A psychometric study of the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales

The Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales (FACES), a measure of family functioning, contains three scales: cohesion, adaptability, and social desirability. These were slightly modified (FACES- R) on the basis of pilot data and were administered to 42 clinic families (families seeking or receiving psychological services) and 206 nonclinic families. Support for the scales was found in high coefficient alpha reliabilities and similarity of the sample means and standard deviations to those of the standardization sample. However, there was little agreement among family members' scale scores. Therapists' ratings of cohesion and adaptability did not correlate with scale scores among clinic families. There was no difference between clinic and nonclinic samples on the cohesion or adaptability scales, although the social desirability scale did discriminate between groups. Factor analysis suggested that cohesion, adaptability, and social desirability cannot be clearly differentiated using this measure.This work was supported by the American Association of University Women and by Grant R01HD13820 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.     

Schedule-induced behavior in hyperactive children

A schedule-induced behavior paradigm was used to investigate the activity patterns of hyperactive children in a standardized situation. In Experiment I, 10 hyperactive and 10 normal control children matched for age, sex, and IQ were observed under conditions of baseline and schedule. Measures of a number of categorized activities were taken on a time-sampling basis. Hyperactive children were more active than controls in baseline and did not respond to the schedule, unlike the controls who became significantly more active in schedule conditions. In Experiment II, 12 hyperactive and 6 normal children were again subjected to the same experimental paradigm, but in two of the four experimental sessions the stimulant drug methylphenidate was administered in an attempt to reduce the amount of baseline activity. Results were substantially similar to those of Experiment I, with hyperactive children more active than controls in baseline and insensitive to the schedule. There was no overall effect of drug administration on the behavior of either group. There were some ratedependent effects of both drug and schedule conditions.     

Must Skepticism Remain Refuted? Inheriting Skepticism with Cavell and Levinas

Topoi - This article defends Cavell and Levinas’ view that anti-skeptical arguments cannot attain universal assent. In the first half of the article, I argue that Conant’s reading of...     

Rice-farming areas report more anxiety across two years of the COVID-19 pandemic in China

Cultures responded to the COVID-19 pandemic differently. We investigated cultural differences in mental health during the pandemic. We found regional differences in people's reports of anxiety in China over two years from 2020 to 2021 (N = 1186). People in areas with a history of rice farming reported more anxiety than people in wheat-farming areas. Next, we explored more proximal mechanisms that could help link the distal, historical factor of rice farming to people's modern experience of anxiety. Rice areas scored higher on collectivism and tight social norms than wheat areas, and collectivism, rather than norm tightness, mediated the rice-anxiety relationship. These findings advance our understanding of the distal sources of cultural differences, the proximal mechanisms, and mental health problems during the pandemics.     

Stop the blame game: An analysis of blaming on Weibo during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in rice and wheat areas in China

In the pandemic era, social media has provided the public with a platform to make their voice heard. One of the most important public opinions online during a pandemic is blame. Blame can lead to stigma towards patients as well as potential patients and decrease social cooperation, which might impede prevention and control measures during epidemics. Thus, studying online blame during the early days of COVID-19 can facilitate the management and control of future pandemics. By analyzing 3791 posts from one of the most popular social media sites in China (Weibo) over the 10 days immediately after COVID-19 was declared to be a communicable disease, we found that there were four main agents blamed online: Individuals, corporations, institutions, and the media. Most of the blame targeted individual agents. We also found that there were regional-cultural differences in the detailed types of blamed individual agents, that is, between rice- and wheat-farming areas in China. After controlling influence of distance from the epicenter of Wuhan, there were still stable differences between regions: people in wheat areas had a higher probability of blaming agentic, harmful individuals, and people in rice areas had a higher probability of blaming individuals with low awareness of social norms for preventive health behavior. Findings have implications for preventing and predicting blame across cultures in future pandemics.     

Remembering complex sentences

Recall of complex sentences at two retention intervals was examined, using sentences which varied simultaneously in three ways, being either active or passive, of low or high Yngve depth, and predictable or unpredictable. Recall of any particular sentence was cued with either the logical subject, logical object, verb or adverbial phrase noun. In general, unpredictable sentences were recollected better than predictable ones, low Yngve depth sentences were recalled better than high Yngve depth ones, and passive sentences were retained better than active ones. The most effective cue was the object, followed in turn by the subject and the adverbial phrase noun, with the verb being least effective. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Individual response patterns in binary choice tasks with nondiscriminable stimuli

The present experiment sought to determine whether individual Ss tend to employ repeatedly the same response patterns in binary choice tasks containing nondiscriminable stimuli and, if so, whether the response sequences when used to constructstimulus sequences improve the performance of other choice tasks. Information and frequency analyses of the response sequences of 48 Ss showed moderate consistency of patterning within a light and within a tone task. Performance of a card task following the light and tone tasks was closely related to the task (light or tone) from which the stimulus sequence was obtained. The frequency analysis showed that repetition patterns were preferred by most Ss but at the expense of alternation responses. The presentation of reinforcement in the card task did not improve performance over that observed in the light and tone tasks.