Endorsement of dysfunctional beliefs depends on current mood state

In two studies we tested the hypothesis that endorsement of dysfunctional beliefs depends on current mood state for persons who are vulnerable to depression. The first study showed that reports of dysfunctional beliefs vary with spontaneous diurnal mood fluctuations in 47 depressed psychiatric patients. The effect of mood state was highly significant (p less than .01); dysfunctional thinking increased when mood was worst and decreased when mood was best. The second study conceptually replicated this finding in a population of asymptomatic subjects. As predicted, reports of dysfunctional beliefs varied as a function of mood state in 14 persons who had experienced a depressive episode but not in 27 who had never been depressed. These findings support the cognitive theory of depression, which proposes that dysfunctional beliefs are vulnerability factors for depression but also that reporting of dysfunctional beliefs depends on current mood state.     

Selective processing of threat cues in posttraumatic stress disorder

Vietnam combat veterans with (n = 15) and without (n = 15) posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) performed a modified Stroop task in which they named the colors of neutral words (e.g., INPUT), positive words (e.g., LOVE), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) words (e.g., GERMS), and PTSD words (e.g., BODYBAGS). In contrast to normal controls, PTSD patients took significantly longer to color-name PTSD words than to color-name neutral, OCD, and positive words. Because Stroop interference reflects involuntary semantic activation, it may provide a quantitative measure of intrusive cognitive activity--the hallmark symptom of PTSD.     

CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISONS ON PSYCHOSEMANTICS OF ICONS AND GRAPHICS

This study is to report a cross-cultural comparison on perceptions of icons and graphics and their relationships. Data were ratings of 10 icons and 10 graphics against 21 bipolar semantic differential scales from 325 college students in three countries, Mexico, Columbia, and Japan. Cross-cultural factor analyses resulted in the identification of four semantic (three affective and one denotative) features, three icon factors, and three graphic factors. Indigenous cultural means of these iconic and graphic factors were computed and used to probe cross-cultural similarities and differences in perceptions. Psychosemantics of icon factors were further predicted by graphic factors through canonical correlation. This study concludes the importance of implicit cultural meanings of nonverbal figures in intercultural communications. The implications of this study are also discussed.     

Reasons for Living Following Success and Failure in Suicidal and Nonsuicidal College Students1

To see if suicide ideators responded differently than nonideators after success or failure experiences, 61 college students who were relatively high or low ideators participated in a computer task on which half got bogus success feedback, the other half got bogus failure feedback. Both groups then completed the Reasons for Living Inventory (RFL). Two (High versus Low Suicide) X 2 (Success or Failure) analyses indicated main effects for suicide on overall RFL and four of the six RFL subscales. Although there were no main effects for success versus failure, an interaction indicated that, in the failure condition, low suicidal subjects were significantly higher than high suicidal subjects in overall reasons for living. Results suggest that suicidal individuals may be vulnerable to failure, and may need interventions to help them avoid potential failure or to bolster their coping mechanisms.     

The rule learning behavior of reading disabled and normal children as a function of task characteristics and instruction

The purpose of this research was to investigate rule learning in reading disabled (RD) and normal children (chronological age and reading age (RA) match) when required to (a) abstract rules independently, and (b) use rules after instruction. Study 1 required the children to solve problems using shapes and letters. Although there was no difference between groups in the rate of problem solving when children were asked to abstract rules independently, the pattern of errors was different. The RD children made a greater proportion of errors on the negative instance for the more complex problems. In particular, this occurred on the letter task which involved psycholinguistic categorization. After instruction, the RA controls made more errors than the other groups. Study 2 was an analogous pseudoword reading task. Even with statistical adjustment for differences in prior grapheme-phoneme (g-p) rule knowledge, the RD children performed less accurately than the RA controls when they had to abstract rules, although this was restricted to the most difficult rule (rule of e). There was no difference after instruction in rule application, although the pattern of errors and post-test results indicated that the RD children continued to experience decoding difficulty. These results suggest a phonologically based productive deficit which interferes with the learning of g-p rules. This may be part of a more general language deficit which includes psycholinguistic categorization. Despite the severity of this handicap, RD children seem responsive to instruction.     

Degree of cognitive impairment and the dissociation of implicit and explicit memory

One group of normal elderly adults and two groups of cognitively impaired elderly adults were compared on an implicit and an explicit memory task. Degree of impairment affected explicit memory; the mildly and moderately impaired elderly adults demonstrated significantly reduced recognition performance. Degree of impairment also affected implicit memory priming performance, particularly for low frequency items, as measured by a word completion task. Explicit memory performance declined for both cognitively impaired groups, but implicit memory performance was sensitive to the degree or severity of impairment, causing a decline in performance only in the moderately impaired group.     

The influence of experimenter attitude on the performance of children of different cognitive ability levels

We investigated the influence of the experimenter's attitude on children's performance in a classification task. We chose 96 children (M age: 5 years, 9 months) on the basis of their performance in a spontaneous classification task. Forty-eight children made partial alignments on the basis of a link established from one object to the next (O-level group); 48 looked for objects having one common property (P-level group). The children had to perform a dichotomy task in two testing situations: one with a caring experimenter, and one with an indifferent experimenter. In the O-level group, the children's performance was superior when the experimenter was caring even though they did not seem to notice the difference between the two attitudes. P-level children clearly distinguished the experimenter attitudes, but their performance remained the same. To determine children's actual abilities accurately, researchers must take into account children's interactions with both objects and partners.     

The development of 3- to 6-year-olds' map using ability: the relative importance of landmarks and map alignment

Previous research (e.g., Bluestein & Acredolo, 1979) has demonstrated that children as young as 3 or 4 years of age can use simple maps, if the maps are aligned, and has suggested that when such young children use a map, they rely on the information provided about landmarks. The support for this suggestion, however, comes from research with older children. Our experiment was designed to find out how 3- to 6-year-olds used a map and whether they could use maps that were not aligned. The children were asked to find a hidden toy in a mapped layout that showed the toy's position and included a single landmark. The maps were either aligned or rotated 90 degrees, 180 degrees, or 270 degrees relative to the layout. The results showed that young children could use the maps, even when they were not aligned with the layout, and that they relied on landmark information to do so.     

Marginal and mindful: deviants in social interactions

Master status people's behavior, physical appearance, or life circumstance is statistically unusual and centrally defining (e.g., the physically attractive, the obese, the intellectually gifted, the facially scarred, the talented, the athletic, Blacks, gays, the wealthy, rape and incest victims). These individuals were paired with people without such conditions. Each pair was left alone on a pretext and covertly videotaped. Pairs were then separated; each member spontaneously recalled information about her partner and the experimental room and provided a record of her thoughts and feelings during the interaction. As hypothesized, all master status Ss were particularly likely to be mindful in social interactions; they recalled detailed information about the situation and often took their partner's perspective during the interaction. The positive or negative connotations of the master status conditions were irrelevant in predicting Ss cognitions (mindfulness) but were critical in determining Ss behaviors (interaction strategies).     

Social support and immune function among spouses of cancer patients

This study investigated whether social support was related to immune function among spouses of cancer patients. Effects of depression and negative life events were examined as potential mediators. Results showed evidence of greater immunocompetence on 2 of 3 dynamic measures: natural killer cytotoxicity and proliferation response to phytohemagglutinin among spouses who reported high levels of social support. All six components of social support assessed by the Social Provisions Scale (Cutrona & Russell, 1987) were strongly related to these indices of immune function. No evidence was found for mediation by either life events or depression.