Task-specific strategies of mental “rotation” of facial representations

The effects of task demands on the visual comparison of facial patterns and of comparable nonfacial patterns were explored in two studies. The studies yielded two primary findings. First, faces, despite their holistic properties, are not rotated faster than comparable non-face-like patterns, although subjects’ judgments of them were uniformly more rapid than judgments for nonfaces. Second, the nature of the same-different judgment task required of subjects had a large effect on the pattern of results obtained: When stimuli were compared to their mirror images, results indicative of mental “rotation” were obtained. When stimuli were compared on the basis of similarity of individual features, the pattern of results was very different. This one manipulation produced effects that exceeded those of all of the other manipulations, including that of rotation.     

Adolescent Smoking Behavior and the Recognition of Cigarette Advertisements1

In a study designed to assess the relationship between smoking status and correct identification of cigarette brands, junior high school students from two schools viewed cigarette and automobile advertisements with brand and model identification deleted. Results showed that adolescents with higher ad recognition scores were more likely to smoke cigarettes. In addition, a relationship was found between age and correct identification of cigarette advertisements, with older students identifying more ads correctly than younger students. No significant effects emerged for identification of automobile advertisements except for sex, with boys identifying more advertisements than girls. Additional findings indicated that even “experimental” smokers, who smoked as little as once per year, recognized significantly more cigarette advertisements than nonsmokers. These and other results are discussed in terms of their implications for prevention and policy issues. It is argued that society's allowance of printed cigarette advertising overlooks adolescents' heightened vulnerability to the kinds of appeals used in cigarette advertisements. Present policy also overlooks adolescents' relative unresponsiveness to the health risk information required in cigarette advertisements.     

Social influence processes affecting adolescent substance use

Social influence is central to models of adolescent substance use. Nonetheless, researchers fail to delineate the various forms of social influence. A framework that distinguishes between active (explicit drug offers) and passive (social modeling and overestimation of friends' use) social pressure was tested. The effect of these processes on alcohol and cigarette use was examined with 526 seventh graders taking part in an alcohol prevention program. Hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated that pretest measures of alcohol use, offers, modeling, and overestimation each accounted for unique variance in posttest alcohol use. Similar results were obtained for cigarette smoking. The general model was not significantly different for boys and girls, or for prior users and prior nonusers, supporting the generalizability of the framework. Implications for intervention programs are discussed.     

Somatic complaints in anxious children

Although stomachaches and headaches are considered characteristic of children with anxiety disorders, there is converging evidence that a broader range of somatic symptoms may be associated with children's expressions of anxiety. The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of somatic complaints in anxious children. The results indicated that children with anxiety disorders endorsed the presence of many different somatic complaints, and that contrary to clinical intuition, stomaches and headaches were not among the most commonly reported symptoms. In addition, the anxious children endorsed significantly more somatic complaints when compared to normal controls. Furthermore, the symptom pattern reported by anxious children indicated the presence of both the somatic and cognitive components usually associated with panic attacks, although none of the children met diagnostic criteria for panic disorder. The results are discussed in terms of the contribution of somatic symptoms to the understanding of anxiety disorders in children.     

A psychological interview process for career assessment

The authors present a comprehensive four-step process for conducting initial career assessment by interview. The process assesses skills, interests, values, non-work relationships, goals and activities, and psychological aspects such as self-esteem and work attitudes. The interview process is flexible, internally consistent and portable. Step One analyzes the client's work history and includes reasons why such a history may be inadequate. Step Two examines work-related preferences. Step Three investigates lifestyle context, and Step Four produces a summary of all the accumulated interview information, including options the client wishes to avoid. Detailed worksheets accompany the article.This article has been adapted, with permission, from Chapter 3, Promoting Client Self Understanding, in Yost, E. B., and Corbishley, M. A.Career Counseling: A Psychological Approach. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1987.     

The effects of self-exposure instructions on agoraphobic outpatients

Nineteen agoraphobic outpatients were randomly assigned to four sessions of either (1) Exposure: planning and discussion of exposure homework tasks requiring patients to enter and remain in phobic situations hitherto avoided; or (2) Control: discussion of marital, family and social difficulties and strategies for dealing with these.A small but significant effect was found at post-test and at one month follow-up in favour of the exposure condition. It is suggested that this variable should be controlled in future relevant experiments and is worth including as an inexpensive expedient of active treatment of phobias.     

Cognitive flexibility-rigidity, repetition effects, and memory

This experiment examined the role of cognitive flexibility-rigidity in memory. On the basis of several personality tests, subjects were classified as flexible, intermediate, or rigid, using a postexperimental blocking procedure. All subjects were given a perceptual grouping task, which masks the meaningful structure of the material. Subjects have the option of discovering the more meaningful structure consisting of word pairs, or alternatively, processing less meaningful chunks of letters. Results were that flexible subjects recalled substantially more items than intermediate and rigid subjects, in that order. In addition, subjects given different (varied) groupings of the letter chunks recalled substantially more than subjects given repeated presentations of the same grouping structure. Transfer tests indicated that subjects acquired different coding strategies under varied and constant input. Repetitious input led subjects to adopt inefficient strategies in processing the material to be remembered, whereas varied input led subjects to adopt efficient encoding strategies.