prominent examples of this combined treatment approach for other mental health disorders, and potential combined treatment approaches for pediatric ADHD. Finally, we conclude with directions for future research necessary to develop a combined neurocognitive + skill-based treatment for youth with ADHD.     

A cluster-analytically derived typology: Feasible alternative to clinical diagnostic classification of children?

Despite numerous studies of the relationships among symptoms manifested by children and adolescents, there have been few systematic attempts to group individuals on the basis of the syndromes identified. In the course of a treatment evaluation project requiring classification of both child patients and untreated controls, the present study was conducted to determine whether replicable types of children and adolescents could be identified by the cluster analysis of their IJR Behavior Checklist profiles. One clinical sample (N=185) and two mixed clinical and normal subsamples (Ns of 358 and 373) were cluster-analyzed separately. Seven types that replicated across at least two subsamples were identified: (1) High Assets, Flat Symptom Profile; (2) Sociopathic, Academic Problems; (3) Moderate Assets, Egocentric, Incontinent; (4) Insecure, Somaticizing, Underachieving; (5) Aggressive, Overreactive; (6) Schizoid, Withdrawn, Anxious, Bizarre; and (7) Diffuse, Mixed Pathology. The issue posed by the title of the article was explored in the light of the findings.     

WISC short forms with emotionally disturbed children

The complete WISC protocols of 100 emotionally disturbed children were rescored according to 30 selected-subtest and 1 selected-item methodologies and then compared for their correspondence to the standard form. High correlations between all of the short forms and the standard WISC were obtained. However, 16 of the selected-subtest short forms and the selected-item short form resulted in a significantly different mean than the standard. In addition, all short forms resulted in a high percentage of individuals changing IQ classification. Results are interpreted as indicating the inappropriateness of short forms with emotionally disturbed children when individual scores are of prime interest.     

The relationship between state anxiety and depressed mood: A validity study

The validity of the A-State Scale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale was assessed using data from a general health survey. Depression and anxiety states were found to coexist, however, evidence from a factor analysis, showing items from the two tests loaded on separate factors, demonstrated that these states can be measured independently. Both the A-State and the Zung Scales were found to comprise two factors, and for each scale, one factor consisted of positively phrased items, and the other of negative items. The implications of these findings for the construct validity of the two scales are discussed.