Identification with aggression vs. turning against the self: An empirical study of turn-of-the-century European Jewish humor

Self-directed demeaning ethnic humor is hypothesized to represent either a means of self-deprecation or a stance of disidentifying with one’s own group of origin. Compendia of published Yiddish humor were examined to empirically test competing conceptualizations of Jewish wit. Results are analyzed in the context of the social milieu of the publication samples.     

Panic attacks without fear: An overview*

‘Non-fearful panic disorder’ (NFPD) is a condition that meets DSM III-R criteria for panic disorder but lacks a report of subjective fear or anxiety. Presenting the first comprehensive overview of this issue, the authors describe studies investigating a wide range of apparently overlapping phenomena including NFPD, ‘somatically expressed panic’, ‘non-cognitive panic’, ‘alexithymic panic’, ‘non-clinical panic’, and ‘masked anxiety’. The review shows that such conditions account for from 20 to 40% of the panic disorder found in various medical populations, and that this group resembles conventional panic disorder in cross-sectional comparisons. We emphasize that a ‘triple-response’ model of anxiety is consistent with our conclusion that NFPD should be conceptualized as a panic disorder subtype. Finally, we discuss unresolved issues regarding the construct and predictive diagnostic validity of NFPD.     

The effects of a career course on undecided college students

The effects of a career course taught by 11 instructors (two sections each) for college students, who were undecided about a major field or career, were evaluated in a pre-post design using the Vocational Identity, Occupational Information, and Barrier scales of the My Vocational Situation (J. A. Holland, D. C. Daiger, & P. G. Power, Palo Alto, Calif.: Consulting Psychologists Press, 1980). Large main effects were observed for the Identity and Occupational Information scales, but not for the Barriers scale. No interactions by instructor or student characteristics were found by using a simple ANOVA procedure or by using a split plot factorial design. The implications for new research and career instructors were discussed.     

Flexibility of information processing and the memory of field-independent and field-dependent learners

This study examined memory differences between 48 field-independent and 48 field-dependent learners, and it hypothesized that rigid information processing by field-dependent learners interferes with cue efficiency during memory recall. The field-independent and field-dependent learners were presented with paired associates in which the target recall words were homographs, and accompanying associates emphasized one of the homograph's two meanings. Homograph recall occurred under three conditions: (a) same cue recall, (b) different cue recall (emphasized other meaning of homograph), and (c) free recall. This study found memory differences favoring the field-independent learner and findings consistent with the rigid information processing hypothesis of field-dependent learners.     

On the psychological reality of a natural rule of syllable structure

If natural rules in phonology, such as the rule which deletes a word final consonant before a consonant, are frequently found in unrelated languages, it must be because they tap universal features of production and/or perception. The present experiment employed a learning task to see whether naive subjects have a predisposition for the natural rule as opposed to its converse (consonant deletion before a vowel). The Ss first learned four novel words (nouns) - two beginning with a consonant, two with a vowel - as paired associates to English ‘translations’. Then three novel adjectives were combined with each of the four nouns, following the natural rule for one group of Ss, the unnatural rule for the other. The twelve phrases were cued by their English translations and the S had to respond to each with the phonologically correct sequence of adjective and noun; confirmation followed each response. The Ss learning the unnatural corpus had a strong tendency to give natural responses, whereas the converse was not true. Consequently they made many more errors en route to mastery than their natural counterparts, even when the operative rule was displayed on the first trial by presenting in turn each adjective with its four following nouns. It appears that our Ss had implicit knowledge of the natural rule, even though it does not operate to any significant extent in English.