Depressive symptom patterns among older women

The structure of depressive symptom patterns was investigated in a community sample of 344 women between the ages of 51 and 92 who were administered the SCL-90-R Depression and Additional Symptoms Scales. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test alternative measurement hypotheses implied by clinical formulations of depressive symptom patterns among elderly persons. The findings show support for the hypothesis that 2 somewhat different depressive syndromes, along with 4 more delimited forms of distress, underlie symptom-reporting patterns. Implications of these findings for future research on the relation between aging and depression are discussed.     

The effect of specific hypnotic suggestions on blood pressure in normotensive subjects

Twenty normotensive subjects participated on a voluntary basis in an experiment designed to study the effects of specific suggestions on blood pressure (BP). After an induction procedure, the experimental group received suggestions presumed to be relatively nonactivating, although capable of lowering or raising BP. A control group was used to record the BP changes over time. All subjects met for one session. Eight subjects from the experimental group met for a second session. Both adaptation and induction resulted in significant BP decreases. A specific suggestion to increase BP gave a significant result when compared to the induction point. There was no significant change from induction to the BP decrease suggestion. Both systolic and diastolic BP behaved in the same way. A second experimental session resulted in no significant change compared with the first session. Also, no significant difference was found in suggestibility scores from the first to the second session. The results are in line with previously published studies.     

Career perspectives of male prison inmates in college courses

The article presents a profile of college-attending prison inmates' personality and vocational interests based on Holland's theory of careers and an assessment of their attitudes that are critical in realistic career decision-making.     

Syntactic criteria in prearticulatory editing: Evidence from laboratory-induced slips of the tongue

Earlier studies of laboratory-induced verbal slips have provided a partial model of prearticulatory editing in speech production—a cognitive process by which impending phoneme strings are evaluated for their linguistic and extralinguistic integrity prior to articulation. These studies have provided evidence of editing based upon phonotactic, lexical, and semantic criteria. The present study demonstrates the existence of syntactic editing criteria via laboratory-induced spoonerisms. Experiment I demonstrates that syntactically legitimate spoonerism errors (e.g., mice saw) are more frequent than syntactically anomalous spoonerism errors (e.g., mice sees), suggesting that prearticulatory phonological processing decisions are modified on the basis of syntactic criteria. Experiment II demonstrates that the criteria for syntactically legnitimate spoonerisms can be influenced by aspects of the syntactic context. Implications are discussed.     

Effects of relative immobilization on the speaker's nonverbal behavior and on the dialogue imagery level

People generally display an important amount of gestural and motoric activity when speaking. Since recent data have shown the limits of an explanation of this activity in terms of nonverbal or bodily communication, the present study attempted to explore what would happen if subjects were impeded from making the principal movements they normally perform during a conversation. Subjects were led to hold a 50-minute conversation while sitting in an armchair devised to restrain their movements of the head, arms, hands, legs, and feet during part of the experiment. The main dependent variables consisted of nonverbal activity in body zones that remained free to vary: eyebrows, eyes, mouth, and fingers. During the phase of movement restriction, highly significant increases in activity were recorded in these zones, with subsequent return to base levels when the subject recovered free movements. Also, significant interactions of conditions of movements and subject's conversational role (speaker vs. listener) were observed for most of the variables. Samples of dialogues submitted to a computerized technique of content analysis revealed a significant decrease in the vividness of imagery during movement restriction.     

Effects of inbreeding on mental-ability factors

The differential effects of inbreeding on 11 subtests of the WISC, in a Japanese (Hiroshima) population, are related to the factor structure of the tests. The degree of inbreeding depression on mental abilities is most strongly correlated with the subtests' loadings on the General factor, g, which is common to all of the subtests. Loadings on the Verbal factor are also positively correlated with inbreeding depression. The (non-verbal) Performance factor, however, is slightly enhanced by inbreeding. One possible inference from these findings is that at least the General factor shows genetic dominance, which is theoretically consistent with natural selection for g in the course of human evolution. It is also noted that the factor structure of the WISC in the Japanese population is highly similar to that of the U.S. standardization sample.