Developmental change in the understanding of affective meaning in music

The development of the understanding of affective meaning in music was investigated. Subjects aged 4, 5, 6, and 19 assigned verbal labels to musical segments previously determined by adults to be representative of one of four affects (happy, sad, angry, afraid). Analysis of correct interpretations and errors revealed a pattern of interactions among age, sex, and affect indicating that the ability to verbalize an understanding of affective meaning in music consistent with that of adult subjects is present during the preschool years. Age-related similarities in performance, as well as differences favoring both younger and older subjects, were observed and were discussed in relation to recent research in, and theories of, affective development and communication.The authors thank H. Julia Hannay, Edward Kemery, Shiela MacDonald, and Robert McGrath for their assistance in this research. The conceptual inspiration of Joseph Intrieri is gratefully acknowledged. We also thank Leslie Brody, Robin Hornik, and several anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft of the paper. Portions of this research were presented at the Southeastern Conference on Human Development, Baltimore, April 1982.     

Genetic counseling for deaf adults: Communication/language and cultural considerations

It has been estimated that at least 50% of congenital or early onset deafness loss has a genetic etiology. Genetic services have traditionally been utilized by hearing parents of deaf children. Deaf adults could also greatly benefit from genetic counseling services. However, many deaf adults do not seek genetic services due in part to the communication/language and cultural differences of this group. Deaf people communicate in various ways including the use of sign language, oral communication, writing, or a combination of these modes. Also, while some deaf individuals are part of the hearing culture, others are part of the Deaf culture which has its own language, values, and traditions. Culturally Deaf individuals do not see themselves as handicapped or disabled. The genetic professional's awareness of the communication/language and cultural needs of this group, as well as their agency's responsibilities under section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, may increase the accessibility of genetic services and contribute to the provision of successful genetic counseling for deaf adults.Throughout this paper, the term deaf will be used to denote a person who audiologically has a hearing loss which may range from mild to profound and may be sensorineural, conductive, or mixed. However, the term Deaf is used to denote cultural deafness.     

What's [Not] New in Trinitarian Theology

The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being Three Persons , Thomas F. Torrance, T. & T. Clark
The Father's Spirit of Sonship: Reconceiving the Trinity , Thomas G. Weinandy, T. & T. Clark
Trinitarian Theology Today: Essays on Divine Being and Act , Christoph Schwöbel (ed.), T. & T. Clark     

Violent behavior in adolescents and young adults: A person and environment model

We explore a model that examines how personal and environmental variables explain violent behavior by adolescents. Repeated interviews with youths from 1984–1992 from 10 cities across the United States provided the data. These interviews first occurred with 2,787 youths when they were adolescents (1984–85 and 1986–87) and the interviews were repeated on a subsample of 602 youths when they were young adults (1989–90 and 1991–92). Longitudinal multivariate analyses showed that almost a third of the variance in adolescent violent behaviors was predicted by a combination of personal variables (gender, substance misuse) and environmental variables (history of child abuse, stressful events, traumatic events, and city rates of unemployment). Further, almost a third of the variance in change in violent behaviors from year to year was predicted by prior violent behavior and a combination of personal variables (gender, suicidality, and substance misuse) and environmental variables (stressful events).     

Age comparative factor analysis of ability variables in adulthood and old age

The generality of ability factor structure in adulthood and old age was investigated using simultaneous maximum likelihood procedures. Data were analyzed for 198 young individuals (age range of 15–32 years), 156 younger old individuals (age range of 53–68 years), and 156 older old individuals (69–91 years). Variables were nine tests marking three ability factors: Verbal Comprehension, Sensitivity to Problems and Semantic Redefinition. Results indicated no changes in the number of factors and no psychologically important shifts in salient factor loadings. Increasingly larger factor covariances, however, were obtained in the two older groups. The results supported the generalizability of ability structures to late life at the level of factor loadings. The implications of these results for the dedifferentiation hypothesis were not clear cut. The consistency of the number of factors across age groups precluded strong support for this hypothesis, The increased factor covariances could be construed as modest support for this hypothesis, but other interpretations were possible.     

Trees as memory representations for simple visual patterns

The form of the memory representation for visual patterns consisting of a few line segments was investigated with three tasks. One task was the reproduction of remembered patterns using pencil and paper. The order in which the subparts of those patterns were reproduced was used to make suggestions about possible memory representations for the patterns. The second task involved rating the “goodness” of subparts of the patterns. These ratings were also interpreted as reflecting the underlying representations of the patterns. In the third task, the time required to recognize that a small pattern was part of a larger remembered pattern was used as further evidence about the memory representations of the patterns. The results from all three tasks are consistent with the theory that the memory representations are tree structures. Methods for deriving and comparing tree structures are discussed.     

Visual comparison processes: Identity and similarity decisions

In the first experiment, in which two successively presented free-form visual patterns varied in their similarity to each other, subjects had to decide, in one condition, if the patterns were “identical” and in two other conditions if the patterns were “similar.” Qualitative individual differences in the effect of similarity on the time required to make a decision were found in the “identity” condition, and these differences interacted with the “similarity” conditions. The individual differences and the experimental effects are interpreted in terms of a two-process model of the visual comparison process—a holistic matching process that is sometimes accompanied by an analytic difference detection process. In the second experiment, the same subjects repeatedly categorized subsets of the free-form visual patterns on the basis of similarity. There appeared to be no individual differences in the subjects’ perceptions of similarity, but subjects’ perceptions did differ from the assumptions made by the experimenters when they established the response criteria for the first experiment.     

Startbox-goalbox confinement durations as determinants of self-punitive behavior

Two levels of confinement duration (5 or 60 sec) in either startbox or goalbox were factorially combined with presence or absence of shock during extinction of a runway escape response in a self-punitive paradigm under a spaced-trials procedure. All groups were equated for amount and temporal spacing of handling before and after each trial. Shocked rats were more resistant to extinction than nonshocked rats only when startbox confinement was short. When startbox confinement was long, shock facilitated extinction. Long goalbox confinement enhanced running speed for shocked rats, but only in the presence of shock. It was suggested that duration of startbox confinement affects strength of conditioned fear, with long confinement leading to its extinction.     

Pavlovian conditioning with ethanol and lithium: effects on heart rate and taste aversion in rats

Rats received paired injections of either ethanol or saline as the conditioned stimulus and lithium chloride as the unconditioned stimulus (US) in a Pavlovian differential conditioning paradigm. Lithium chloride evoked a large deceleration in heart rate (80-100 beats per minute) as an unconditioned response. As a result of 10 conditioning trials, the substance paired with LiCl elicited a lower average heart rate than that elicited by the unpaired substance. Moreover, animals that received ethanol-LiCl injections subsequently were more averse to the taste of ethanol than animals receiving saline-LiCl pairings. However, there were no differences in ethanol's ability to serve as the US to induce an aversion to a novel flavor solution (i.e., the Avfail phenomenon was not observed). The overall pattern of results underscores the value of using multiple indexes of learning in drug-drug conditioning paradigms.